Fantastic Feedback Tool for Every COL and SBL Class!

I'm in love!! ...with Kahoots!

No, I didn't give you a link and don't Google it yet! Read me out. I promise I'll give you a short rundown of why you must use it in your class- tomorrow in fact! It fits in perfectly and integrally to a SBL and COL classroom. (If you really have to rush just read the bold- you'll get the idea).

You know clickers and instant feedback systems etc? Well my school doesn't have money laying around to get those and in fact I'm pretty sure I like Kahoots better. So here's why:

Simplicity:

1. Any device works! It doesn't matter what device you or your students have, what software it runs or how old it is. If it can access the internet you're in.
2. No downloads, logins or complicated instructions. This is about as simple as you can get. 
3. Incredibly easy interface for creating questions.

Value:

1. Immediate feedback. I see immediately 
• What % of students get each question.
• Which students get it the most overall (by their running total)
2. Discussion. I can immediately address misunderstandings and discuss incorrect answers. The quiz has a setting for auto-proceed or manual. I like manual because I can pause to discuss answers with students and discover misunderstandings while strengthening critical thinking skills and mastery.
3. High level thinking. Though it is multiple choice, more than one answer can be labeled correct so students are challenged with higher level thinking skills (no simple process of elimination here!).
4. Media options. Every question has the option to drag and drop a picture or video above it. So if you want students to respond to a graphic or to clarify a question with a graphic or video, you are all set!
5. Repeat to reinforce. Students love it so much they beg to play it again and again which reinforces the concepts with practice (and since it auto-shuffles the answers they can't just go by location).
6. Student growth: Repeat playing shows student growth and they take it on as a challenge.
7. Data analysis:
   Teacher can download the results which are in spreadsheet form and are broken down by question and overall and include student names for great analysis- no work involved!
8. Learners become leaders:
   Students can make their own and challenge their classmates. This makes learners leaders and forces students to think of wrong answers as well as right ones which really stretches them and takes their learning to a new level.
9. Great leveler:
   I found that students typically labeled "faster" did not have any advantage. They often presumed too much or acted to quickly and hurt their own score enabling "slower" students to catch up with them. Also the scoring emphasizes growth! Each time a student completes a question they are told exactly how many points they are behind the next highest scorer. This gives every student an attainable goal which I love. The "slowest" may start at the bottom but they can climb their way up by trying to be just a little more accurate or quick on the next question. A student who was last on the first game was the winner of the fouth and quite psyched!

My class has never been this loud! But they were so universally engaged, motivated and on task that I couldn't care less! If you already use Kahoot! I would love to get tips from you! If you are trying it for the first time, I'd love to hear how it goes!

Here is the link if you simply can't wait to try it out!

Here's how it works:

1. Creator makes the quiz (could take 2 minutes if it is only a few questions).

2. When the class is ready, one device is used to project the quiz on the wall. The link (it's always kahoot.it) and pin are shown clearly on the screen.

3. Every student* navigates to the link, types in the pin and enters a nickname** 

4. As students enter their names they appear on the screen. When everyone's in, press start and off you go!

5. Before the answers appear, the question is shown on the screen for a little over 5 seconds. This is a great time to make sure everyone understands it. Practically, the delay ensures every device is ready to record their answers.

Front of class view

 Student view

6. The question and answer choices appear on the screen. Symbols that correspond to each answer appear on every device. Students race each other and the clock (predetermined time by the creator) to click their answer gaining points for correctness and speed.

Front of class view

Student View

7. Once everyone's answer is submitted, the correct answer(s) and breakdown of student choices are displayed. At this point the presenter regains control and is able to discuss the question, re-show the picture if needed and move on to the current scoreboard (top 5) at their own pace.

Front of class view

 Student view

Normally top 5 are shown

Steps 5-7 are repeated until you run out of questions, at which point (if your students are anything like mine) they will beg you to do it again since they just must beat their friend or reach the top of the scoreboard! Build in some time for repeats and you will discover they love practice more than they ever thought ;) and you get great feedback painlessly!

There is a final page for students to give simple feedback for the creator which is especially great when learners become leaders and make their own.

Front of class view 

Student view

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* I found that students could share a device if necessary. They took turns answering collaborating very vocally.

**At first I required them to use their names so I knew. Then I discovered it didn't matter since they were all so proud of the names they came up with and so vocal about their standings! 

The Joy of Having Students Redirect the Class

On Thursday I walked into Alg 2 class ready to review and practice for an assessment on learning  targets related to graphing parabolas and transforming the graphs. I didn't have any earth-shakingly original ideas but with all the snow day and President's day weekend disruptions I figured there would be plenty to practice and review.

But my student's had a better idea! One student had a bag full of M&Ms and offered me some stating his mom had given them to him because it was his birthday. I congratulated him on his birthday and before I could say more, another student piped up "Miss Morrison, can we make Happy Birthday signs for Josh using Desmos and what we've learned about graphing??"

I was immediately in love with the idea! Here was a hands-on way to practice our graphing and transforming graphs skills (like I planned) that it was student initiated and motivated (they all were begging me at this point).

So the next 88 minutes were spent creating masterpieces on Desmos. They were trading tips, referring to the rules for transformation they learned, asking lots of questions and constantly engaged in peer feedback, collaboration and teaching. They couldn't believe class time was up when the alarm sounded and were sad that they had to move on to the next class. I was in love with the culture of learning they had just created in spite of me!

Here are some samples:

This was my fastest finisher who spent the rest of the block helping his classmates.

This is not finished yet but for a student who struggles to become engaged was outstanding effort.

This was the birthday boy's- having come from another school situation where he already completed an Alg 2 course, it was great to see him applying concepts he had learned there but was fuzzy on and asking lots of other questions.

Project Based Learning- Tech tools

I have some new friends for project time!

My students are working on a project in response to a debate we viewed and discussed in class. I gave them lots of project choices and then encouraged them to pick their medium according to their own learning styles and multiple intelligences that we figured out at the beginning of the semester. This means there needed to be multiple ways for them to create their project. 

Sooo... I found, thanks to my Twitter PLN and other online resources, some great sites/apps/tools that helped the projects become differentiated (of course the typical methods- writing, making videos... were options as well). These were some that were the most popular:

Google Docs- Of course I knew about this one before and we have used it from the beginning but I am still blown away by how much it helps the students collaborate, makes feedback easier and forever eliminates the "I forgot my flashdrive at home/ lost the email where I emailed the doc to myself/ I have an old version and this computer won't open it/ I worked on a different computer yesterday and it's saved there" trouble.

Storify- Since this was a recent debate, some students are using Storify to create a log of responses to the debate on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube as well as articles, videos, blogs and other Storify pages. They think this is a really cool interface and I love how they can analyze reactions to the debate freely by grouping and in-line commenting on the things they include in their Storify.

Sample of Storify made by CNBC

Pixaton- One artistically minded student decided to do the project "Pretend you are one of the debators. If you had 5 more minutes, what would you say? Why?" by creating a comic strip. He is able to use a medium he loves (art/comics) to answer a high level question in a fun way.

Knowmia Teach- This app originally created for teachers (I love it for flipping videos) is also available to students. I didn't want any of the projects to be presented in front of the class. I wanted student's to be able to give feedback and view the projects asynchronously. For this reason slide shows in the traditional sense were not an option. However, some students really love making them. Knowmia Teach allows students to import slideshows or create them in the app and then record themselves explaining the material. This is then compiled into a video. One of my guys brings his own iPad in and is loving using this app!

Sample screenshot from app- one of my videos

Snow Day=Virtual Learning Day!

We had snow days last Thursday and Friday which, attached to being off on Monday and Tuesday, gave us a six day President's Day weekend. I and another teacher had been pushing for virtual learning days on snow days for some time and we got the go-ahead Wednesday morning as Thursday looked like it would be out and we had used up all our snow days.

Our school uses Moodle so I alerted my kids to check it and be ready to complete whatever I posted if we had a snow day. The reactions in my different blocks were funny:

Freshmen: "Miss Morrison!! It's a snow day!!!"
Me: "Yes, but this way we won't have to take away days from spring break or add a week to the end of the school year."
Freshmen: [silence for a moment] "Oh!" "Wait- that makes sense"  "I like that idea" "That's good!" "That's way better than adding days!" "Why haven't we done this before?!?"

Juniors: [confused and surpised looks. silence]
Me: "This way we won't have to take away days from spring break or add a week to the end of the school year."
Juniors: "Ooh!" "That makes sense." "Yeah! I like this idea!" "Ok, I'll be checking!"

Seniors: "Ok." "I'll go on and do it." "Yup."
Me: [surprised that they are unfazed because we have never done this before..] "...This way we won't have to take away days from spring break or add a week to the end of the school year..."
Seniors: "Yup, got it."

So now I needed to prep for virtual learning. I made videos for my Algebra 2 juniors to watch and told them to practice the problems and chat/email me with questions. I embedded a Khan Academy video for my senior Calc class and told them to read the section (a skill I have been working on with them) and practice with some problems. I told my freshmen Physical Science class to finish watching the last 45 minutes of a debate we had been watching and discussing in class. I made a Moodle forum for them to post questions/comments on and told them to make one original post and reply to two others. This allowed for asynchronous learning which is important at this early stage when we have not established a precedent for virtual learning days and do not require all students to be on during their class time.

I was most excited about the freshmen virtual learning task but also most worried they would not log on to do it. My fears were proved to be unfounded. Of the whole school (other teachers also did this with their classes) they had the best buy in!! All but 2 or 3 logged on and completed the task. They were also eager to talk about what they had done on the Wednesday when we returned.

Since we also ended up with no school on Friday, I posted follow up (more videos and practice for juniors and seniors and debate project planning for freshmen) on Friday morning.

The juniors and seniors completed their tasks for the most part and those who didn't realized very quickly that they needed to go back and catch up since we just kept on moving in class. Thankfully and unusually the next topics did not build directly off of the ones on the virtual learning days so they were able to participate in the class activities and catch up on their own time.

I'm so thankful this first try at virtual learning days went well and I have several take-aways that hopefully will help me grow in this.

1. Make the task have an interactive component with other students. The freshmen were most involved because they were responding to one another and analyzing what they learned. This also assured me that they were completing the task and gave me opportunities to assess how it was going and their learning.
2. Use videos from others when possible. I always emphasize to students that different teachers teach differently and they may understand a particular concept better when someone else teaches it. This was a great opportunity to have them watch someone else explain a concept and I had the chance to clear up any confusion and fill cracks in the learning when we returned. It also gave them an opportunity to try other excellent resources that I had previewed (Khan Academy and MIT open courseware). Also, making a video from scratch on the morning of an unexpected snow day is not necessarily a quick process and with all my guys who do plowing and shoveling it is important to get them the material early so they can complete it when they have a chance.

I hope I have another chance this year to build on what I and the students have learned through this process and I'd love to hear ideas and best practices from other teachers who do virtual learning days!!!

Conic Section Design with Desmos

If you haven't ever tried Desmos, go check it out now. Before you keep reading. Even if you think you hate graphing. You can't possibly walk away from it without being impressed with the fact that graphing can be cool- really cool!

So on to how we use it in my math classes, and more specifically for a recent project...

Desmos is a great way for students to explore how changing parameters in an equation changes the graph. This is its most common use in my class. Its sliders feature alone is worth its weight in gold to a math teacher and students!

However, there is so much more that one can do with Desmos. So for a concluding project for both the semester and our chapter on conic sections, we used math equations in Desmos to design and create art. My students were impressed and inspired by the amazing work others have done on Desmos and quickly set about to create their own with a few guidelines:

• Artwork does no have to be original (it could be a comic book character/ famous landmark/ logo) as long as it is not a copy of art already on Desmos.
• Use all four conic sections in the artwork.
• Some areas of the artwork must be shaded using inequalities.
• Work must not be similar to a classmate's.
• All the time given in class for this project must be used.
• Share the graph on Drive for your classmates and teacher to see.

My purposes were to practice the conic sections standards and reinforce inequalities and basic graphing techniques all while introducing students to the power of equations in design.

The results were fantastic! Here are some of my favorites:

[Under each image I have included the link to the graph on Desmos so those interested can see the equations and zoom in on interesting details]

1. "Maxine's Rainbow on Water"- The best part about this one is the black radiating lines around the rainbow. She wanted rays so she looked through artwork on Desmos until she figured out how to create these using sine curves in polar form! Since they only learned a little about sine curves and definitely never learned about graphing them in polar form, I was blown away!

   

   Link to view equations and zoom

2. "Calvin"- This is a really outstanding replica of a well-beloved cartoon character. If it looks simple, go look at the equations- all 31 of them!

   

   Link to view equations and zoom

3. "Dress"- Again, this student did an outstanding job finding and learning to use a complicated equation to make the star in the middle (actually 2 equations). Ever think you'd see "low level" math students using equations like this? Me neither...
   

   

   Link to view equations and zoom

4. "Surf's Up"- My favorite thing about this one is that it was created by a student who really struggled with translating what she was visualizing into the grapher. It was a real struggle for her so I was very proud of what she accomplished!

   

   Link to view equations and zoom

I was sooo impressed with all that my students did and can't wait to do this project again. This next time around promises to be even better. After introducing Desmos to my new class, one of the students seemed distracted for quite a bit. Upon going over to investigate, I discovered he had found the art section on Desmos (which my other class never found on their own) and was already playing with the graphs. He had discovered how to make circles and how to use the sliders to make a parabola look like a spinning jump-rope. He was full of questions about how to shade his graph and if there were shortcuts to typing some of the equations. Last semester's class didn't ever realize they could make moving pictures! 

If you want to see the objectives etc for the project, here is the link to the Google Doc. If you ever try it with a class, I would love to see what your students come up with so my students can be challenged with other's work. Any ideas on improving the project are always welcome as well!