Shu-NCrew

North Carolina Virtual Schools has an end of course survey that collects data about student performance, student perceptions of teacher performance, and ways to improve how NCVPS reaches the needs of learners across the state.  I checked it out.  It’s a nice survey. 

Because of the perspective of the survey though, it’s difficult to ask questions that are course specific and teacher specific.  There is valuable data to be gathered about our courses and about ourselves on an individual basis, and we have plenty of reasons to want that valuable data!  In English IV, we have consistent grammar, vocabulary, and writing assignments every unit.  Do you have some types of consistent assignments?  As part of the revision team, student perception on which types of assignments are working and which types of assignments aren’t effective would be incredibly valuable!

What’s more, students are very honest in these surveys.  They’ll let you know where you are lacking and where you excel.  If you can take feedback, and I encourage you to grow thick skin and seek feedback whenever you can, then you’ll love this method as a way to way to get valuable feedback.  The video below goes over my survey on the second day I rolled it out via a url in announcements.  At this time, there are only 12 responses, but I’m hoping more and more students complete the survey!

Shu

Tags: course surveys, data driven teaching, data in education, feedback, online polling

As an English teacher, I often have basic memory tasks for students to perform. They need to know the definitions of vocabulary words, and they also need to know titles, authors, eras, and origins of classic literature. It’s tough to just ask students to memorize a list, and here I have a new toy/tool for you!
Online studying via flash cards is no new thing. If you really wanted to, it would be possible to just create a series of questions and answers on powerpoint and send it to your students as a study tool. But what CoboCards.com allows students to do is create flash cards collaboratively and then actually study collaboratively.
There is a tool that allows teachers to see how many students have contributed to the flash cards library, and there is a feedback tool that tells students exactly how they’re doing on important concepts… especially valuable for those EOC classes!
Check out the tutorial below to see some of the basic functions of this impressive online flashcard site, and keep in mind that there are more in-depth tutorials on the site!

What do you think?
-Shu

Tags: collaboration, flash cards, online education, online learning, study tools, virtual learning

Do you have a project and need supplies, or do you need some technology in your classroom?
Is the principal muttering about money not growing on trees every time you bring it up?

Adopt-A-Classroom is a nonprofit organization that helps teachers get money directly into their classrooms without worrying about budgetary beaurocracy. Nobody tells the teacher how to spend the money; it’s donated to your classroom, so it’s your call. This year, I got money for:

1. ten headsets with microphones; now my students can record answers in Audacity, a program I’ll go over in a blog coming soon. They can also record narrations in PowerPoint presentations.
2. 512 mb USB drives for every student; now my students can keep all their work on their keychain rather than in a giant 3-ring notebook. It’s saved the school hundreds of dollars in copies already.
3. an extra printer with ink; now my student can print color copies or black and white for when they do need an occasional hard copy.
4. 10 USB optical mouses; now my students don’t take the balls out (why do kids do that?), the mouses actually work instead of getting filled with crud, and they have the little wheel on the top of the mouse that makes navigation easy.
5. flowers and a terrarium; now my classroom looks and smells nice. Of course, the terrarium has a big Venus Fly Trap and lots of baby crickets… kind of a guy’s version of a flower garden.
6. a scanner; now I can take old handouts, scan them to .pdf format, email them to the kids’ free google accounts, and the kids can keep them on their USB drives. Again, it’s paper-free. I can also scan in handouts and then project the .pdf version on the wall using my digital projector.
7. a digital projector, which is incredibly valuable in myriad ways. More on that in future blogs.

All you have to do is sign up for an account. After you sign in, you’ll follow the steps to ask for cash. It’s all self-explanatory, so I won’t redundantly list the instructions here.

There are a couple of little tidbits I will divulge though.

1. The staff at Adopt-A-Classroom will answer your emails personally and quickly.

2. When you get a cash donation, you do not have to spend it on the stores the website provides. If you email them and tell them that you can spend the money better locally, then they’ll just ask you for a receipt and then reimburse you.

They’re great, because they handle all the tax documentation that your donators might need. Most importantly, though, since ‘you’ solicited the money, you decide how it’s spent.

Now it’s time to think about all those contacts you have outside the world of education. All you need is email addresses. Who has money and might donate personally? What businesses might donate to your classroom for the tax break? What are you teaching that people in the community might be excited about? Who might be excited about it? What could you buy to make the lessons really cool for kids?
Now go get some cash!

-Shu

Tags: classroom cash, classroom funding, directly funding classrooms, money, money for teachers, teachers, tips for teachers

There is a new product out for use in education. It’s expensive, but it’s valuable as a data-gathering tool. It comes with software and about fifty credit-card-sized remotes. The remotes link up to a computer program, and the program shows what the button pushers pushed. The software works with PowerPoint, and the idea is NCLB-centered. That is, it’s all about testing. A teacher with an EOC (end of course), state-given final can design PowerPoint slides about his or her test. Then, the teacher shows the questions, the kids ‘answer’ them, and voila! -instant data.

With this tool, teachers have very pretty data that tells them what kids do and don’t know. As the first part of the KWL, (what we do know, want to know, and what we learned) this has been proven valuable data. The kids love the remotes, the planning is easy, and the tool helps teachers focus their lesson plans on where the students need the most assistance.

I’m a wine salesman as well as a teacher, and I often find myself talking shop while ‘at work’ in the wine world. Recently, at a wine tasting, I was talking about the remotes, my new toys in my arcenal. The woman I was talking to asked me how much my new toy cost the school. When I told her, she snorted wine, shocked. She asked me why I haddn’t bought 25 small dry-erase boards, put them under my kids’ seats, and used the PowerPoint slides to the same ends. The data wouldn’t be as pretty, but it would be pretty clear when the kids wrote a letter and held up the boards simultaneously whether they knew their stuff or not. Seriously, I told her that she should quit what she was doing and become an educational consultant. It was brilliant, and it would save thousands. I asked, what did she do, anyway? She told me she was teaching in a school in Raleigh, where she had been teaching for fifteen years. And that’s the value of experience, I reckon.

-Shu

Tags: badlridge training, best practices, educational ideas, gather data, KWL, school data, school technology, technology in schools, testing data, tips for teachers