Over the past year, I have been trying to experiment with new technologies in my post-secondary instruction, to model for pre-service teachers different ways to attempt to incorporate digital tools into their own classrooms. I’ve had some successes, some failures but it has always led to me reflecting on how we’re using technology (and application for future teachers).
This week, I built in a pre-assessment activity for students to pull out their phones! I know this is nothing ground-breaking, but it was my first venture into designing a response activity where students used their texting features to engage in the class. Using polleverywhere.com, I asked students two simple questions:
- What is assessment?
- What is evaluation?
Students followed the instructions posted on the polleverywhere site to text a 140 character or less response. We then put the responses into a word cloud for each (using the Wordle link directly on the site), becoming the catalyst for a discussion around the two key terms.
One of our essential questions for the course is “What does effective assessment and evaluation look like in a classroom?” so a starting point for this is crafting a shared understanding of the key terms (including their inter-relatedness, as well as the difference in the terms). The activity functioned as a great pre-assessment to determine the collective entry knowledge of the class, as well as a great way to have the students develop a deeper, constructed understanding of the key vocabulary.
The activity was a simple and effective way to integrate student-owned devices into the instruction and learning, using a very effective web tool to lead to deeper exploration, as well as model for pre-service teachers one method to potentially incorporate technology into the classroom. I would be interested in hearing any practicing middle or high school teachers’ experiences in using similar activities to incorporate student owned devices. What were the results? What preliminary activities did you need to accomplish (with students, administration, parents) before using student-owned devices? I’ve seen how it can work with adult learners but what about younger students?