Wallwisher in Action - In Leadership Class

Mrs. Cooney decided to look into implementing a wallwisher activity in her leadership course.  She wanted to have her students look at the characteristics of what it takes to be a good and bad leader.  So, she created two different walls.  One of them had the question, "What do you think is an example of a good leader?"  Students had to think about the discussion that they had in class prior, and had to create a 'sticky note'.  This note needed an explanation of their choice of a great leader, followed by included some sort of media to support their statement.  This could have been done either with the use of a picture or a YouTube video.  The other wall had the same concept however, it was deemed for examples of bad leaders.

The best part of this application is that the wall can be made in about 5 minutes and can be public for anyone to see.  It is important to know though that Mrs. Cooney made a point to only allow a 'sticky note' to appear with owner approval.  (As a side note, it was important that full names were not disclosed for safety sake since this wall is public.)

To view one of Cooney's wallwishers, click HERE

This application can be used in many different situations.  If you would like to bounce ideas as to how you can use this in your curriculum, you know where to find me!

Great work Cooney!

Gathering Information using Google Forms

Have you ever thought of using Google Forms to gather information about your students?  Mrs. Reilly has been using this feature in her Piano class most recently.  For those of you who are unaware, Google Forms is one of the features of Google Docs.  It is very easy to create one.  You are able to choose the type of questions (such as multiple choice, short answer), as well as the theme of the form.  As you can see, Mrs. Reilly picked the one pertaining to pianos.  Not only is it very easy to make, the form converts all of the answers into a Google Spreadsheet for easy viewing and analyzing.  How do the students get to the form you ask?  It is quite easy.  Make sure that you give students permission to view the form as long as they have the direct link.   

I actually used this feature at the end of the year last year to gather information from my students in regards to how I did an a teacher.  I do this each and every year, however, this was the first time that I actually did it online.  To my surprise, I actually received more thoughtful responses than I ever did when I required students to complete the form by hand.  Plus, because I did not ask for their name, I truly got confidential responses back.  I will definitely use this feature in the future.

Mr. Zeller has been looking into using the feature to actually gather formative data from his students.  There is an actual script that you can embed into Google Forms so that it will actually grade the responses that students gave.  It is called Flubaroo.  With this feature, you create the answer key.  It will grade the responses for you, let you know which questions were an issue for the class as a whole, as well as send an email back to the students to let them know how they did with an optional response from the teacher; all in one email.  For more information, feel free to see me and we can chat about this!

 The possibilities are endless as to how you can use this feature.

Blogging a Different Way - Mathematically

It was brought to my attention that the Geometry PSP crew this year did something different at the beginning of school.  One of the first things that students learn/review in Geometry PSP is symmetry.  After having a discussion about symmetry and points of reflections, they had their students walk around the school and take pictures of what they just learned.  Students were to find all different types of symmetry and points of reflection.  Once they were done, they had the students pick one picture to text to the class blog that the teachers previously made.  (They made this using Blogger, one of the free features that you have with the Google Apps for Education account.)  By doing this, the teachers were able to have immediate feedback from the students and the class as a whole could have discussions about each picture that was uploaded to the blog.

This is certainly a different way of blogging and is another great example of how you can embrace the technology that students have in their pocket.  There is no doubt in my mind that students were having a great time in class taking pictures with their cell phones while learning at the same time!










The pictures that you see here were taken from Ms. Gagnon's Geometry Blogs.  If you are interested in learning how blogging could be adapted into your classroom, come on down and we will have a chat!

Glogging

This past week, I spent a couple of days in Wellness 1 classes helping students create wellness star glogs.  There are a couple cool features this year with Glogster.  We were demonstrating the feature of recording your own voice as well as the drawing tool.  Not only this, but Glogster has incorporated a autosave feature.

Thanks to Mr. Guerard, I discovered a different way of using Glogster.  He actually created a glog that explained the Wellness Star Project that the students were working on.  This way, if the students lost their paperwork, they could view the expectations online.  Glogs do not have to just be for students in creating projects.  They can be used in instructional settings as well.  Might be a cool thing to do instead of always using a platform such as PowerPoint.  Check out Mr. Guerards glog HERE.