In today's challenging blended learning environment (which may consist of students learning from home, students learning in person, or a concurrent hybrid of the two), you want to maintain the basic building blocks of an effective classroom. Such a learning space should have opportunities for varied feedback, structured discussions, and scaffolded classroom management. Mote and ClassroomQ can help with one or more of these aspects!
How do they work?
Mote is primarily a feedback tool that allows users to make a voice recording up to 30 seconds long inside of a Google Docs Comment. (Mote also works inside the Comments of Slides, Sheets, and even Google Classroom.) It requires installation of a Chrome Extension to make a Mote, and accounts can be created via a Google sign-in, although neither the extension nor an account is required to listen to a Mote. In the free version, you can both create and listen to an unlimited amount of Motes. For more on Mote, please see the following Google Slide presentation I have created, along with an example Mote on Slide 3.
ClassroomQ is essentially a "hand raising" digital web-based tool; students who request help are queued up in the order they hit the button. Teachers create a free account via Google or email. When a teacher logs in, a session is begun, and a "class code" is given. (Tip: this class code is unique to the teacher account and stays the same code for every session you begin, in case you want to permanently post it.)
Students who want to join a session do not need to create an account. By choosing "student" when they visit the site, they will be prompted to type their name and enter the session's class code. Once they have joined the session, they can hit their button when necessary along with the option of adding a comment in a text box; a student will be told their place in line, and can also cancel their request. (From their session perspective, students cannot see which other students have requested help or what comments they may have made.)
Teachers will see up to 5 student names queued up in the order they hit their buttons, along with any comments. (Note the teacher interface allows you to toggle off student comments so they are not visible, if you only want names to appear.) When a teacher has resolved a student's question, the student can be removed from the queue.
One of the advantages of ClassroomQ is its extremely easy interface -- there is no way to get lost, and in fact, a teacher could easily manage a session from a small screen device like a phone.
 |
| A screen capture to demonstrate what ClassroomQ looks like from the perspective of a teacher on a phone. Note that the class code is marked out in the image, and if you turned the phone horizontally, the student name and commentary would perhaps format better. |
How could you use them? Mote provides an alternative feedback method for students that appreciate a kind of commentary beyond just text (and hearing their own teacher's voice feels more personal!). Students that struggle to understand "tone" linguistically will have auditory support. If your students are challenged by reading (pre-literate, EL, and/or ECE) they will also appreciate a voice recording that you can play and pause and repeat as needed. Students that have their own Mote accounts could make voice commentary that would enhance peer-to-peer feedback as well as potentially create a "voice discourse" without the possible distractions and anxiety associated with a video commenting tool like Flipgrid. (Although in fairness to the wonderful video-centric Flipgrid, they recently have added the ability to make text comment responses to videos.)
As the video below discusses, ClassroomQ can be more than a way to digitally raise hands for help (whether your students are in person or at home, or a mixture of both); for example, the video mentions using it as a game buzzer to answer review questions. You could also gather instant feedback for how your lesson facilitation is going, determine the order of when volunteers will present, or initiate classroom discussion managed by the teacher if students utilize its comment feature. (This last idea may especially come in handy if you have blocked chat and muted student mics in a virtual meeting.)
You can also imagine some interesting possibilities for app smashing. Perhaps a student lets you know via ClassroomQ when they are ready for you to read over the opening paragraph on a Google Doc, so you then can make a Mote voice comment for next steps. With ClassroomQ, you may also selectively choose to share your screen in a teleconference meeting and let all students see student comments, as another way of facilitating discussion.
Downsides? While both tools have a free initial tier, you have to pay for upgraded features:
- Mote pricing for premium features start at $19/year for an "Essential" individual plan which extends your Mote time from 30 to 90 seconds; the $39/year "Unlimited" individual plan allows for voice-to-text transcriptions of your voice comments, in-app translation of those transcripts to one of multiple language options (a potentially powerful ELL feature!), and more.
- ClassroomQ pricing for premium features start at $19.99/year for individuals (school or district licensing also available) to lift the limit from 5 students in queue to an unlimited number, the ability to see who joined your session, and exportable session data.
However, the free versions of both tools offer significant usefulness and may be more than enough for your classroom needs. If nothing else, the free versions give you an opportunity for a robust try-out of the tools before you shell out dinero. Most importantly, cost is only at the teacher level -- ClassroomQ doesn't require a student to ever make an account, much less pay, and Mote voice notes can be played by students without them ever creating an account (although they need to make at least a free account to create a Mote).
Are you using Mote or ClassroomQ? How do you integrate them into your classroom? Leave Comments below!
