Sunday, March 22, 2015

#macul15

I had a great time at the 2015 MACUL conference. One of the most exciting aspects of the day for me was Twitter. After Jim Ekdahl's presentation in 504 I felt compelled to create a professional Twitter account, and when I used it at the MACUL conference it felt like there was almost another conference happening on Twitter at the same time! However, I wasn't glued to my phone the entire time. I saw a couple really interesting presentations.

The most interesting one for me was actually one of the recommended presentations given to MACers my Jeff and Rory. From 10-11 I saw Andrea McKay present on what she dubbed "mind-reading." She was essentially showing how to use technology to get a sense of student's understanding. The aspect of her presentation that stood out to me most was gaining an understanding of what students know about topics before teaching them. She does this by creating a true-false pretest in Google Forms. By doing this she can attempt to comprehend what the students know, what they don't know, and how she should then deliver content. It should be noted that these pretests go ungraded. It would be unfair to grade students on content they haven't even been given yet.

I know what you're thinking: I don't have time to grade a pretest on top of everything else! Well luckily Andrea also informed us of Flubaroo. I am pretty sure Flubaroo has come up in 504, but in case you don't remember/know Flubaroo is a Google Forms add-on that can be used to quickly grade assignments. Using Flubaroo almost makes it seem ridiculous not to implement a pretest in class due to its speed in spitting student data back out. Doing this creates student data which was another point in the presentation. However, Andrea made it clear that student data should not just be created to create data. One must think how useful data can be created. For example, you could look at your students' scores on their last test, but what do the scores actually tell you? With something like a true-false pretest a teacher can actually get a sense of what students know by looking at the content in the questions.

Using Google Forms and Flubaroo in this way is how you can read the minds of your students. With a Google Forms pretest used in this manner teachers can move forward with confidence when trying to understand how students approach content. I could easily see myself utilizing this in my own classroom. Often, I'm uncertain what students know coming into class and this would be a great way to learn that information. All I have to do is reserve a laptop cart or computer lab and I can start to become mind reader. Hopefully one day I can turn into a fortune teller.

8 comments:

  1. Carl- I am glad to see that you gained some valuable insights from Andrea McKay and #macul15 as a whole. I think it is a great idea to create a professional twitter, and that will be a great way to network in the future. Like you, I also found Andrea McKay's presentation about Google Forms and Flubaroo fascinating. It just goes to show that sometimes the most useful technology isn't the most difficult. Although it may be useful to learn about a variety of technological programs, it is also beneficial to not forget about good old Google!

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  2. Hey Carl!

    The conference was indeed pretty cool! I was surprised at how smoothly everything ran, and how much I had actually learned by the end of the day. As I am sure you are well aware, I was also at the mind reading session, as I was the volunteer for the "mind reading" demonstration.

    Have you ever used flubaroo in the classroom? I have used it quite a bit, and honestly, it is the bomb.com. The thing that I like best about it is that since it works exclusively with Google Forms, it is very adaptable to other software such as Pear Deck.

    What I'm wondering is, what did you think of Pear Deck as opposed to other software like Socrative? I found it to be pretty need and user friendly.

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  3. Carl,

    I think that Flubaroo was mentioned a couple times in class, but I completely forgot about it until the conference. Why am I spending all of this time grading simple quizzes? Simply because I don't take the time to create them on Google Forms and sign out the computer lab. There is really no excuse. In the future, if I have the technology, I will definitely make use of these tools.

    Google Forms is a great way to check for prior knowledge. I did a True/False quiz a couple weeks ago to see what my students knew about the Mayan empire, and it was really telling. However, if I had used Google Forms and Flubaroo, I would have been able to organize that information and build my instruction specifically around what students don't know. Great post Carl!

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  4. Hey Carl!

    I was not at the "Mind Reading" presentation, but I heard lots of good things from others, and now you! Ever since we got a laptop cart at TCEC, I have been using the various applications of Google Drive in my classroom quite regularly. However, I had not yet thought of the idea of using Google Forms to administer pretests at the start of each unit. I think this is a brilliant way to check for prior knowledge. I have never used Flubaroo before; it is something I want to check out, but I'm not sure how effective it would be in an English classroom where I hardly ever test students using multiple choice questions or questions that have right or wrong answers. Either way, I still think it is important to check for prior knowledge prior to diving into a new unit, and I think Google Forms is a good tool for this. Cheers!

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  5. Hey Carl,

    First of all, I agree with you 100% on Twitter. As you know, I was also having a field day on my phone on Friday. It's so cool to be able to engage professionally with so many people at once. Many people posted links to the materials of other sessions, so it was like I was able to browse the whole shebang at one time. Very helpful.

    You must have really gained a lot from this mind-reading session, because you are totally reading mine. I am definitely skeptical about flubaroo because I have never used it. I had to give a department-mandated pretest last week and I still haven't graded the thing. They just bum me out. You'll have to show me about this tool sometime!

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  6. Hey Carl,

    First of all, I agree with you 100% on Twitter. As you know, I was also having a field day on my phone on Friday. It's so cool to be able to engage professionally with so many people at once. Many people posted links to the materials of other sessions, so it was like I was able to browse the whole shebang at one time. Very helpful.

    You must have really gained a lot from this mind-reading session, because you are totally reading mine. I am definitely skeptical about flubaroo because I have never used it. I had to give a department-mandated pretest last week and I still haven't graded the thing. They just bum me out. You'll have to show me about this tool sometime!

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  8. I think that one sign of a good presentation is that multiple people could writer about it and cite completely different aspects of it. This seems to be the case for Andrea's presentation, Carl, and it sounds like she showcased a thoughtfully considered way to do a pretest. One of the criticisms MACers have had about MACUL in previous years was when the focus was a bit more on gadgets and tools and less on teaching. My sense was that there were several presentations--Andrea's very much included--in which the powerful takeaways were teaching ideas. I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed her session, Carl, and I hope that you find twitter to be a useful networking and idea-generating tool in your teaching career.

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