Socrative Archives - Carrie Baughcum

After weeks and weeks of excitement, new tools and waves and waves of awesomeness, things have finally settled and iPad life has been smooth sailing.

With my students now the captains of their iPads…

they easily navigate between apps, using Goodreader to complete assignment notebooks, worksheets, take notes and write paragraphs.

New apps that we (I say we because I currently have a dynamo…awesomely tech savvy…she totally speaks geek student teacher) have introduced to our students have been warmly welcomed and tired with a fantastic energy and without hesitation. We have tried Baiboard, Socrative, Study Blue and Bitsboard (all of them and all but Bitsboard are also internet based….BONUS for your non-iPad users or if you do not have iPads). We continue to have great success and celebrate all the awesomeness of what each app offers our students. All while knowing there are just so many more awesome apps out there!

My students are still finding their way around Google Talk (I introduced them to it about a week and a half ago). This app allows them to easily communicate with me if they have any questions while they are working on their homework. While my students have become expects at using Edmodo as a communication tool, we quickly found that for homework help, Edmodo doesn’t reply fast enough and the multiple posts and long streams of communication can be confusing for them. We are still in the lets try this out phase of Google Talk… setting our course and hoping we find more treasure…but my students are over the moon they have this tool to use and uber excited at what it can do. Bonus…can we say independent students advocating for themselves…geee!

My Goals for NEXT WEEK…

Each student has 5 tools (apps) on their iPads they are confident, independent and proficient at using
These 5 tools meet and support their educational needs
Of these 5 tools (apps)...

One to two of them improves access to the curriculum and improves output of information
One of them allows us (me and my students) to communicate with ease (at home, in my class or away from my class)
One to two of them provides interactive and engaging funs that reinforces new and old skills.

So until next week you can find us sailing the open seas, rocking our iPads and spreading our awesomeness where ever we travel!

Remember in Goldie Locks and the Three Bears when Goldie Locks (that naughty girl she was, being in someone’s house without asking) sat at the table tasting porridge… this one is tooo hot…this one is tooo cold… this one is just right! That moment…The moment the porridge finally tasted perfectly warm, was exactly what happened this week!

This week things came together in awesome ways! So much awesomeness is happening. I simply can not contain it to a day by day account and feel the the urge to shout all of the awesomeness that happened this week!!!!

1) Students can independently upload documents from Dropbox to Goodreader

2) Students now complete all worksheets on the iPad (both in class and at home)

3) All class notes are taken on the iPad

4) Students know how to independently view documents side by side in Goodreader
ex. Students can complete their paragraph organizer on the iPad and view it on the same
screen while typing the paragraph using it

5) All grading is done at the beginning of each class (a huge change in routine for us)

6) Grading time is down to 5 minutes

7) Instant daily feedback of performance has significantly reduced the number of
corrections that need to be made to homework

8) Corrections are now done the day they happen, rather then on a specific day of the week

9) The overall pace of a class lesson has almost doubled,
     significantly increasing the amount of instruction given
     in a week

10) Students are starting to use their iPads to take notes on while looking at
videos / resources on the computer

11) We are almost a completely paperless classroom

12) WE… staff…myself and my Teaching Assistants…and my students are crazy
giddy happy and proud…WE ARE (almost completely) A PAPERLESS CLASSROOM!!!!

13) Students use all of our basic apps almost completely independently…
Goodreader, Dropbox, Google allowing me to begin to slowly introduce new tools

14) New fantasticness is emerging…Fantasticness I tell you!

15) We use the Socrative app once a week in two classes to record and document
student performance in Reading and Social Studies

16) We began using Study Blue to learn measurement abbreviations in Math class

17) Upon learning how to use Study Blue one of my students sat in his desk, stared at
me, stared some more and then said…

Student: Wait…this makes note cards.

Me: Yes, it does

Student: I make note cards for Science class

Me: Yes you do

Student: Can I use this to make note cards for Science

Me: You sure can

…and we set up a time after school to make the note cards together.

Can you just feel the sparks and connections clicking!!!

18) We discovered the app (during a day it was offered for free…bonus) Jet Scanner and a
      whole new world of independent awesomeness was opened. No scanner needed
      when you can take a picture of a worksheet, turn it into a PDF and then upload it
      to Dropbox, share it with all of your students and they can upload it into Goodreader
      and type and/or write on it

19) I am in the process of starting Assistive Technology
      Evaluations for three of my students. I have plenty of
      data already that these tools need to be a perminent
      part of their educational days

Next weeks technology and iPad goals…

Introducing, modeling how to use and using Baiboard to students…humongously huge deal…this means working in groups (something that is very challenging for my students and we rarely do)
Changing my thinking about how we are teaching measurement to my Math students. No more memorizing and memorizing and memorizing conversion facts. I am going to focus on teaching them to use technology as a resource to access facts and information.
Teach my students to use the Jet Scanner app, how to upload documents to our Dropbox and make them available to the class
Explore and test out ClassDojo behavior management system
Continue to our awesmomeness streak into the next week…because seriously..My StUdEnTs RoCk!!!!

Category: Socrative

Week 5 and 6: Steady As We Go

Week 3: Juuuust Right