520 Blog 3

Ok, so it’s not the 3rd week, but this IS my 3rd reflection on the 520 course. I have yet to complete a large percentage of my assignments, but I did finish one that proved to be quite helpful at the end of my first year teaching middle school math.
The Toolbox Assignment required us to check out and evaluate several online tools that could be used in the classroom. Some of the tools I investigated were impractical, requiring subscription to a service or not very powerful in and of themselves. Most, however, were quite practical in the sense that they lent themselves to an immediate, seamless integration into my classroom. My favorites were Poll Everywhere and Survey Monkey.
When I discovered that Poll Everywhere was free, easy to set up, and simple to use, my mind started racing with the possibilities. The next school day, I used Poll Everywhere to solicit student responses from small groups that contributed to spontaneous large group discussion, allowed me to track each group’s pace and accuracy of the response. The kids loved the idea of having a computer to use, seeing their response ‘fall down’ on the projection screen, and using other students responses to either confirm their own, modify their own, or get them started on their own. The use of Poll Everywhere eased the frustration some of the students have when ‘discovering’ new patterns and concepts and lacking a sense of confidence doing so. They were gifted with a more immediate response, whether corrective or complimentary, from me, and could see that other students were able to achieve accurate responses or were also struggling to respond.
Because it was easy and quick to implement, student request to use it again was granted. We used Poll Everywhere for the same purpose, to share small group responses with the large group, in two different environments, pretty regularly for the last two weeks of school. The first time, each of the five groups were given a laptop, and one student was assigned to use it. They were given the material and guidelines for the investigation, as usual for the lesson being taught. This time, however, the students were instructed to access a blog containing links to each of the responses required in the investigation (www.cmsmath7.blogspot.com). When their group had come up with and written their response on the guide handout, they would click on the appropriate link on the blog page, type in their group’s response, and watch it appear on the front screen. The rest of the time, the kids were working in the computer lab, collaborating on a Google presentation, in addition to sharing and comparing responses.
There were very few problems, none of which took time away from the productivity of the class. Through the experience, I learned to minimize the title of the poll in order to leave more space for the responses, change the background color of the poll in order to signal that we have moved on to another question, and save the responses from one class to share with other classes, giving the last session of the day a larger data base to work with.
I used Survey Monkey to gather information from the students about their opinions on what works, what doesn’t work, etc. It was a typical end-of-the-year survey for me of the students. I would like to expand this survey to include parents, with more questions. Fortunately, Survey Monkey was the tool of choice for one of the administrators of the district’s charter school, so I was able to sell her on how this could be a powerful tool as part of the 3-year evaluation requirement of collecting student and parent feedback. I think we may be on to something…