Formative

Here we are on the eve of KySTE 2015, and what better way to celebrate than to share a new tool?

It's strange how the world works.  Infuse Learning is an assessment tool I've plugged in several of my PDs in the past.  Unfortunately, they recently sent out a mass email and wrote a blog entry informing its users that the site will close down permanently on April 3.   Although there were some beta and buggy issues that sometimes compromised the tool, it had a lot going for it, and it was hard to complain about its cost (free!).

But as one door closes, another one opens.  Usually when a company follows me on Twitter, I give its website a glance for 30 seconds and move on.  However, a few weeks back, the folks at Formative got my attention.  I looked at their site....and looked at it some more.  That led to a slew of emails and a Skype chat with Kevin McFarland (one of its creators), and here I have to give praise. McFarland has gone above and beyond answering my questions and demoing this new website with me.  He's a former educator with a passion for his product, and it shows.  Now, McFarland admits that Formative is just out of beta with some powerful upgrades still around the corner, but I have to be honest: even from playing with it as is, I can tell this will quickly become one of my favorite formative assessment tools.  Plus, it is completely free.

How does it work?  Formative is a Web 2.0 tool that is device-agnostic -- if you can get to the Internet you can use it.  Basically, a teacher can create formative assessments (Formative calls them "assignments," as a reminder that the site can be more than just a quizmaker) and students can take them one of two ways: either in a "open" way that requires no account or registration, or they can log in to begin a data trail tied to their name.  In a novel touch, when teachers create assessments, they are given either a "Quick Code" or a direct URL they can share with students that would technically work in either registered or unregistered mode.  This dual nature of Formative is powerful.  The open mode makes it easy for teachers to try it out with their class, and allows students to take assessments in seconds (much like the open systems of Nearpod's "sessions" or joining a Socrative "room number").  On the other hand, registered accounts will eventually allow student data to be collected and analyzed over time, something that is beyond the current capabilities of Nearpod and Socrative.  While on the subject of those two popular tools, Formative has obviously studied them and others in an attempt to bring the best options together in one product.

There are two types of assignments that a teacher can create: "build your own from scratch," or "upload & transform a document."

Build your own from scratch:  After deciding on your assignment title, you can either "Add a Question" or "Add Content."  For questions, you can choose a typed response, multiple choice, true or false, or "show your work," which is basically a whiteboard tool for students.  (This drawing function reminds me of one of my favorite aspects of Nearpod.)  For content, you can easily embed a YouTube video, or draw and share something you created on a whiteboard.  There is also a Rich Text Format editor as a content option, but I had issues successfully embedding code or making hyperlinks active; at the very least, this could function as an informational text box inside your assignment.  The RTF editor aside, the tools were easy to manipulate and edit.  In an upcoming upgrade, McFarland says you will even be able to tag questions with specific Core Content standards.  The eventual implications of this is enormous; for example, perhaps you could see how one student is handling a specific standard, or run a report of all the standards with how your class is doing with them.

Upload & transform a document:  This to me is one of the more awesome aspects of Formative.  We often talk of making a paperless classroom, but for many teachers like myself, we have reams of great assessments that either exist as paper versions only (you could scan it and make a PDF, but then what?) or are carefully crafted in an electronic document that doesn't easily lend itself to be reconfigured as a quiz.  How do you make the bridge? Formative has the easiest solution I've seen so far.

If you choose upload, you are confronted with a myriad of choices, as the picture below shows.

In Formative's upload tool, you can transform a website, access your Google Drive for docs, access Facebook (!) or even take a picture (!!), among several other options.

Once uploaded and transformed, Formative allows you to edit the assignment in various ways.  The most obvious is you can add "answer boxes" wherever you like in whatever size you like.  Answer types not only include text and multiple choice, but drawing and taking a picture!  (You also have a whiteout tool to "cover" part of your upload if necessary.)   You can delete pages you don't need and resize, delete or move any boxes after the fact.

After an uploaded assignment is saved, you can choose it from your Dashboard, go to Live Results, and edit the answer key for automatic grading of right and wrong answers.  I like how you can list multiple answers as correct ("30," "Thirty" and "thirty," for example).  The Dashboard will give the assessment's Quick Code or direct URL, and allow a teacher to see students' answers in real time.   The default grade value of each question is 10 points, which you can change.  As students answer, you can manually change the right/wrong answer grades as well as assess the qualitative responses, like drawing or text.   Here again, Formative has a unique tool with a red to green "slider" which can make the points go from zero to the maximum amount.  (According to McFarland, giving additional written feedback in this same slider area is a near-future upgrade.)  From the Dashboard, you can click "Export" and download an Excel spreadsheet that gives a simplified, but useful, report on all the students who have taken your assignment.

Clearly this student has not watched Star Wars.

Like any brand new tool, there are some quirks that you either need to be aware of to avoid or will hopefully be improved in future versions.  I already mentioned the RTF editor issues when creating an assignment from scratch.  When working with an uploaded document, I hit a few walls.  For example, if you add answer boxes to multiple pages and then decide to delete some of those pages, you will notice under Live Results that the "deleted" answer boxes are still there.  (Perhaps delete the answer boxes BEFORE deleting the pages.)  Multiple choice answer boxes create how many letters and number of choices you want (A, B, C...) but you can't actually add answers to each letter (A: blue, B: red....), so if the multiple choice selections aren't already on the uploaded document, you are probably better off with a text response.  Another annoyance is that if you add an answer box after the fact in the middle of two existing answer boxes, the number assigned is not in sequence but what would actually be the next number as if it is at the end.  For example, if after making an assignment with 36 answer boxes, you decide to go back and put an answer box between #7 and #8, it will number it #37.  Issues like these actually led to me deleting my uploaded assignment and starting over, so for now, plan your uploaded assignment creations carefully.  But these are quibbles.  I cannot stress enough how awesome it is that Formative can magically transform your existing documents into digital assignments; it's a game changer and by itself makes the site worthy of a try-out.


How could you use it?  As mentioned previously, Formative's strength is that it could do the best of both worlds.  If you want students to interact with digital assessments without registering, you can easily do so via its Quick Codes or public links (much like Nearpod or Socrative requires no student account to interact with its tools).  If you plan on using it often and want longitudinal data, students can create accounts and you can eventually analyze their answers over time.  And don't forget your ability to digitally convert existing documents, or even transforming a webpage or a picture into an interactive assessment.  Last but not least, a flipped/blended or differentiated classroom experience can be as easy as handing out Quick Codes. Simply put, Formative is one of the most user-friendly and powerful formative tools I've found.

Downsides?   You may have to wait a few more months for some more useful upgrades like tagging questions with Common Core standards and giving written feedback, but patience will be rewarded with this tool.  Mr. McFarland really cares about input from teachers that can improve the product, so this is a site that can only get better.  He also promised that the core product will always be free for teachers, and that's music to my ears.

Go now and get Formative!  If you are already a user or after you try it out, leave a Comment below and share your successes and challenges with the tool.

24 Hours of #KyEdChat

With just over a day to go before the beginning of KySTE 2015, another quick announcement.   #KyEdChat will have 24 hours of educational social media conversation starting at 10 am EST on March 5 and ending 10 am EST on March 6.  Spearheaded by Donnie Piercey and others, this marathon of twittering will nicely parallel with the last two days of KySTE.

I was flattered to be invited on this adventure.  This is my first time creating questions and moderating a #KyEdChat, so I'm very thankful and excited. My time slot is 9 to 10 pm EST on Thursday, March 5, and the conversation topic will be an extension of my KySTE session earlier that morning (pragmatic augmented reality tools, as I detailed in my previous blog post).   Thanks in advance to Jennifer Cox (instructional coach at Collins High School) for helping me moderate the session.  If you can't join for my slot, there are 23 others to pick from, so grab your device and tweet!

And now I will leave you with a very cool animated GIF.

  

KySTE and our first Edtech Share Fair!

As I desperately try to thaw out, I look ahead to March, which will bring warmer weather and some busy times with it.  Today I want to highlight two events that happen next month, KySTE's spring regional edtech conference and our inaugural Shelby County Edtech Share Fair.

(Quick side note:  both of these events are on Watson's World under the "District PD Opportunities" page.  I update this page periodically.  Here's a link.)

KySTE

KySTE is the local regional chapter of ISTE.   Every spring at the Galt House in downtown Louisville, KySTE hosts the largest Kentuckiana edtech conference of the year.  I have had the privilege of attending as well as presenting at the conference several times.

This year's March 4-6 conference theme is "Welcome to the Future."  I am attending all three days and presenting at two sessions: one on augmented reality (Thursday, March 5, 10:30 am, Coe Room) and another about the construction of Southside Elementary (Friday, March 6, 10:30 am, Coe Room).  Southside just opened in August 2014 and features some of the most sophisticated intelligent classrooms in the district. The Southside presentation will be a group effort, and features Tommy Hurt (Shelby CIO), Kerry Whitehouse (Assistant Superintendent of Operations), and Susie Burkhardt (principal of Southside).  Several Shelby County instructional coaches and teachers are attending the conference as well, and I can't wait for us to share what we will discover at the sessions.

For a list of #KySTE15 session topics, click here.

Edtech Share Fair

This week, we began to officially beat the drums for our first ever Edtech Share Fair on Thursday, March 26 from 4:00 to 5:30 pm at the district's new Learning Center next to Southside Elementary.   I'll share our "press release" with links to more information; I will embed our Smore flyer and our ThingLink page underneath.

Be sure to get your tickets ASAP!

Step right up, step right up!  Our inaugural Edtech Share Fair is coming to the new Learning Center at Southside Elementary on March 26, 2015, 4:00 to 5:30 pm.  Nine teachers from around the district (elementary, middle and high school in several different content areas) will set up their “station booths” and give short presentations on various tools, as well as lead mini-discussions with audience members.  Hear how they have integrated their edtech into their classrooms and impacted student learning, while getting a chance to visit our newest district space.

But this is no typical PD!  With Adam Watson as your carnival barker, be prepared to rotate through only the stations you select in the order that you want.   There may even be some popcorn on this midway of learning.  So come one, come all!  Help make our first Edtech Share Fair a success!

To get your FREE ticket, please visit our Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edtech-share-fair-spring-2015-tickets-15803660173

To take a virtual tour of our Edtech Share Fair, explore this Thinglink page: http://www.thinglink.com/scene/626833573361483778

For a Edtech Share Fair FAQ and a preview of the nine presenters and their tools, see this Smore flyer:  https://www.smore.com/dgk17

Be sure to follow our event hashtag: #scsharefair   twitter.com/hashtag/SCsharefair

Snowbound but still learning

Brrrr.  Day #4 of our Kentuckiana snowmaggedon.  In Shelby County, we announced today's closing with some flair:

Here's a fun fact: Kentucky is "the first state to tackle the problem on a statewide basis," and several districts are piloting snowbound learning days.  When a snow day occurs, students know to log in and get their assignments.  (For those with tech equity issues, a "hard copy" packet is provided before the expected snow day or provided to the student when they return.)  The big question, of course, is: will they do it?  As always, students are willing to meet and exceed expectations.   I actually wonder if students prefer the personalized, individual, comfortable learning they can achieve at home rather than the desks in a row, bell-driven experience that occurs for most of our schools. (I think I can guess the answer.) How can we replicate that experience inside our schools?  (For further reading, Kentucky's pilot program is detailed in this national news story, and another article discusses how Lawrence County uses Google Classroom to make "no school" into "snow school.")

Here in Shelby County, several of our teachers and principals are using Twitter to communicate assignments, expectations and/or use of technology to continue learning at home.  Here is a sampling:

AP Phys- make sure to read ch 15 and do problems pg. 494 #1,2,3,12,23,24 and pg. 496 #18,19. Submit answers on socrative. See canvas..
— Ms. Heather McCall (@msheathermccall) February 18, 2015

EnglishFam I sent a remind101 to you yesterday with the assignment again. Link got messed up so here it is again: http://t.co/Evkgqh0WQX
— Ms. Murphy (@MsMurf_MLCHS) February 18, 2015

On these snowy days I challenge every one to read a good book and tell your principal or a teacher about it when you return.
— East Middle School (@EastMSMissiles) February 16, 2015

Found this link from a Painted Stone friend. Anyone can use this website... Check it out K-5 available: http://t.co/WH6IEIp8Zb
— Dawn Riddle (@mrsriddleCCE) February 17, 2015

Whenever we return to the brick-and-mortar buildings (tomorrow? Monday?  April 24th???), I hope that we continue to find innovative ways to blur the boundaries of where and when learning can occur.  Until then, stay warm inside your igloos and be careful on the roads!

TUIT: Kate Herrick and Lillie Hall, WMS

I arrived at Wright Elementary on Monday and have been settling into my new embedded home for the next three weeks: the library.   That means it's time for a new Instagram photo!

My MacBook Air hanging out with its much bigger edtech cousin, Wright Elementary's new library SMART board!

A photo posted by Adam Watson (@watsonedtech) on Feb 11, 2015 at 9:55am PST

Meanwhile, as I just begin my whole-school PD and plan for some classroom observations with the Jets, I wanted to give one more West Middle School #ShelbyTUITshoutout.  As I mentioned in previous entries, WMS had an unusual amount of teachers that paired together to tackle an edtech tool....which leads us to English teachers Kate Herrick and Lillie Hall.  Ms. Herrick is a first year teacher, working with veteran educator Ms. Hall.  They have partnered together to integrate Edmodo into their classrooms.

For those that don't know, Edmodo is a Learning Management System (LMS).   Student sign up is simple, and teachers can easily reset passwords of enrolled students.  In Edmodo, a teacher can make and assign a quiz, create assignments and have students submit work, have discussions via forum posts, send alerts of upcoming deadlines and important news, and maintain a calendar of events.   Last but not least, a teacher can upload files in a library so digital media can be shared.

But there are other uses for Edmodo.  As Ms. Herrick explains, "In my instruction, I plan to use Edmodo both inside and outside of class to allow students to respond to written prompts or to watch short clips, view images, or read short texts to develop background knowledge for class the following day." In other words, Edmodo will help create a blended and flipped classroom experience.

The site also continues to improve.  There is now an Edmodo "app store" (some free, some for a fee) that allows another level of interaction with and between students.  Recently, Edmodo added a built-in assessment tool called Snapshot that can automatically generate Core Content-related questions and give teachers valuable data on their students' proficiency.

An overall class example of Snapshot results.

Still, some parents may balk at Edmodo because of its perceived social media appearance, especially for younger students.  Ms. Herrick addressed these concerns in a letter to parents, which read in part:

Edmodo can be accessed through downloading the app or simply by visiting Edmodo.com. Edmodo looks like Facebook, making it familiar and exciting for students, but it is not a social media site. Some of the features include:

1.  Students can direct message me, the teacher, at any time with questions or for homework help; however, students cannot message each other. This is a great way to open up communication between me and students without offering a “social media” type communication between students.

2.   Edmodo allows for online discussion, giving students an authentic audience for their writing and an opportunity to engage in written communication with each other.  As a class, we have established norms for what our “cyber behavior” should look like. If students cannot follow the norms, they will lose privileges of Edmodo and will be faced with appropriate consequences, just like with any other unacceptable behavior in the classroom.

3.      My favorite feature of Edmodo is that it allows guardians access to see what both I and the student post on the site. For privacy reasons, guardians can see only what their individual students respond. I will soon be reaching out to guardians with directions on how to access Edmodo with a “parent code.”

I agree with Kate on #3: when I used Edmodo the last few years I was a high school English teacher, this was also one of my favorite features. Each student that enrolls in a class gets a corresponding parent code (accessible by the teacher), so a parent can register and see his/her child's Edmodo classes on their own.  I posted what we did in class every day, not only so absent students could figure out what they missed on their own, but so parents of struggling students could see what we were up to in order to support their child.

There are certainly other LMS's that are more powerful; to give but two examples, Blackboard and Canvas by Instructure are used in higher education yet are increasingly seen in K-12.  Few are as user-friendly as Edmodo, however, and by partnering with other webtools like Edpuzzle, make Edmodo even more compelling.

As our 1:1 student device initiative begins next school year, we will be able to utilize tools like Edmodo even more in an "always online" environment.  Kudos to Kate Herrick and Lillie Hall for starting to experiment with that environment now.  Congrats for your #ShelbyTUITshoutout!

Lenovo Yoga: fixing your audio for HDMI connection

The new Southside Elementary, which just opened in August 2014, is unique in our district when it comes to technology.  As they built the school, they made sure that input plates to the new projectors reflected current standards.  Therefore, one of the ways you can hook up to the projector is via HDMI.

Yesterday, as I was preparing for some PD I will have here on Feb. 13 (topics include Google Forms, Augmented Reality, and SMART Board power tips), I plugged in my Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga device to a SMART board.  First, in order for the SMART Board to work as a touchscreen and use the Notebook '11 software, you need to plug the Yoga via a USB cord to the input plate.  Here's the first hurdle: you need to use the USB on the RIGHT side of the Yoga or you will get an error message.  Next, you need the display to show up on the screen. The Lenovo Yoga has a mini-HDMI port on the right side, whereas the wall plate has a normal size HDMI input.  This leads us to the second hurdle: make sure you pick up a mini-HDMI to regular size HDMI cord (one online store with good prices is here).

Now, I got the display on the screen, and the SMART board's touch capability was working fine.   However, I could not get my sound to come through the room's speakers!  So that leads us to the final hurdle: you need to update your Lenovo's drivers to get both video AND audio to output via your HDMI cable.

1. Go to the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga driver website.
2. Look for the "Conextant CX20751 Audio Driver for Windows 8.1 (64 bit)" (see picture below).
3. Download and install the driver.  This will take a few minutes and require a restart of the Lenovo Yoga.
4. After a successful installation, there is nothing you should have to do; when your HDMI is hooked to a display, both video and audio should automatically work.

Two final thoughts before I end this entry:

• If you are having other issues with your Lenovo, check out some previous Edtech Elixirs entries.
• The driver fix above will need to be done regardless of what display device your Lenovo Yoga is hooked up to via HDMI.  For example, if you plug it up to your HDTV, you still need to update the driver or the sound will not come through the TV's speakers.

Quick Key

Ahh, Scantron.  They have been a mainstay of many teachers' formative or summative assessments over the years, especially when multiple choice activities are concerned. I remember taking my cards to the grading machine in the teacher's lounge (sometimes waiting several minutes for my turn!), and when I slid each student's answer sheet in, I prayed for near silence (meaning few if any misses) and hoped to not hear the staccato click-clack revealing a student had a number of wrong answers.

Of course, Scantron is rife with problems.  The grading machine itself is not free, and in my experience prone to frequent breakdowns.  The cards themselves were always guarded and in short supply, as their cost was also not insignificant.   Assuming the student marks were readable in the first place, the machine will still occasionally read answers incorrectly.    It reminds me about clickers and why I hate them so much -- why spend all that money on equipment and waste time trying to use them, especially if they are not reliable?

Enter Quick Key, a free app and site that (much like Plickers) technically requires only one mobile device and photocopied "Quick Tickets" for students to answer on.  Never go back to Scantron again!

How does it work?  Go to the website to register for free, then download the free iOS app (Android is coming in the future) to your iPad or iPhone.  You will need to log into the app using your account credentials; info is synced between your device and your online account.

On the site itself, you can create multiple classes along with student rosters for each.  (Student ID numbers can be either automatically generated or you can assign.)  You have two choices when it comes to quizzes.  There is an advanced quiz builder through the site, complete with plugging in pictures; when finished, the quiz is saved as a PDF you can print out for students.  A second option is through the app itself; think of this as just inputing your answer key to correspond with a hard copy quiz you already have made.

Once a quiz is created, you will need to download, photocopy, and hand out the Quick Tickets to students so they can take your quiz.  (You can see that the Student ID number is important to keep track of individual results.)  Students fill out the Ticket and return it to you.  Using your device and the app, choose the correct quiz and class, then scan each Ticket individually to automatically grade and see the results in real time; later, you can export an Excel report of the individual student results.  The scanning and report generation is surprisingly quick.

Here is a short video that gives an overview of Quick Key:

How could you use it?   If you are limited in student devices and don't have a 1:1 environment, Quick Key can still save you tons of time grading and assessing multiple choice answers.

Downsides?  Quick Key only works for multiple choice and not open response assessments. Although multiple choice tests certainly can be higher order and challenging, be careful on over relying on these as your only kind of assessment!

Do you use Quick Key?  Talk about it in the Comments below.