Snorkl

As a former high school English teacher, I always felt pressured to provide useful, personalized feedback quickly.  Digital tools like the Comment feature in Google Docs became popular just as I was leaving the classroom, and certainly shifted the paradigm when it came to giving "just in time" quality feedback.

Now, thanks to artificial intelligence, we are on the precipice of the next generation of digital feedback that can transform teaching.   For some time now, genAI chatbots like ChatGPT already offer an augmented opportunity to comment on student writing -- if you are willing to engineer a prompt for what you are looking for, then copying and pasting each student essay into the tool, then copying and pasting any AI feedback you wished to share back with a student.  (You can even include your rubric in your prompt, so you can get your feedback with a suggested assessment score.)  This is free and helpful, albeit time consuming and clunky.

But now we enter what I am calling the "refurbished" phase of AI.  In these newest AI tools, the programming is more hidden under the hood, while the interface is much more user friendly and less dependent on prompt engineering.  And that leads us to the tool for today's entry: Snorkl.  While its strength in providing feedback for solving math problems seems obvious, its potential for analyzing reflection and metacognition in multiple content areas is also apparent.

How does it work?

You can sign up free with a Google or Microsoft account.  Snorkl will ask you whether you are a teacher or a student -- I'm not sure how easy it is to change this if you answer wrongly, or are wanting to see what the other side is like before trying to return to your standard role, so choose wisely.

Your home page is intuitively organized with several options.  A "Getting Started" box provides light tutorials for how Snorkl works. Some videos to watch are in "Resources."  You can explore premium plans; although a free account gives you unlimited classes and co-teachers, you have "limited" activities -- an actual number is not specified.  Last but not least, you can create a class where you can then make activities for students (a share link for your activities makes it easy to get students jumping in).

Your Home tab.  Note the tabs across the top for Classes and Library (see below).

What does Snorkl feel like for a student? In the pre-made "Try as a student!" section, several prompts are given so you can experience Snorkl for yourself, and reveal its potential for a wide range of content.  For example, there's one for "Trig Ratios," and another that asks you to "Identify the author's feelings about New Orleans in this 4th grade ELA assignment."  I was intrigued by the "Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich" activity -- a classic writing prompt I used years ago with students to show the importance of details when describing "how to" instructions -- so that's the one I chose.

When I opened it up, I first encountered the "Response Whiteboard."  

The activity's instructions are in the upper right, which can also be read aloud to the student.

As you can see from the toolbar at the top of the whiteboard, there are several buttons that allow you to insert text, pictures, and formulas for your response; while you can use the mouse/trackpad to draw, it's probably not as natural as using your finger or stylus on a touchscreen device. (This is the same whiteboard interface the teacher uses when creating the activity prompt for students.)  However, "Record Screen + Voice" is where the real magic of Snorkl resides.  While you can write or draw to your heart's delight before hitting this button, you really can't submit your response unless you make a recording.  That's because Snorkl takes what you say and converts it to text for the next step of the process. Of course, like any screencast, you could draw and type as you talk.  (The first time you do this, you'll be prompted to give permission for Snorkl to use your microphone.)

Once you submit your response, Snorkl uses AI to, in effect, analyze your thinking out loud and tell you how well you did.  The first time I responded I didn't doodle and simply talked through how to make a PB&J.  After several seconds, I got back this screen:

The comments on the right are timestamped; click on the time and you can go straight to that part of the recording.

I have to admit, this had me pretty slack-jawed.  You can play back your recording, with a running transcript in the form of captions.  Snorkl provided some simple overall feedback ("Correct," "3/4 Strong") followed by impressively detailed commentary.  Even the tone seemed appropriate -- Snorkl celebrated my strengths ("Great job on giving a detailed explanation...I love how you even included the part about opening the bread bag") while also providing me ways to improve ("Have you tried using the same knife for both the peanut butter and jelly?").

If you like, you can do another response, with either a clean whiteboard or pick up where you left off.  These additional responses become a history that you can revisit and review, to see your growth over time.

The Portfolio tab shows how Snorkl can be a place for artifacts for learning; for example, imagine a student pulling out a response during a student-led conference with their parents. 

Of course, teachers can review and play the videos of these submitted responses.  Once several responses have been submitted, Snorkl's website suggests that a teacher will be able to see some class-level insights, such as "top exemplars" and "common misconceptions," but it is also possible such insights are only fully available as a premium feature. 

Snorkl calls itself "a versatile tool for all subjects, used from elementary through college."  As an additional nod beyond the "try as a student" examples indicated above, the platform also provides some pre-made activities in several content areas and grade levels in its Library.

The library bank already covers many grade levels, with more "coming soon."

Finally, for a video on getting started with Snorkl, watch the following (3:24):

How could you use it?

Students could be assigned a Snorkl task:

• as a more interactive type of "flipped learning" homework
• during class as part of a blended learning station rotation
• at the end of class as a formative assessment exit slip to determine if they understood today's content (and give the teacher data on what misconceptions to address for tomorrow's class)

Downsides?

Snorkl offers some powerful features for free, so it is hard to find faults with the tool itself beyond just how many activities you can create at no cost, or the possible limitation of the drawing features if you don't have a touchscreen device.  From a teacher's perspective, it truly can become a powerful "instructional aide" (not teacher replacer!) in your classroom.  A more likely negative is about the potential for a teacher to overuse the tool, or use it without also checking student work in person.  As always with edtech -- especially with AI -- practice moderation, oversight (it's not always right), and balance.

Have you used Snorkl, or a similar AI tool?  Share your stories in the Comments below!

Verso

At the beginning of March, I had the fortunate opportunity to attend and present at the KySTE conference in Louisville -- the first time the conference was back in person since the pandemic started.  (I was literally at KySTE in 2020 when the world shut down, a story I shared here.)  As if fate wanted to re-affirm for me the value of KySTE, I learned of a new tool in the very first hour of the very first session of the conference that got me so excited, I knew I'd be doing a blog entry about it!  The presenter was Roslyn Manning -- more with her in a moment! --- and the tool was Verso.

Verso is a platform for virtually managing discourse in your classroom.   At its most basic, a teacher can create a question or pose an issue, and students can not only respond to the prompt, but to each other.  But Verso has an extensive set of tools that make it much more than just a place for an online conversation thread.

How does it work?

Firstly, you need to create a teacher or student account, either via email or through Google or Microsoft.  (I would recommend students use Google, to minimize remembering yet another username/password as well as to expedite Google integration.)

When a teacher first creates an account, Verso helps walk you through the creation of your first Class; you can create as many Classes as you like.  Each Class has a unique code that can be given to students, making it easy for them to join.  Once a Class is made, you have two basic kinds of discussions you can push to students: an Activity, or a Check-In With Students.

An Activity is the much more robust and customizable option.  You can attach files, links (to websites but also to videos), or something from your Google Drive to build schema before they address the prompt.  Next, you provide instructions in a Rich Text Format editor box.   You can give conversation starters, as well as suggest contextual and academic vocabulary to use.  There are several toggle settings where you can allow students to provide video or audio responses, upload files or images, or even limit them to 500 characters or less.  Lastly, you can indicate a specific start and end date for the Activity, turn on moderation if you want to approve responses before they appear, and determine whether students can comment on each other's responses.   After an Activity is launched, you have some other editing options, such as hiding student names from each other for anonymous responses and comments (although the teacher can still see who said what).

There are several features here worth mentioning that elevate these Activities.  Firstly, while you may not want or need to include every single aspect for every discussion, the formatting suggestions Verso provides is excellent scaffolding to ensure students engage in high quality discourse.    For example, your directions can provide sentence stems to model what a response or comment should sound like, and vocabulary suggestions are a reminder of both academic jargon that is appropriate to the content topic as well as discussion phrases that strengthen argumentation.   This leads us to a second useful feature: from the teacher's dashboard, you can even view responses that highlight when this vocabulary is used!

Check-In With Students is the other task option, which is much more template driven.  Its purpose is not so much open ended discourse as to have students reflect on their recent learning and/or how they are feeling.  While a Check-In may be limited in its customizations, the advantage here is that it can be quickly pushed out -- perhaps as an exit ticket at the close of a lesson, or a social-emotional learning (SEL) pulse check at the start of the day. 

Creating a Check-In can be done in just a few steps.  Note the potential categories in Step 2 which help shape the objective.

Once student responses come in from a Check-In, it's easy to see what category the students have self-assessed themselves so you can plan your next lesson accordingly.

How could you use it?

Verso clearly can make student online discussions more engaging and rigorous, as well as make SEL and learning reflections easy to push out and analyze.   Don't forget to utilize audio and/or video responses to increase equity for EL and ECE students; that way, the focus is on the quality of their responses' content as opposed to the medium of the reply.

Here's an excellent Activity tip from Roslyn: if you want students to comment on each other's responses, turn on moderation.  Once all students have responded, turn off moderation and "publish" all the responses, then remind students to now comment.   This will give all students the best chance to receive comments since all the responses are available at once.  (Without such management, the late responders will be the least likely to receive a comment.)  

Downsides?

With the free version, you are limited to only three active Activities (and can't edit them once created and saved) unless you pay for the premium version; as of the publication of this entry, this upgrade costs $59 a year.  It would be nice to see integrations such as Google Classroom which could pre-load a Class's roster.

As I explored Verso, I was definitely curious to hear more about how it's being used in the classroom, so reaching out to Mrs. Manning seemed a natural next step.  I've gotten to know Roslyn a bit through our Kentucky Digital Learning Coach state network, and I share her passion for student discourse.   So I was thankful she accepted my invitation to be interviewed for Edtech Elixirs!

Roslyn, welcome to Edtech Elixirs!  Share with us your educator story.  

​Thank you so much for having me! I come from a long line of educators--my grandmother was an elementary teacher in Alabama, and my mom was an ECS teacher in North Carolina where I grew up. She taught in a variety of different types of schools, but for most of her career she taught in the state juvenile prison system. Talk about an interesting childhood--I grew up roaming around the local prison! I knew that I would eventually become a teacher. I think it's a part of my DNA. I've always loved reading and writing, so I decided that I wanted to be an English teacher. I attended the University of Alabama (Roll Tide!) and graduated with a B.S. in Secondary Education Language Arts. I taught Advanced Junior English in Tuscaloosa right after graduating, and at the end of that school year, I moved to Kentucky to be closer to my now-husband. In 2013, I started teaching freshman and sophomore English at Oldham County High School while completing KTIP and getting my Master's in Teacher Leadership, focusing on Instructional Technology. In addition to growing in my technology use, I also worked to earn my National Board Certification. I often participated in school and district technology initiatives--Digital Leader Network, iTeam, etc., and in May 2020, I became our district's second Digital Learning Coach. 

Why do you feel that student discourse in general – especially peer to peer – is important?

​It's no secret these days that students struggle with communication. This is a skill that ALL people learn eventually, but I think the increase in technology has the general population complaining that "kids these days" only know how to communicate in text messages. As an educator, I think it's vital that we meet students where they are, and change our instruction to better prepare our students for the digital world that they communicate in. The variety of ways students can communicate just elevates the need to teach peer-to-peer communication more intentionally in MULTIPLE ways: verbally and digitally. 

What does digital discourse achieve differently, or perhaps even sometimes better, than face-to-face discussions?

​Digital discourse, in my experience, is a gateway to deeper face-to-face discussions. So many of our students need time to process their thoughts before sharing with an audience, whether that be a digital audience or an in-person audience. And, as I mentioned previously, students are communicating in writing much more frequently than they are verbally in person or over the phone, so why would we not intentionally give them learning opportunities to practice, make mistakes, and grow in this area? I wouldn't say digital discourse is inherently better than face-to-face discussions, but in the same way that we teach our children dinner table etiquette, we also have a shared responsibility to teach our students digital citizenship through netiquette. 

As an English teacher, I used to emphasize "code switching" with my students. I never wanted to shame them into thinking that their colloquial language  is "bad" or "wrong," but I did want them to learn the appropriate settings for the language that they choose to use. The same holds true for digital discourse, and there's a lot to be learned from digital communication. Students have to analyze tone and word choice to be effective communicators through writing. For most, verbal communication is much easier to deliver and decipher because of verbal and nonverbal cues, but written communication requires far more refined skills. It's important to provide a safe space for students to practice and refine these skills.   [Editor's Note: for more on the value of digital discourse, read this previous blog entry.]

I’m highlighting Verso in Edtech Elixirs, a tool I’m pretty excited to share!  Can you share any stories of how you or other Oldham teachers have used Verso effectively?

​A good friend of mine at Oldham County High School introduced me to Verso several years ago. She will tell anyone who asks that she's not "techy," but she discovered this tool when it was in Beta and started using it with her A.P. English Literature course. I quickly jumped on board and used it to set up a Socratic Seminar with my English II course. My students struggled with verbal discussion, especially if it was whole-class, so this was an easy way to get students talking to each other anonymously and to provide tons of support for them in the way of sentence stems and stimulus material for discussion. There are so many features available to teachers that we can use to help support our students' discussions, such as the ability to comment and "star" student feedback and even hide responses if they're inappropriate or irrelevant. 

Verso  is an excellent tool to give peer feedback on their work as well. I love the collaboration that comes from using Verso in so many different ways! 

Any other digital discourse tools that you’re a fan of?  

​There are so many ways for students to engage in digital discourse such as Padlet, Google Workspace tools, and more. However, I love using Parlay Ideas as well. Be aware that it is a freemium, so you don't get unlimited Roundtables. It's very similar to Verso in that you can have students communicate anonymously with their peers, but Parlay also has a "live Roundtable" option that helps you facilitate live discussions (similar to Socratic Seminars) where students can "tap in" to the conversation and teachers can "nudge" students to share their ideas with the class. 

Roslyn, thank you so much for agreeing to our interview today!  One final question: what’s your advice to teachers just starting to integrate technology into their classroom?

​Always be transparent with your students! As a young teacher, I thought I needed to "know it all" and felt embarrassed if I didn't know an answer or made a mistake. However, students appreciate hearing, "I've never used this before. If it totally flops, we'll figure it out." I experienced MUCH more success with technology when I was totally honest with my kids about the tools we were using. And most of the time, they were much more patient in the process if they knew we were all learning together!

What are your thoughts on Verso?  Have another favorite digital discourse tool?  Share in the Comments below!

Update 3/18/24:  With the free version of Verso, you now are limited to only three active Activities and cannot edit them once created and saved.  I'm not sure if you can delete one of these three Activities in order to "free" a slot, OR if the first three you create are free and you are then forced to upgrade the account (and deleting one wouldn't help).  I've updated the entry to reflect this change. 

Nearpod, SAMR, and Transitional Pedagogy

Welcome back to school!  Due to a new K-8 school being built, Shelby County went to a contingency calendar and our first day back for students was today.  So most of you have at least a few weeks head start on us.

Since my last entry, Edtech Elixirs has hit a happy birthday milestone.  My first entry was August 1, 2014.  That makes the blog five years old, with an average of a thousand views per entry (as of today, 141 entries and over 141,000 views)!  Not coincidentally -- as the blog began partially as a resource for Shelby educators -- I also had my five year anniversary with the district as well. As always, I thank my blog readers for giving me the audience to share my edtech findings and think-alouds, and I thank Shelby County for allowing me to follow my edtech integration passion.

And now onto today's topic focus . . .

Back in June, I attended the third annual Deeper Learning Symposium hosted by Jefferson County Public Schools.  One of the presenters was Danna Pearsall, who shared her knowledge on Nearpod.  I learned about a few new features, including the ability for students to take (and then download) notes while participating in a Nearpod Presentation.  These notes -- complete with the slides themselves --- can even be added to their own Google Drive!  (It should be noted that the notes feature is only available if the presenter gets the paid version of Nearpod.   More on that in a bit.)

An example page from downloaded student notes.  This is a premium "Gold" (i.e. paid) feature of Nearpod and needs to be enabled by the teacher.

Before I go any further, I should mention that Nearpod itself feels like an old friend that I actually first tried out back in my classroom teaching days.   When I came to Shelby, it was one of the earliest edtech tools I recommended to staff, and I wrote about our teachers using it in the first year of Edtech Elixirs.  As much as I admired Nearpod in the past, I continue to be impressed as it grows, thrives and improves in 2019 and beyond.

What is Nearpod?  Put simply, it is a teacher-paced, guided presentation tool with interactive elements that can help you assess your students in real time, as well as give you data reports to analyze later.    Although you can create a presentation from scratch inside Nearpod, most will prefer importing a finished one into the platform, and that is where I want to make a tangent before discussing more about the tool itself.  The real power of a tool like Nearpod is that it is a schema scaffold for tech-hesitant teachers to expand their edtech integration ability into the classroom.

How do we reflect on the deepness and richness of edtech implementation? Consider SAMR as a way of analyzing the net effect (pun intended!) of when technology is integrated into a classroom lesson:

• Substitution is where new tech replaces old digital/analog tools, but the task is unchanged.
• Augmentation is the same task, but there is more functionality and improvement of effectiveness because of the technology.
• In Modification, you have redesigned parts of the task, and begin to see the transformative nature of the technology use.
• Redefinition is the ultimate transformative experience that usually reaches an audience or collaborators outside of the four walls of the classroom.  Here, we design and create tasks previously inconceivable thanks to the technology.

One of the things I love about SAMR as a reflective tool is that the focus is on the task, not the technology.  There are no points earned in SAMR for mere edtech usage; it is all about integration and intentionality.  As an example of this, consider Skype.  When it first became a mainstream tool, it seemed like something out of a sci-fi show.  (On a screen or flat panel, Skype still reminds me of the Star Trek viewscreen on the bridge of the Enterprise.) .However, if you got a person to Skype into your classroom and just ends up a talking head that is remotely piloting a PowerPoint, how transformative is that compared to a guest speaker coming in person and droning on for an hour?  You are, from a learning perspective, breaking even at best.  If it is a non-interactive lecture, one would be better off with the guest shooting a video, burning it on a DVD, and mailing you the disc.  (At least you could pause a DVD!) As you can see, it is not Skype itself, but the use of Skype that has to be analyzed via the SAMR lens.  So it is with any technology you bring into the classroom: you need to first consider your task at hand and the academic objectives you want to meet.

The act of going from S/A to M/R means going from tech enhancement to tech transformation of what a learning experience can be, as well as going from a teacher-centered to a student-centered environment.  Who is making the tech choices? Are students creating or consuming?  Put another way, if the electricity and Internet go out, a S/A lesson can theoretically be improvised and continue ("I'll guess I'll lecture without pictures," or "I'll hand out a multiple choice quiz on paper instead") whereas a M/R lesson would be dead in the water.

Understanding SAMR is all well and good, and most teachers can make a Substitution move fairly easily, such as going from an overhead projector to a PowerPoint.   The struggle is finding a pragmatic way to get to "AMR" edtech integrations.  Here it is a question both of appropriate tools that stretch without overwhelming the educator, as well as finding a judgment-free way for the educator to grow their pedagogy.   While Substitution often (but not always!) is typical of a traditional pedagogical environment (i.e. direct instruction, lecture-minded, teacher-centered), it is unrealistic to assume an experienced teacher can or even should jettison all of their former skills and tools to move into a transformative pedagogy.   Indeed, there are times that Substitution (or no tech at all!) might be best, or traditional lectures and direct instruction may be necessary to properly meet the specific and contextual academic objectives at hand.   The only concern is being stuck in an instructional rut of always doing Substitution/traditional approaches when other ways might be more effective or impactful on learning.

And that is why a tool like Nearpod can be a powerful tool, especially for teachers just learning to grow their edtech practice.   Nearpod's original genius was its assumption that many teachers already have a storehouse of instructional material -- PowerPoints.   Nearpod makes it easy to import these pre-existing PowerPoints into Nearpod Presentations.   All that's left is adding interactive elements such as polls, open ended questions, "draw it" features, and quizzes.  When a teacher is ready, he/she turns the Nearpod Presentation into a live session.  A nice bonus: since the session will be pushed to the students' screens, you don't need a main projector or display.  A student doesn't need to create an account; the teacher's live session generates a unique code only good for the current event, and a student easily joins the session with that code and signs in by providing their name.  (While there are apps for Nearpod that makes it somewhat easier to join a session from a mobile device, any device with a browser and Internet access will do.)  The pacing -- that is, when the slides advance -- is completely in control of the teacher.  When interactive elements occur, teachers can see the data in real time, and even share a student answer anonymously to all the screens for the sake of discussion or highlighting a good model example.  At the end of the live session, a final report is generated for the teacher where you can review the data/answers from all the interactive elements as a PDF.   Thus, Nearpod's potential for Augmentation and beyond can be plainly seen.   Students are interacting with the teacher, content and each other in new ways; a teacher can use the assessment data to impact and change instruction in real time as well as for future planning; a student can think and reflect more deeply via the interactive assessments than a Scantron bubble test could ever reveal.  And imagine if, instead of Slides and PowerPoints, students created Nearpods to lead interactive presentations, or to gather data from a user group as part of a Design Thinking invention process! In short, Nearpod allows for genuine blended learning.

Here is a video which demonstrates how Nearpod led an instructor from his former mode of PowerPoint presentations and pushed him forward to a transformative classroom (1:13):

It should be noted that while the features mentioned above can all be done with the free Nearpod version, paid versions exist (currently $120 and up annually for an individual license) that give additional tools.  The licensing is based on a teacher, or "creator" account -- a student participating in Nearpods never has to pay or even make an account.   Additional features for the paid version include some additional interactive/inserted material elements (such as inserting YouTube videos), increased online storage space for your Nearpod Presentations (from 100 MB to 1 GB and up**), enabling the student notes feature mentioned earlier, and perhaps most importantly, the ability for students to do a Nearpod Presentation "anytime, anywhere" (perhaps personalized to student needs!) instead of only when a teacher makes a live session.

If you are interested in pre-made Nearpod Presentations, there is an online store.  Thanks to a multitude of partnerships with companies such as Common Sense Media, Teaching Tolerance, CK-12, PhET, Newsela, and BBC Worldwide, the catalog is deep, with high quality lessons across a wide gamut of content and grade levels.  However, while some of these are free, many of them cost from a few dollars for a single lesson up to approximately $30 for a bundle.

Other features of Nearpod that have been added in the last few years include:

• Google Slides Add-On.  There already was a free Chrome Extension (Nearpodize) that could take your Google Slides and convert them into a Nearpod Presentation.  However, you can now easily insert interactive material while creating your Slides, then upload it all to Nearpod.  From the Slides menu, choose Add-Ons > Get add-ons and search for Nearpod.  Read here for more details.
• Nearpod 3D.  You have a gallery of over 100 three dimensional, manipulatable objects to insert into your presentation.  Students can rotate them and zoom in and out.  The gallery categories are Ancient Times, Amazing Places and Things, Environment, Human Body, and Microscopic.  Read here to find out more.
• Nearpod VR.   Imagine taking your students on a virtual field trip and seeing a place in a 360 degree environment.  Nearpod has an extensive amount of VR Presentations in their store -- some free, some not.  Two things are outstanding about Nearpod VR.  Firstly, there are incredible choices across multiple contents -- even ELA and math! (Recently, lessons were added that incorporate Historical Perspectives and Literacy, which fits nicely with new social studies standards.) Secondly, Nearpod VR works fine on any device, including Chromebooks.  While phones in goggle headsets may make VR more immersive, Nearpod VR requires no special equipment or setup.  For more details, read here.

The Nearpod Google Slides Add On allows you to insert activities while composing your Slides, which then can easily be uploaded / converted to a Nearpod Presentation.  Note that some of these activity options only work with the paid version.

If there was a downside to Nearpod, it is definitely the price point for the premium features.  While I appreciate what you get for free, and that the paid licenses have likely enabled Nearpod to endure and improve for all these years, I just wish there was a tier between free and $120+.  Perhaps a middle option of $20-30 a year to allow student to take notes and teachers to give students Nearpod Presentations that are personalized "anytime / anywhere" lessons/homework?

Nearpod starts with existing edtech schema and pedagogy (PowerPoints, direct instruction, lecture) and builds upon it to create a deeper learning experience.  I could mention other edtech examples that do the same, such as Google Docs, which takes what teachers and students already know about word processor programs and has the potential to improve the task of writing itself (i.e., Google Docs allows students to have real-time collaboration and use Comments for more effective peer feedback).  The point here is that tools like Nearpod and Google Docs stand on the threshold between traditional and transformational pedagogy.  These tools are part of a much needed bridge of a larger transitional pedagogical framework, necessary for improving not just edtech integration, but the nature of teaching and learning itself.

**Update: the storage size is updated, as of 8/14/20.   As with all edtech, other elements of Nearpod described in this entry may also change over time.

Legends of Learning

Greetings, all!  Sorry for the hiatus, as this fall as been busy.  As I prepare to go to my first regional ECET2 conference in Hebron, Kentucky this weekend, I thought I would take the time to blog.

The focus of this entry,  Legends of Learning, is something I've been excited about since I first heard of it several months ago.  I have talked about it in interviews, and shared it in professional development sessions.  In short, Legends of Learning (hereby shortened to LoL) takes two of my passions in learning -- personalization and games -- and combines them in a unique and compelling way.

While the content is currently limited to middle school science, LoL has stated they will expand their offerings to other contents as well as to elementary and high school levels.

How does it work?  As a teacher,you first need to register with an email and a password, along with your school information.  (Students simply need their teacher's code to join his/her "class," give their first and last name, and create a username.  Conversely, teachers can also create student accounts and rosters/groups when at the "playlist" dashboard.)

Once in as a teacher, you can explore and play any of the games offered.  First, you can browse by three science topics: earth, life, and physical.  You'll then see learning objectives listed (by standards).   Finally, you can look at individual games.  Once you find ones you like, you can begin creating "playlists" by dragging and dropping them onto the playlist bar in the order you like.  (Bonus: an indicator gives you a feel for how long it might take to complete all of the playlist games.)  When you are ready, you can launch the playlist.  With some built-in assessment questions (unfortunately, you cannot customize or add to them), you can get a feel on how well students are comprehending the material as well as how far and fast they are proceeding in the games, all in a real time teacher dashboard in a very easy to follow user interface.

It should be noted that teachers begin with so many free "coins."  Each time one student plays one game, it costs one coin.  While there are ways to get more coins without spending money (see "Downsides?" below), at some point you will likely have to consider a one year license purchase (available for quote request but not listed on the LoL site).

There are several useful, even innovative, features built into Legends of Learning:

Managing Students, Freeplay, and Pause/Stop

The dots representing the students march across the playlist as they complete their games and assessments.  You can click on any of them to see which student they are, and how accurately they are answering multiple choice questions in real time.

If any student dot turns red, that means they have opened up a new tab and are no longer interacting with a game.  This is by far one of my most favorite aspects of Legends of Learning!  What an easy way to manage students to stay on task!

If a student completes all of their assigned games and there is still time remaining, a student can do "freeplay" -- that is, play any of the games available in the assigned science objective.   An instant answer to the student who asks, "What do I do when I'm done?"

Last but not least, you can pause a playlist at any time to do a "catch and release," or stop it entirely.


Quick Comprehension Overviews

As assessment questions are answered by at least one student, the question "opens up" in a growing column on the right side of the dashboard.  With the green and red indicators, you can quickly determine if certain questions are not going well (like the "male peacocks" and"bird mating calls" questions in the above image).  Might be time to pause the playlist and do a catch and release!

Post-play Data Reporting

Once the playlist is over, you can click on the orange "Question Data" button in the bottom right to see how students performed.  You can view this inside the LoL dashboard, but you can also export this data as a CSV file.


One final positive about LoL is the depth of its onsite resources and research information around game based education.  If one is looking for why and how gaming improves learning, or looking for other educational games to use, LoL's site is a solid place to start.

How could you use it?  Since you are not limited in how many playlists you create, you could make them for differentiating to a group of students or even down to personalizing for one student.  It could be a different way of "flipped learning" by delivering content or building schema as games for homework, then use classtime to apply student knowledge.  And what better way to slip in direct instruction of content during project based learning science units at the student's choice of time, place and pace?


Downsides?   You always hope for free tools, so the inevitable cost of students playing the games is a bit of a bummer.   However, you can share a referral code to colleagues which, if it results in a sign up, will get more coins for you!  You can also earn coins by giving critical feedback on the games themselves. However, your opportunity to try it at no charge should give you enough evaluation time to see if it makes a difference for instruction and learning before paying anything.  As already mentioned at the beginning, the current limitation of only middle school science content hinders larger amounts of classrooms being able to use the material, but I believe patience will pay off in expanded offerings in the future.


Have you tried Legends of Learning?  If not, what are some other educational game websites you feel make an impact on student learning?   Respond in the Comments below.

Spiral

Spiral is an online tool that has remained stuck in my head since I first encountered it several months ago.   It seems here to stay and continues to grow and improve.  Spiral is a remarkably robust "classroom learning platform" that is free** (with some premium features coming down the pike soon).   If it did only one of its main apps well,  I'd be impressed.  However, it does several things well in one online location...in a user-friendly way...with the capacity to supercharge learning.  The teacher's dashboard optimizes real-time analysis of student interaction in an uncluttered view.  Last but not least, a student-centered approach is clearly part of Spiral's DNA.

Spiral consists of four apps:

• Quickfire.   You can create "quizzes" in advance or simply do verbal prompts on the fly for students to answer.
• Discuss.  You can import a PowerPoint or Google Slides (or make slides from scratch).  A running chat room allows discourse throughout your presentation while you push out slides, and you can add discussion questions at certain points.   The mechanics are such that students are encouraged to see each other's comments and respond to each other -- a much more student-centered experience than typical direct instruction.  (In some ways this is like Nearpod, but Discuss is much more about creating conversation among students.)
• Team Up.  An opportunity for students to collaborate and create a presentation to share with the rest of the class.  While Google Slides offers a stronger collaborative tool for a more formal presentation, I like how easy this makes it for a teacher to group students together (randomly or intentionally), create roles, and assign activity objectives and/or group sub-objectives.
• Clip.  Take a YouTube video and insert multiple choice, open response, or class discussion questions at certain points in the timeline; the video stops and prompts the student to answer before continuing to play. EDpuzzle and PlayPosit do similar functions with more depth and options, but Clip gives up complexity for a simple, streamlined tool that would likely meet the assessment needs for most teachers.

The teacher's dashboard easily allows you to see student responses in real time.  If you are connected to a projector, you have options of highlighting and sharing responses on the screen (with or without student names).  All of the student answer data generated from each activity is always saved, and found in the teacher interface under "Timeline."   They are visual and easy to review, but the data from each session is also available as an Excel export.

One of the best things about Spiral is the simple but effective nature of its teacher feedback system.   For most of the apps, you either give a student response a checkmark for "correct" or push it back to the student to edit and improve their answer.  Considering that most of Spiral works best in a real-time synchronous environment, this is the most effective method for a teacher truly facilitating the student-centered learning environment. If it's meant to be essays or formal products that need rubrics or more detailed feedback, consider a different tool.

How does it work? Teachers can create a free account via their email or choose to log in with an existing account; currently, the options are Google, Facebook, Twitter, Clever or Edmodo.  (Note that Google Classroom integration is also possible in Spiral.)

You then can create multiple classes, each one with a unique code.  This code is how students will join your particular class.  (Note that launching an activity from a certain class has this same class code; this consistency is similar to Socrative, where your room code is always the same.)

When students first create an account, they are first asked the class code, but then have a choice; they could just put their name and jump into a launched activity immediately, or use the same options as a teacher in order to join with an existing account.   Also worth noting: students will either use the standard Spiral website and click on student login at the top, OR they can go to gospiral.ac to join a launched activity.

The way a teacher can create an activity to launch is quick and intuitive.  Here are some short video overviews of each app:

Quickfire video (3:11)

Discuss video (4:55)

Team Up video (4:11)

Clip video (5:02)

There are several small but significant aspects of Spiral that I appreciate.  I like how in Quickfire, you can choose for students to either answer in text or via a drawing mini-whiteboard.   A timer can be added for Quickfire, Discuss and Team Up activities.  "Shuffle" in Discuss randomly makes a student have to comment on another student's reply, ensuring all are engaged. Last but not least, Spiral seems very mobile friendly if you have BYOD in your classroom.

How could you use it?  Clip would be perfect for flipping instruction with an instructional video.  By asking a few questions, you not only can track participation but get a pre-class assessment on where student comprehension is.   Team Up can give a more structured approach to collaborating and sharing knowledge, especially when you just need an informal end-of-lesson sharing.  I'd love to use Team Up as a digital jigsaw activity.  Discuss would be great for a workshop whole-group direct instruction anchor activity while still keeping engagement high by having discourse. Quickfire is rapid enough for "pulse of the room" assessment and exit tickets, even if you have not prepared in advance and you are using verbal prompts.  Lastly, Quickfire's drawing response feature allows more of a "show your work" approach, especially useful for younger students in math.

Again, the beauty of Spiral is that you can do all of these apps from one location and login, without having students jump around to different sites (for example, from Nearpod to EDpuzzle).

Downsides?   It would be a nice option for teachers to be able to give detailed feedback or reply to student comments in Discuss or Quickfire, but I admire Spiral for keeping it student-centered and choosing rapidity over depth; as a formative tool, it is only meant to basically let students know "you are correct" or "explain more in detail."

Manually creating rosters doesn't seem to work well.  Students aren't able to pick their names off a list and save any time when you create a roster, although this may be a glitch Spiral is fixing; until then, you need to allow students to create their own accounts via an existing Google, Edmodo etc., integrate Spiral with Google Classroom, or simply allow students to enter on the fly by inputing their name for every new assessment (similar to how Kahoot works).  In the free version at least, you cannot see data across various assessments, so it's not a deal breaker if the student login is not consistent, but if you plan on using this often, I recommend a more uniform approach to how students choose to enter the platform.

Spiral Premium features include adding "steps" to QuickFire questions as well as student progress reports.

Do you already use Spiral?  Can you think of other creative ways you could use it in a classroom?  Please Comment below.

**I recently noticed that the Spiral pricing structure has changed.  In particular, the free version of Spiral no longer includes the Discuss, Team Up or Clip tools. (updated 7/24/19)

New Assessments Coming to Schoology

Schoology recently announced another major improvement coming this fall 2017.  What is currently called "Test/Quizzes" will now become "Assessments" (which better aligns with the way the tool can be fully used, in my opinion).  Yesterday, I watched a webinar on the new assessment tool.   While the existing question types will get improved for all users, only Enterprise users will have free access to the new "enhanced question" types, such as highlight hotspot, math short answer, number line, and "fill in the blank" (FITB) options.

The student will have more accessibility options, such as choosing a Spanish keyboard and changing the font size.

Other improvements include:

• The student will see the elapsed time as they take the assessment. The total time will be part of the data a teacher will see once submitted.
• You can now tie a specific rubric to a specific short answer question, and use it to grade and give feedback.  (Different questions can have different rubrics!)
• For some questions, you can build in a partial credit option when automatically grading.
• A survey can be created for the end of the assessment -- a great reflection tool for the student and a way the teacher can get direct feedback.
• An improved user interface for both a teacher making the assessment and the student taking it.

The new teacher interface when adding and editing questions.

I should add that older Test/Quizzes and question banks will still work in Schoology with the updated assessment tool.

I highly recommend watching their archived webinar (39:06), especially to see the new enhanced questions in action!

Note: the images above are all captured from the webinar.

Recap

Note 7/13/24: Recap is no longer an active website.  The old URL redirects to Swivl's Mirror app, a different platform, although one that seems to encourage student reflection.

The ultimate goal of technology in the classroom should be making teaching and learning happen in ways that you never thought possible.  One of those areas transformed by edtech is formative assessment. Nowadays,  there are many tools at a teacher's disposal where you can check a student's understanding quickly and in an engaging way.    But what if you want to expand past gathering multiple choice and short text answers?   What if a tool could capture understanding beyond the typical literacy demonstration of written words?

A few years ago, I discovered and wrote about Flipgrid, a student video response system.  Teachers could pose a question in a "grid," and students (via a webcam) could record a response within the website.  It was as easy as going to the URL and clicking a plus button.  In the time since, Flipgrid has improved the tool -- for example, you can now respond directly to someone else's response, creating a thread of digital discourse -- but there were a few downsides. (There were also numerous browser conflicts where Flipgrid didn't work, but in the two years since I originally reviewed it, I'm assuming those are now fixed.) 

[Update 5/3/17: Flipgrid now offers a limited free single grid option for teachers, Flipgrid One.]

 Several of our Shelby teachers used Flipgrid and gave it praise. For a time, in the nascent assortment of student video response tools out there, Flipgrid had few competitors.

Until now.

Thanks to a recent Google+ post by Christy Cate, I have found another tool that is just as easy to use, will work across multiple devices (including Chromebooks and via Android and iOS apps), and best of all, it is free!  Folks, welcome to Recap, brought to you by the same people behind Swivl.

How does it work?  Register using your email or Google account.  (It's important that you choose "teacher" during initial registration, even if you play the student to other people's recaps in the future.)  Your account will come with a demo class to give you an opportunity to play with Recap's features, but adding a new class is easy.  Once you do, you are faced with two options for students to log in for your class: via a class pin directly, or via their email/Google account.  The pin might be best for younger students, as the graphic below explains:

Note that the login setup is permanent for that particular class.  If you choose the direct class pin option, you can add students manually, but you must do so individually.

Next, you can create a recap.  One of Recap's helpful features is that you can make one assignment/recap around a certain theme or topic, but you can have up to 10 questions per recap.

Once students are in the class, they can choose to answer a recap.  Recap will then stop and prompt the student at each question, recording their answer before moving on to the next question.   At the end of the process, the student can also let the teacher know whether "They Got It," "Partially Got It," or "Didn't Get It."  Students can also view other students' responses. Although the teacher can give some text feedback to individual responses, students cannot leave feedback for each other, nor can they respond in video form to another student response.

The teacher's dashboard allows them to see all the student's responses individually, as well as a graphical representation of the "got it" reflections.  A final intriguing feature is the "Daily Review Reel," where randomly picked responses from some (but not all) of the students are edited together with some nice framing graphics.  This video can be shared with others, outside of the Recap website.

The teacher dashboard from the demo class.

This video gives a quick overview of Recap in less than a minute:

One thing that is very impressive about Recap is its simplicity of use, from setup to teacher management to student response creation.  I can imagine it used at multiple grade levels and for multiple contents.

How could you use it?  Reflections on a completed project or test can be done quickly: What was hardest? What was easiest?  Did you feel you were overprepared, underprepared, or studied/worked just enough?   Summative assessments themselves might have an alternative in Recap, especially for ECE students with compositional difficulties or ELL students who may speak more proficiently than they write.  An exit or entrance slip via some Recap questions could give a teacher a much more rich and nuanced appreciation of what students know and understand. The "Daily Review Reel" would be a fantastic way to share your classroom work with parents or staff; as of now, it is automated, but fuller control of which responders/responses are included is coming soon (see below).

Downsides?  It would be nice to have the capability to quantitatively assess a student via a grade or a mastery of standards (as of now, the only "grading" is a student's self reflection on whether they "got it" or not, and the ability for a teacher to give written feedback), but that might also be too heavy for Recap's intended streamlined purpose.  I was pleased to see several improvements coming soon, such as a student being able to resubmit/redo a response.  If they ever are able to have students respond to each other (like they can in Flipgrid), this free tool will corner the market.

It's reassuring to see that developers intend to improve their tool; hopefully that means the site will stick around and mature.

Do you use Recap?  Flipgrid?  Another student video response system?  Post your thoughts in the Comments below.

Update 4/26/17:  A new feature of Recap that can help create inquiry and personalize learning is about to launch: Recap Discover, part of Recap 2.0.  Learn more here.

Quizalize

The last month of this school year has been a blur of busy-ness. As we prepare to complete our 1:1 initiative in August for our K-5 students, our first school year of Chromebooks for middle and high school students has just completed. It has changed what learning means for Shelby County.  Also in the busy-ness mix: in the last few weeks I have presented at Fayette County's Innovations for Learning and KDE's Persistence to Graduation Summit.  This was my second year at IFL (what a great regional and FREE annual conference!) and my first for PtG; I hope to return to both next year.

For my last blog entry of the 2015-2016 school year, I want to highlight a new formative assessment tool -- Quizalize.  To me, it is the next natural evolution of the gamified online tools such as Kahoot and Quizizz, which builds on their strengths and finds new ways of being useful for educators.

How does it work?  First, register your free teacher account.  (There are some premium features available; more on that below.)    You will land on a page with several options at the top:

Note the URL public link (on the right), making it easy to share your Quizalize profile online.

"Start Here" is definitely recommended as your first stop.  Here you can access a printable guide, watch a short overview video, and play a demo quiz; you can also make a quiz as well as search Quizalize's "marketplace" for quizzes shared publicly by others.  (Some of these public quizzes are free, and some cost.)

The other top buttons on your landing page are fairly straightforward.  Under "Your Quizzes" you can see quizzes you have already made or create new ones.  One helpful aspect is that you can organize quizzes into "collections," making it easier to navigate through them.  You can view or create classes under "Your Classes."  This is also where you can assign a quiz to a class, or see data from quizzes your students have taken.  "Marketplace" takes you to the same searchable database mentioned above.  By clicking your name, you can edit your profile and settings.

Creating a quiz is easy; simply create your questions and then assign the quiz to a class.  One of the more powerful aspects of Quizalize is the ability to tag questions with objectives or topics, which will greatly enhance its reporting features.  Also, Quizalize quizzes can easily be taken asynchronously.   You can assign them as homework with a start/end date of completion.  (Of course, you could ask students to take it simultaneously during class as well.)  Unlike Kahoot, students can take the quiz without a projector displaying questions and answer choices; all of the necessary information is right on their own screen.  When assigning a quiz, you have several options such as scrambling the order of questions so students side by side will have a different experience.   The teacher is given a unique access code to the quiz; this code and the site quiz.al are all the information a student needs to take it.

Creating a class is also easy.  You give it a name, and decide whether you will make students have to create an email/password to sign in.  Unfortunately, for those that want to upload a roster, you do not have that as an option.  However, the tradeoff is an easy interface for students to access and take your quizzes (similar to Kahoot and Quizizz, a student can take a quiz without registration). With the code and quiz.al site, a student can jump into a quiz within seconds.   One of the interesting features of Quizalize is that a list of student names from previous takers will show up; students should look for their name first and click on it, but they can type it if their name is not shown.   I recommend making this clear in your instructions to students, in order to make data for the same student consistent over time.

One of my favorite aspects of Quizalize is the visually clear way student answer data is presented, both as whole class and on an individual basis.  Student performance is broken down as "strong," "almost there," and "needs help." If you use the subtopics tagging feature, you can also quickly see overall areas of struggle and proficiency.  Here is where the premium aspect of Quizalize adds value; if a teacher wants to pay $69 a year, he/she would have access to a spreadsheet view of performance as well as the ability to export the data.

Here is a video I made that shows an overview of Quizalize's assessment analysis features:

One last thing to mention is that Quizalize has partnered with Zzish, which allows the ability to assign multiple activities from other online platforms.   When you log in as a teacher, you can "Add Activity" from sites such as Kahoot and Socrative.  However, although a student can see these outside assignments once they log in to Quizalize, it is not a direct link or embedded activity.   For example, you could copy the Kahoot game PIN and put that in the activity description for the student to see for their "assignment," but the student would still have to log into Kahoot from a new tab to play the Kahoot game.

How could you use it?  As bellringers or exit slips, Quizalize can give you quick, vital information on student performance. With the quiz.al link and a code, quizzes could easily be imbedded in Schoology Updates or non-submission Assignments.  Coupled with a content-related video or text reading, Quizalize could be used for more engaging homework or as part of a flipped activity.  Last but not least, Quizalize could be another digital tool for gamifying your classroom.

Downsides? Fans of Quizizz will miss the lack of funny memes for wrong answers in Quizalize.  Both Quizizz and Kahoot have a rich reporting structure available for free, whereas you need a premium account in Quizalize to export similar Excel spreadsheets.  Lastly, although Quizalize has a leaderboard of sorts when running live games, Quizizz and Kahoot may be more effective in feeding the competitive nature of students.   However, its ease of use, coupled with the power of "subtopics" and quick visual representation of results, make Quizalize a compelling alternative.

Are you a user of Quizalize?  Talk about it in the Comments below.

Wizer

Worksheets are a nasty, nasty word in education.  Fair or not, they epitomize the "one size fits all" approach to mindlessly giving out the same photocopied work, year after year after year.  However, like other maligned educational words and phrases that have fallen out of fashion (like "direct instruction"), we must be careful not to throw out a good tool that has been used poorly in the past . . . especially if they get a twenty-first century upgrade.

Which brings us to the focus of this entry: Wizer! (That's pronounced like "wiser," as in "I hope to become wiser in integrated technology as the years go on.")  These self-described "blended worksheets" can become another powerful formative assessment for your digital classroom, despite the pedigree of the dreaded W word.

How does it work?  You need an account to either make or take Wizer worksheets, but registration is free and you can even use your Google account as a sign in.  (GAFE users, take note!)  Once logged in, look in the upper left of the page to access your previously created worksheets or to create a new one.

Once you choose to create a new worksheet, you must choose a theme.  (Like Google Forms in the beginning, there are a narrow amount of choices with some seasonal influences - I saw a Valentine related choice, for example - but you should be able to find enough variety.)  Next, you will see various ways of editing the worksheet at the top and right side.  At the top, you can indicate the grade level of the work or tag it with indicators.  Down the right side, you can save the worksheet as you go (there doesn't appear to be an auto-save), preview what it will look like to students, change the cover photo, and last but not least, edit the color and font of the worksheet's title.  The wording of the title itself is easy to click and edit, which will automatically give the worksheet its name when you look under "My Worksheets" in the top left.

In the body of the worksheet, you can choose various Tasks. Perhaps by design, the top row of choices are interactive, and the bottom row are more passive/informational.  So you can choose from interactive options such as matching, multiple choice, labeling a picture, and open response questions to more passive embedded material such as YouTube videos, pictures or links.  Another plus is how simple it is to edit Tasks and change the order of their appearance on the worksheet.

I'm particularly impressed with "Fill On An Image" and "Matching," which among online formative assessments are fairly unique choices.

For a video on how to create a Wizer worksheet, see below:

After the worksheet is completed, you go to the upper right to toggle the Publish button, and now you can "Assign to students."  From here, you can create multiple "classes" to assign the same worksheet for the sake of organization (and control turning on or off access class by class).  You can provide a link to the worksheet (in an email, a Schoology Assignment/Update Post, etc.) or directly integrate it with Google Classroom.

Note that you can choose to give or not give "Automatic feedback to students."

Once students complete the worksheet, you can go to your worksheet and click on "Assess Answers" in the upper right. Right/wrong answers (like multiple choice) will be automatically graded for you, and you can toggle through student submissions to manually grade Tasks such as open responses or override Wizer if it says a student was incorrect.  There is even a space for teacher comments. Once saved, all of this will be available to students when they next log in.

For a video on how to assign worksheets and assess student answers, see below:

Note that by default, all published worksheets are available in the public "gallery" on the home page of the site, which can be shared or copied to their own account by other users.  However, you can make your worksheets private by going under "My Worksheets," finding the worksheet you want to change, clicking the three dots button, and clicking on Make Private.

How could you use it?   The beauty of Wizer can be summed up in a sentence: it's a formative assessment that is easy to navigate with Tasks that could be used K-12.  If you are worried about the "one size fits all" of old school worksheets, why not make multiple versions and differentiate?  (You can copy one of your existing worksheets and edit it accordingly.)

Downsides?   Questions are automatically a point per answer; you cannot customize the values. There is no way to search public worksheets (currently, you can only browse the ones shown on the home page), but since worksheets can be tagged when created, I believe this is a feature likely to come down the pike.  While already packed with several Task features, I look forward to using other tools in the future such as drawing or audio.

Wizer is getting user input for which Task will be added next.

All in all, Wizer is a great new free online formative assessment that is already impressive.  If it continues to grow and improve, this could easily become a favorite in my toolbox.

Be sure to share a Comment below if you've used Wizer already or after you give it a try!