Integrating Technology:  Fast ways to assess your students

Are you looking for a faster, more engaging way to assess your students? Do you like to use entrance or exit slips, or find out how students are doing or what they are thinking?  If your answer is yes, then try some of these assessment tools.

Why use technology for assessing?

Not all students are willing to express themselves in front of their classmates, and we’ve all been there when the question posed to the class, “Does anybody have any questions?” is then followed by silence. No questions?  Really?  While sometimes there really aren’t any questions, other times, or even quite possibly, a lot of the time, there are questions but students are afraid or uncomfortable asking them in the classroom. There is a fear or unease of showing vulnerability perhaps by asking a question.  So for any of these reasons, using one of the many assessment tools in class can be quite helpful for both teachers and students and for different reasons.  I find these can help to engage students more and enable us as teachers to really develop a better understanding of where the students are in terms of their learning and growth in the classroom.

A few tools to start with

I use a variety of assessment tools for different reasons in my classroom, but I would like to tell you about the first few that I found to be very useful. I started using Survey Monkey a few years back as a way to find out generally how the students were preparing, what kind of activities helped them the most and the least, what areas they thought they needed some additional help with, and I also added any extra question for them to add  additional comments or concerns.

Because I wanted them to all complete the survey, I gave them credit and to do this, I asked them to provide their Celly user name for identification.  I strategically placed the “identify yourself” question at the very end of the survey and I provided reassurance that their personal answers would not be shared and it was just information to help guide me in deciding how to best provide instruction for them in my class. It worked out great with all of its features, analyzing the data through summaries and also looking at their individual answers, really did provide a wealth of information to help me make my instruction better for them. It also gave me the opportunity to see what they needed in terms of personalization and I value this information the most.

As time passed, I found more uses for Survey Monkey such as short quizzes, entrance or exit slips and other formats for engaging them in the class discussion. And it was great because the answers were quickly available, no student login or sign up was needed and I could save the information to refer back to at any time. Now if you are like me, you like to try a variety of things and maybe you have a top 3 or top 5 list of your favorite tools for an area of your instruction.  I do as well and would like to share a few others with you.

Have you heard the phrase? “On my Soap Box”

The name of this tool immediately caught my attention because of its name, many times hearing the reference to “getting on one’s soap box” to discuss something.  So the next tool I tried, is in fact called, GoSoapBox.  GoSoapBox is another quick way to assess students and does not require students to create an account but rather have an event code to enter.  The event code is assigned to your specific created class or “event.” The expression “soapbox” does go back a long way but GoSoapBox is a great way for students to communicate and respond to polls, quizzes and discussion questions. And the nice thing is that students can respond openly, and their responses are saved and readily available. This is a great way to pose a question to a class and have students share their answers, and then they can be displayed on a SmartBoard for open discussion. As a teacher, I can always refer back to their answers and use this as a way to work with students individually and help them to enhance their skills.   My students liked using this format because it involves technology and it is quick and easily completed on their phones or other device.  And more importantly, it was something different than they had done in their other classes and other assessments they had done.

Kahoot! A “game” changer for sure

My next favorite came a little bit later in the spring of 2014 and that was Kahoot!. I could spend a long time talking about the numerous ways I have found to use Kahoot! in my foreign language classroom and the energy and enthusiasm that the mere mention of the word creates for my students is unreal.  However, just to give you a few highlights if you have not yet used it, Kahoot! is a great way to have students engage in a game, with questions ranging from vocabulary identification, to images or video, fill-in-the-blank and any type of question that you want with various answer choices. Students can play on any device, the question appears on your screen or Smartboard and students enter a game pin to join your game.

So how does it work? The game Kahoot! Is kind of set up like the trivia games you may have played at restaurants. After each question, students know where they rank, and at the end of the game there is a winner and the top 5 players are listed. And what’s even better is that you can have the feedback and results instantly.  You have the option to open the results directly or email a spreadsheet to yourself. So while it can be used for fun and is great for engaging students in the learning process, it is also a way to quickly assess students and provide feedback quickly as well. Even better, they can now play against themselves in the “ghost mode.”  And if time is an issue for you, there are many public Kahoots available that people share and you can borrow them and use them for your class.  Another way I have used Kahoot to enhance student learning is to have them create games for us to use in class. This way they are getting the practice that they need and the class as a whole has more opportunities for fun, engaging ways to learn. All you have to do make sure their questions have correct answers marked and advise students to set the timers for each question accordingly.

So for now, these are three different and quick ways you could try for implementing alternate assessments in your classroom.  Try one of them or all of them, they are easy to use and I think you will find students will be interested and more excited to learn.  By just having something different than a paper and pencil assessment and the ability to use their device to complete it, can lead to positive changes in how your students learn.

Until the next time, keep working on that technology integration and send me your thoughts. I would love to hear how it has been going so far. And if you want to see some examples, feel free to contact me at rdene915@gmail.com or @rdene915. Next time I will talk a bit more about some of these and other assessment tools. Thanks for reading!

We all know that we must assess our students regularly using formative and summative assessments.  Assessments are needed in order to determine what learning has occurred, what areas need to be reinforced, and as teachers, what our next steps must be.  We need this information to guide our instruction and help decide what additional opportunities to provide for our students.  We also must assess our students so that we can have the vital information necessary to provide feedback to them, in order to guide their learning. Providing them with timely, relevant feedback is essential to helping their growth and reflection on their learning and needs.  Assessments are an integral part of the learning process for teachers and students for these reasons.  So how can we make assessments more effective, informative and engaging too?

Why use technology for assessments? 

Depending on the number of classes we have, and the number of students in each class, creating numerous assessments in a variety of forms, grading them and providing feedback in a timely manner, can become quite time consuming. However, with the numerous tools available for technology integration, assessing students in a variety of different ways is now available. Teachers can now conduct quick entrance and exit slips, administer surveys, engage students in discussions both in and outside of class, create quizzes and other more formal assessments to determine what learning has occurred. And what’s even better than all of these possibilities mentioned, is how quickly the results can be obtained, evaluated and feedback provided to the students.

Some of the tools available provide instant feedback to teachers in several forms.  Teachers can select to receive downloadable spreadsheets, a quick email with the results and some offer other formats as well, all of which help to develop an understanding of where the students are in terms of their learning and what areas need a bit more focus and instruction.
What differences can you expect?

In my classroom, I need to assess my students on a regular basis because learning a foreign language, especially at the lower levels, requires ongoing evaluation of how the students are understanding the material.  Since I am teaching a language, feedback on a regular basis is critical so students can build their vocabulary and enhance the four language skills.  With the number of students I have in the lower level, providing assessments and giving feedback to the students in a timely manner has always been a priority to me. I wanted to grade quizzes and return them the next day, because that is when I believed it was most needed and effective.  The results of student assessments are necessary so that we can continue our learning plan. However, sometimes due to other time constraints, or the length of assessments, grading their work and returning it the next day, in spite of my best efforts, did not always happen, and for this I needed  to find a solution.

With the tools available through technology, many of these concerns have disappeared and made a tremendous difference in the efficiency of my classroom and my teaching procedures, and the types of assessments I can create for my students and meet their diverse learning styles.

Where to begin: What are some tools to start with?
Using tools such as Edmodo, Kahoot!, Responster, Socrative, Survey Monkey, Quizizz, Riddle and several others like these, I can quickly create discussion questions, quizzes, a survey, or combination of all of these and provide the link to my students to complete in class. There are so many options for creating a formative assessment using any of these tools and many more are available.  Once they’re all finished, I can see the results or even download the results directly to my computer, download the information to a spreadsheet or I can analyze the statistics in a variety of ways. Assessing students using tools such as these, makes the use of entrance slips and exit slips much easier and quicker.  By having your students complete an entrance slip using one of these tools at the beginning of a period, it enables you to have the results within only a few minutes and use this valuable feedback to help guide your instruction for the day or make changes as needed.  You can also use these results to provide valuable information back to the students, one on one, and help them to work on their personal growth and reflection.

The results of the assessments are stored and they can be shared with students in a variety of ways if desired, as well.  Teachers can refer back to the results to track growth, to note patterns in certain classes or students, and to provide individual feedback to students on their strengths and weaknesses. I find it beneficial to my professional growth as well and use these results to reflect on my instruction in class. With technology, assessments are fast and can be saved for later reference.  Paper assessments get lost but assessments created using one of these tools are stored and can be referred to as often as needed.

Benefits of using these tools
There are so many options for conducting assessments in the classroom and in addition to allowing teachers to conduct this type of evaluative work in a quicker manner, it lessens the paperwork involved.  It also benefits students because they learn additional vital technology skills as well.
All of these tools can be used in any grade level or subject area and they do not require students to create an account but can be shared simply through a shareable URL which can be posted on a class website or sent on messaging tool such as Celly, which is used in my classroom, or any other messaging app.  The ability to design, share and evaluate assessments using these and other tools is remarkable.
So if you’re looking for a better way to provide feedback to your students, to streamline some of the assessments that you do in class, and definitely to reduce the amount of paper used, I suggest trying one of these tools that I mentioned. There are many options available but these are just a few of those that I have used at least at the start of my integration of technology into my classroom and ones that have had a huge impact on the assessments conducted in my classroom. My students have truly enjoyed having these alternate ways to show what they know and can do with the material.   Thank you for reading.  I look forward to sharing more ideas with you about tools for student collaboration and sharing of ideas.  Next topic will focus on specific assessment tools and how to use them in your classroom.

So if you have been gradually working toward integrating more technology into your classroom, in a way similar to how I started, I hope that you are seeing some results at this point. Maybe you started with a Messaging App.  If so, do you see improvement in the way you can communicate with your students and they can collaborate with one another? Or did you start using an LMS?  Have some of the frustrations which came about because of lost papers, forgotten assignments, or students who missed learning opportunities due to class absences, started to disappear? I hope so. Because if they have, then that means that the steps you are now taking are having a positive effect on your classroom and are enabling you and your students to experience a more efficient and beneficial learning environment.

It takes time, there is no doubt, but we must persist when we take on any new venture. Sometimes it can take longer than we like, because we run into difficulties and roadblocks.  You have to expect new questions to appear while seeking the solution to the prior questions. That’s the nature of the game. But this ongoing cycle also promotes goal setting and makes us more driven as educators.
The next step

In my last post, I was talking about the uses of Blendspace as a means to curate resources and flip your classroom. It does not matter what you ultimately decide to use, but having one place to keep your resources is a really great idea. We can all become overwhelmed by the many new technology tools that are brought to our attention every day. There are so many out there and choosing one can be quite difficult. So how do you make that decision? Looking at sites such as Graphite or EdShelf can help.  Seeing the feedback of other educators that have used some of these technologies in their classroom is definitely a good way to learn more about a tool, its functionality and applicability in your classroom. For example, using something like EdShelf, you can get a summary of the uses of a web tool, see what age group it is recommended for, which areas of instruction it would apply to, and read some stories about user experiences. If you have not checked EdShelf out yet, I recommend taking a look.

Back to Blendspace: Many possibilities

So going back to Blendspace, I like to talk about it because it really does provide a variety of benefits to me both personally and professionally.  It enables me to flip the classroom and to save that vital classroom time when we’re all together, for student interactions, engaging activities, or even for students to work independently while I facilitate their activities, rather than talk the whole class period. I can create a lesson and share it with them through their account on Blendspace or through the URL link and post it on Edmodo. Regardless of how the lesson is shared, they have access to many resources and can learn asynchronously outside of the classroom, on their own schedule, using whatever device they choose.

Learning can take place anywhere at any time. Students can work on a lesson in the car on the way to a game or late at night when they decide to stay up and work on something. It does not matter because the choice is theirs and that’s the great thing about technology and the usefulness of tools like Blendspace which enable flipping the classroom and storing so many resources in one place. I have also used it as a great way to store some of the various assessment tools, presentation software, or examples of projects that I have created. It makes it easier to share ideas with colleagues and at conferences and it’s a great way for me to be able to review the work I have done, to make suggestions to others, and to also see my own growth and reflect on my progress on the learning continuum.

When students create projects for my class, they don’t have to worry about fumbling with a flash drive and I don’t have to worry about losing valuable class time opening emails and attachments.  There is no concern for privacy with any grades or other information being shown. I can compile all of their projects into one lesson, give it a title, and open up one lesson which contains all of their work and display them one after another for the class to enjoy. If the students want to see each other’s work they can access it, it is stored permanently and so we can always go back and obtain the link and see what tools they have already used in class.
Building a Lesson with Blendspace

Building a lesson for any level or discipline is quite easy as well. You can take any topic and using the tools provided such as Google Search, Educreations, Google Drive, Dropbox, selecting a file to upload from your computer, and several others to search for relevant information. All it takes is finding the resource and dragging it into place in your lesson. You can add boxes, move items around, but no matter what you do it is done quickly and enables you to provide a lot of additional learning opportunities and resources for the students. And it can also be used by the students to create a project for your class, if they want to include text or a quiz or a variety of media resources, they have many options.

So these are just some of the reasons why I am really happy that I found Blendspace and how its use has benefitted my classroom. My initial reasons for using it have evolved over the past 3 years and I continue to find new ways to integrate it into my classroom. I hope that you will check it out and create a lesson and see if it works for you. It might be another area which can provide great benefits in your classroom, or it might just lead you to explore other tools. Either way you will be integrating additional technology into your classroom and you and your students will be positively affected.

I hope you are enjoying the information and I look forward to sharing more with you next time, on different ways technology can be used to assess students. Thanks for reading. I would be happy to share ideas with you, feel free to contact me.

Did you take another step and begin using a Learning Management System?  Even though I use Edmodo, which gains many new users every day and is not something solely used for teachers and their students, but can be used to engage other educators and join a variety of professional communities.  Connecting this way is important for our growth as educators and for building our personal and professional learning networks. But it’s okay if you have not yet gotten to that next step, integrating technology is an ongoing process and it is best done in phases, working towards building your comfort level and learning how to use it effectively. But if you have taken both of these actions, you’re probably ready for some new challenge.

So again I ask you, what is it that would make a difference in your classroom? What do you think that you possibly are not providing or that your students are not giving back? The answer to this question could be the same, but sometimes it can be very different so it comes down to what your individual needs are. I can only tell you from my experience how I progressed on my path of integrating technology, and it did not happen overnight. Although when I speak about the tools that are used to my classroom or I give presentations at conferences or participate in Twitter chats, I talk about a lot of tools that are available but by no means should one infer that I use them with my students every day, all the time. Using technology completely and trying too much at once would impede real learning in the classroom and is much more effective when integrated into units.

Deciding to integrate more technology grew from my curiosity in ways to flip the classroom, so that I had more time to interact with the students and engage them more in the discussion rather than spend valuable class time watching videos or listening to audio activities or sometimes even a teaching a new concept.

So through my research for the answer to this question, led me to a great tool called Blendspace. You might wonder what it is and how it’s different than other tools like it?  You may have used or at least heard of tools like Livebinder and Symbaloo, which many people are familiar with and perhaps even use on a regular basis with their students. But when I found Blendspace and started using it, it was simply a way to avoid the struggle the students had typing in such long URL addresses, which wasn’t an easy task because those great URL shorteners were not around yet. I used Blendspace to create lessons for each chapter in Spanish class.  Students enrolled in their respective classes, had access to shared lessons and I let them have the time to explore the different resources I had put into the lessons. Some of the resources were from my list of favorites and others were ones that I quickly found by using the different tools available through Blendspace for quickly creating a lesson.

Over the years my uses for this have evolved and I will tell you more about that later but for right now my main purpose is to tell you that sometimes it’s beneficial to have a tool like this to curate your materials both for your students and for yourself. I recently presented a 1in3 session at ISTE in Philadelphia and Blendspace is gaining in popularity.  It is an app available in Edmodo, so if you’re looking for a package deal you may decide to choose the same tools that I did. But again, while what I’m telling you may sound like great ideas that seem to be applicable to your personal experience, I still recommend trying these things out first.   Don’t hesitate, create an account, check out the examples that are available and see what other people are using it for. Think about your initial question, and decide if this tool is helping to solve it and providing opportunities.  If you come up with mostly an affirmative answer then by all means continue working with the tool until you are a bit more comfortable. And even better, engage the students in this discovery process, encourage them to seek answers and try new things. It’s all about taking risks and learning, and with technology the learning possibilities are limitless. We learn from each other and even though we have the title as teacher, we don’t always have to be it. 

I hope that your answers are coming to you and that you are feeling more comfortable with some of the technology you are using in your classroom. It just takes that first step, some discovery, curiosity and patience.  Take a chance and see what benefits your classroom will receive from something new like Blendspace. I will share some ideas with you but first, see what you can learn on your own.  Or even have your students figure it out with you.

I’d love to hear from you so feel free to contact me with questions at any time. And in closing, don’t stop questioning. Be curious. Be reflective and be active. Think of goals to enhance meaning and growth. Thank you

Teachers may find themselves on varying ends of the spectrum of what I will refer to as being technology savvy. Teachers who have taught around 20 years or were 80s children like myself, have seen many changes in the world of technology from the entrance of Apple computers and programming in the early 1980s to the start of the Internet in the nineties to cloud computing and other emerging technologies today. There will be more tremendous changes on the horizon.

I find myself in a unique grouping in that I’ve grown up in the age of computing, so for me, adding technology into my classroom was not something I found to be a daunting task. I would not consider it seamless either.  However, with that being said there are always risks involved with starting a new venture such as integrating technology and there are many questions one might ask about where to begin, how to begin and what is the best way to use the new tech while adding to the learning and not having it become an interference.

So where does one begin? Well it depends on where you are now. Have you been using computers and technology or is the concept completely out of your area and new?  In my experience as a foreign language teacher, I had been using some games and activities, and the typical computing tools like word processing and other presentation software, but other than that, the technology used a few years back was somewhat limited in my classroom to audio and video and the occasional use of the Smartboard. But then a period of change occurred, and I realized that there were so many possibilities out there for adding to the learning experience and engaging the students and so I asked myself one question. What am I missing?

This initial question quickly led to additional questions. What is it that I am NOT providing to my students and alternatively what is it that my students could be doing better?  What are they NOT providing for our class?

With this initial question, I placed the demand on myself to seek an answer, I wondered what I could do differently to bridge what I have now termed the “disconnect” which I felt was occurring. So I began my search for ways to solve this problem of disconnect and sought to find one thing that I could change as a way to make a difference. What I came up with is that we needed a better way to communicate. And this may be where you find yourself.

Have you wished that your students would be able to ask you questions when they have a question?  That when you find a good resource or perhaps want to remind a class of something after an extended weekend or break, that there were a reliable way to do that? If you are answering yes to these questions then what you need first is a messaging tool. That’s where I started, & I found Celly which enabled me to send reminders to students, to receive their questions, to share resources and to be available when the students needed, which often was later in the evening or during the weekend when their questions appeared.

So what did this messaging tool do? It began solving the problem of the “disconnect”. It was the first step in a series of changes that I made to my teaching style and to my classroom procedures that have brought about many positive changes in the educational experiences I provide for my students, but more importantly it has enabled them to have more access to the help they need when they need it.

Once I felt confident that this tool was working, I began to think about something else that might need improvement. This would be the next step for you as well.  Perhaps it’s a way to organize your class materials so students can get those extra copies of the papers or find the requirements for the project that’s due the next day or try some of the many web tools and review activities that you have shared with them. If these sound like good ideas to you, then what you need is a Learning Management System. For myself, this was the next step and after some research I found Edmodo. I have made presentations at conferences and my message is the same, which is this:  There are many wonderful learning management systems available and depending on where and what you teach, Edmodo may or may not be the best choice for you.  But I believe that each classroom should have a common site.  For my classroom it is a great choice.   I have worked with many of the other options and I can tell you what you might want to know about them. I have continued to use Edmodo because my students stay with me throughout their Spanish studies, and it makes sense to keep them in the system, so they can see their growth, so I can track their progress and have access to the materials which then become a part of their digital portfolio. Maybe an LMS is not what you want but instead you choose to create a website, for example through Google sites or Weebly or even use Wikispaces as a way to post resources and links.  No matter what you choose you can’t go wrong. Centralizing your materials for your class and your students is a great idea and you and they will benefit from it.

Going back for a moment to my initial word of “disconnect”, perhaps it is clearer now how these two tools really help to solve that problem.  Individually either one would work in my favor to promote the communication and collaboration with the students and to make class materials and resources available, but the combination of them builds even more into what I can offer because the students can be assessed, they can have their voice expressed in many ways using Edmodo or Celly and each year we can track their progress through Edmodo.

So I ask you, what would help you the most? If you were asked to name one thing that you could change or would like to change, figure out what that one thing is and start small and build. Take a step, work with it and then add something else. You may find that your first choice is not the best but it takes action and follow through. So that means give it some time. Trying something new can be a challenge and it is definitely a risk.  It may work and it may not, but as an educator it is our job to actively be taking risks, facing challenges, working toward goals to completion. When all is said and done, we take the time to look back and reflect and that’s what you must do as well.

Did you find an answer to your question or did it bring about additional questions? Keep wondering and keep seeking more information. Be curious.  Be persistent.

Technology changes every day and there will be many opportunities to find the perfect answer to your question, it just may take a little bit of time, but that’s okay. Learning has no time limit.