Like Krazy

For those teachers who use games for learning and review, it's apparent the rise in engagement that they bring to the classroom. But, does this engagement and enthusiasm always lead to learning? According to research by neuroscientist Paul Howard-Jones, adding an element of chance can help further increase the chances of learning. It's just a matter of adding it at the right time. For instance, the addition of a simple 50/50 chance of losing all points associated with a correct answer leads to more effective learning. But where in the process does the learning peak? I asked Howard-Jones via email and it turns out that the following sequence works well: student/team answers question student/team is given a 50/50 chance to "double or nothing" their points correct answer is revealed It turns out that even if they lose points or answer incorrectly, the learning is still at a peak because of the state of mind of ALL the students involved. Good or bad, even those who a...

During a recent Engchat discussion about student writing I contributed a comment about an activity I do with students which I call Think with Ink. There were several questions so I thought I would expound on the process.      The idea of Think with Ink originated in a professional development session held at my school close to 20 years ago. Please note that I am almost completely avoiding a snarky comment about actually learning something constructive from a professional development session conducted by an "outsider." While I believe that most of the time the best PD does come from within because the PD leader knows the audience, MUCH can be learned from "outsiders" on a continuous basis through Twitter, hashtag chats, and webinars. That outside voice has become essential for my growth and constant learning.      At its core, Think with Ink (my name for it) is a simple exercise. Students are given an open-ended topic (i.e. Good - "We are about to r...

I like to play golf but do not do it very often, therefore I am not very good. But that's okay because I have no aspirations for the PGA and it gives my golf outings a sense of adventure beyond the course itself (woods walks searching for wayward golf balls and/or clubs that have "slipped" from my grasp, etc). All of this allows me a more casual approach to my scoring, i.e. a lost ball does not mean a penalty to me because I believe the lost ball is penalty enough. It helps keep the experience less stressful. It's time to take the same stress-free approach to my blog.  My number of posts are very infrequent, similar to my rounds of golf, but I would like to change that.  They are not as frequent as I would like for many reasons, but one of those is the time I have been spending putting together tutorials, lessons, and web pages for the faculty at my school. To remedy the stress of blogging, or lack thereof, I decided to use the "lost ball" approach a...

A couple of days before the last day of class one of my colleagues, Paul Clark, mentioned an end of the year idea that he was doing with his English classes. He gave his students ballots to vote on different categories for the readings they had done in class: Best Novel, Best Character, Biggest Jerk, etc. He gave them the ballots the day before classes ended, tallied the votes, and created cards and envelopes for students to read as part of an awards ceremony in class. He said students had a good time doing it each year and it was a good way to reflect on and appreciate all they had done over the course of the year. Of course, I stole it. I did add a few technological twists and it was one of these that created a surprising ripple effect. My students voted using a Google form that I set up for them and therefore, all the results were placed in a spreadsheet. The next day Paul was using tally marks to compute scores before classes began. I sat next to him, showed him the...

I remember sitting in class a few (plus!) years ago and at times totally following what was going on. It could have been almost any subject but there were times when it seemed to click.  At least I thought so. Then I got home and started the homework. Different story. It just wasn't that clear anymore and I realized that I didn't quite get it the way I thought. This was not exclusive to homework as it also happened at times on quizzes and tests. I thought I had studied enough (which, admittedly was what I always thought) but it did not pan out. I want my students to avoid this problem and the trick is for them to answer the question: "How do I know when I really know it?" But how? I recently saw a tweet for a webinar run by Ray Jimenez, who is a great webinar presenter by the way, entitled "Learners Don't Know What They Don't Know." Of course, I was excited to get the long-awaited answer to my question in one interesting hour but, ironically e...

While I like to give the students an opportunity to do a game-like review (Jeopardy and "Blingo"* are two popular formats) before a test, the time and resources are not always available for me to create an appropriate amount (and type) of questions. But now I have the students generate the questions and then it just takes a cut and paste to build the review into Socrative.com. The review session is done in pairs with students sharing an iPad (or netbook). In a couple classes there was an odd number of students so there was one group of three, but the third person seemed a bit left out and could not read the screen very well with the others. In most cases, as they worked through the review, one student read the question out loud and they both discussed the answer before selecting. The review game in this case is Space Race, which is part of Socrative.com. At first appearance it may seem a little "young" for high school students but my freshmen and senior classes ...

Things started to settle down on the third day as if it was almost routine in my classroom to take a quiz on a smartphone or netbook computer. But I did not want the same issues I had with the computers not connecting to the wireless (turns out it was a faulty wifi switch but I didn't know it at the time) so I brought out the big guns - the iPads.  We purchased a cart with 26 iPads over the summer and I put it to use for the first time. The students were extremely excited and most put down their phones to have a go. The quiz program worked perfectly (Socrative.com) but I immediately realized how easy it must be to see such a big screen from a nearby desk. Does the fact that that is one of the first things I thought of mean that I am getting cynical? I hope not. Maybe just more "wise." I realize that there must be some special advantage in using the iPads (or any other tablet) over a smartphone for this particular exercise but that wasn't happening just yet, but I did...