The Answer Pad

The Answer Pad is one of my favorite mobile learning solutions for educators.  This is a combo site/iOS app that lets teachers turn their classroom paperless and do testing/assessing on a mobile device.  Also, Answer Pad turns a student's device into a graphically based student response system that is perfect for differentiating instruction and assessing students in real-time.  This can be used by any curriculum for any subject.

I highly recommend checking out Answer Pad by clicking here!!!

*Answer Pad is an advertiser of Technology Tidbits.

Chronicle

Chronicle is a innovative new iPad that is ideal for classroom management, grading, assessing, note-taking, and so much more.  It is a educational tool that educators are using for harnessing their teaching best practice methodologies.  It is designed for educators to "Chronicle" each student through detailed and easy to use data by allowing educators to add multimedia (i.e. audio, video, images, etc.) content to each student's progress.  Teachers can customize notes and audio clips to each student, and assess students in real-time using a visual "traffic-light" design.  Also, it allows educators to integrate Common Core Standards and act as a grade book w/ an abundance of export features.

I highly recommend checking out Chronicle by click here!!!

For more info check out Edshelf.
For my Pinterest board on Educational iOS Apps click here.

*Chronicle is an advertiser of Technology Tidbits.

Chronicle

Chronicle is an innovative new iPad app that allows educators to assess students in real time on any subject as well as their behavior w/ a unique "traffic light" system.  Also, it allows educators to share student data, generate detailed reports, and add media (i.e. audio, images, video) to notes for individual students or groups.  Best of all, Chronicle integrates w/ a gradebook and is aligned to Common Core Standards.

I highly recommend checking out Chronicle by clicking here!!!

For more information on Chronicle click here.

Also, check on Chronicle on Edshelf.

STEM Essentials- The Assessments

After you have thought about your STEM unit and have developed a plan that contains your idea, related curriculum standards, challenge, and end product, it's time to figure out how to assess successful completion of the challenge/project.

Although we haven't touched on "guts" of the project yet, it's important to know where you want to end up before you fill in the blanks.  This backward mapping will help to ensure that all of the pieces tie together cleanly at the end and remains focused and organized.  Enter: The Assessments.

 On a daily basis, you will want to use different types of formative assessments.  Formative Assessments are designed to give the teacher a qualitative (rather than quantitative) measure of student understanding. Using these strategies daily will give you a good read on student understanding and help you to plan upcoming lessons accordingly.  Most formative assessment strategies are no prep (Thumbs Up/Down) or low-prep (Exit Tickets) which makes them easy to gather useful data.

At the end of the project, you will want to conduct a Summative Assessment that shows what students have learned throughout the duration of the project.  This will most likely take the form of assessing the completion of student products through the use of a rubric.  Teachers can also add a more traditional test for the unit, but STEM units are generally use a rubric so that students may be assessed on a number of different elements.  As you develop this rubric, you will want to choose carefully what criteria to assess.  No matter what kind of summative assessment you choose to implement, students should be made aware of how they will be assessed at the beginning of the project.  When using a rubric, be sure to review the criteria and scale with students focusing on what students should be doing to be successful.

Aside from your daily informal formative assessments and your end-of-unit summative assessments, I also like to set up checkpoints at certain key places in the unit.  This may be as easy as the teacher reviewing the progress of the team and signing off on their progress or it might look as formal a quiz.  Choose the most appropriate method for your students that ensures forward progress.

Now that you have learned about the different types of assessments that take place throughout a typical STEM unit, you can begin to put these in place for your specific unit. Stay tuned for next week's post on creating rubrics.

STEM Essentials Handout: Formative Assessment Strategies , Summative Assessment Strategies

Answer Pad

The Answer Pad is one of the best and easy to use free Student Response/Dialogue Systems for mobile devices.  It is fantastic learning tool that is being used by classrooms all around the world that allows educators to assess their students in real-time on their mobile devices.  The way this works is the educator creates from scratch or uses Common Core Aligned templates to create assignments, tests, quizzes, etc and then pushes them out to their student's mobile devices.  The students then complete the assignment and the teacher is able to view/assess their work.  This is a great way to differentiate instruction and even flip a lesson.

Also, there are other beneficial tools such as the ability to draw, annotate, create digital portfolios, important photos, and more to help save teacher's time.  Answer Pad is a great way to turn the classroom paperless as all test taking/reporting can be done on a mobile device.  Best of all, it is safe and CIPA/COPPA compliant where educators can create/import student accounts.

I highly recommend checking out The Answer Pad by clicking here!!!

Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a new site/community/app that reminds me of a more "adult" version of Voicethread.  This is a nice site/community and iPad app that allows educators to record a video (asking a question) called a grid and then have students respond via their own video.  Educators can then view through their admin page which videos have been viewed, questions answered, etc.

Best of all Flipgrid has an educational portal where students don't need an email address or account to access teacher's grids, as well as many privacy options for educators to control.  Finally, a Flipgrid can be embedded into a site and easily integrated into any LMS (Learning Management System).

I highly recommend checking out Flipgrid by clicking here.

For the free iPad app click here.

Classkick

Classkick is an interesting new (private beta) iPad app that allows educators to gather, assess, and provide instant real-time feedback w/ students.  The way this works is through an innovative whiteboard where the teacher can see what each student is working on all their very own iPad.  This is perfect for differentiating instruction and actually viewing how students are doing their work as it happens.  Also, this is a great teaching tool that is easy to integrate into any curriculum and can be used by students of all ages.

I highly recommend checking out Classkick by clicking here!!!

Edueto

Edueto is a great new site for educators to create homework online and then grade it once students have completed it.  This is done from a easy to use interface and allows teachers to add text, images, videos and more.  After the students complete the assignment teachers can then grade them in a fast organized manner.  Also, educators can find other assignments already created on Edueto and customize them to meet their own needs.

I highly recommend checking out Edueto by clicking here!!!

Oncore

Oncore is a new classroom productivity iPad app that acts as a Learning Management System (LMS) and helps differentiate, assess, and facilitate instruction.  This app allows educators to manage their classes and students and even create a custom seating chart.  Educators can take attendance, grade assignments/quizzes (on a 5 pt scale), track participation/behavior (similar to Class Dojo), and more.  Another nice feature is the ability to group students by similar abilities which makes it easier for teachers to visualize students learning and differentiate instruction.  Finally, Oncore is aligned to Common Core Standards and helps educators integrate them into their classroom.

I highly recommend checking out Oncore by clicking here!!!

The Answer Pad

The Answer Pad is one of my favorite all-in-one mobile learning solutions for a classroom.  Not only does it allow a teacher to become paperless by doing all testing/assessing on a iPad (or mobile device), it can turn a iPad into a student response clicker system.  A educator can use Answer Pad in a number of different ways and push out assignments that they can grade and assess in real-time, which allows them to differentiate instruction, guide instruction, and even flip their classroom.

I highly recommend checking out Answer Pad by clicking here!!!

*The Answer Pad is a advertiser of Technology Tidbits.

6 Ways to Strengthen Rigor in Your STEM Classroom

In recapping this series on Strengthening Rigor in STEM, we've talked about how to define rigor in the classroom.   We've discussed that rigor is not making the work harder or assigning more problems.

We've also outlined the basics on tools such as the Rigor/Relevance Framework that we can use to guide our planning and instruction to establish and maintain rigor in the classroom.

This list generated by this series is by no means exhaustive, but is a tangible list of strategies you can use to begin to building rigor into your classroom:

• Interactive Notebooks
• The Art of Questioning
• Student Portfolios
• Rubrics
• PBL Elements
• Student Menus

By using or reintroducing these strategies into your classroom,  students can begin to stretch their thinking and begin to perform in ways that will help them to grow them academically as well as help them achieve mastery and beyond.

geddit

geddit is fantastic free learning tool that is ideal for a 1:1 environment where educators can assess student's learning/understanding in real-time.  This is all done through a very easy to use visual interface where students use mobile devices to inform teachers of their understanding in private and real-time.  Through a tap of a button a student can respond to a question or lesson that details their level of understanding on a color coded bar graph.  This makes it easy for educators to quickly glance who is understanding the material being taught and who might need help, making differentiated instruction easy.

I highly recommend checking out geddit by clicking here!!!

*iOS app coming soon!!!

Below is a brief demo video...

Strengthening Rigor in STEM- Student Choice Menus

Student Choice Menus a very useful way to both differentiate student learning and strengthen rigor in the classroom.  Recall that rigor is for ALL students, not just our high performers or our gifted students, so all students can benefit from this model.

Since all students have different ability types, it sometimes becomes difficult to create a project that will force all students to stretch their thinking but not lose or confuse anyone.  Student Choice Menus are a viable solution because they can allows student choice yet meet each student where they are. They are great for easing students into STEM projects too because they allow students to "practice" having latitude in projects and "practice" students each working on different things.

Student Choice Menus can be created in a couple of ways:

Tic-Tac-Toe
Students are given a a tic-tac-toe board containing different tasks or explorations in each block.  Students will then choose a "path" to complete.

Restaurant Menu
 Students are provided a list of choices in each category (Appetizers, Entrees and Desserts).  Students are then asked to choose to complete a set number of labs, tasks, etc. in each category.  The restaurant menu concept works well for younger students, but you might consider naming the categories differently for older students.

List Menu
Students are provided with a lists of explorations, experiments, tasks, etc.  Each one is assigned a point value based on its difficulty level.  Students will choose enough items to meet the point requirement determined by their teacher. (This is a great way to differentiate by assigning different point requirements to students.)

Even though Student Choice Menus are more rigid than how we would normally teach a STEM unit, they are a great introduction to STEM units and projects as they provide a small bit of choice and latitude in comparison to the choice and latitude in a normal STEM unit.

Strengthening Rigor in STEM- Rubrics

Using rubrics is an excellent way to establish rigor and hold students to high standards in the classroom.

Using rubrics to maintain rigor can be used in two ways:

• Students- to demonstrate the expectations and levels of mastery for the lesson/project
• Teachers- to assist in planning rigorous lessons for students

Providing rubrics for younger students and/or developing rubrics with older students is a clear-cut way to define expectations and establish rigor in the classroom.  By providing a set of "guidelines" for student achievement, rubrics help students to understand the expectations. A thorough rubric also helps students progress from understanding the basic components to thinking deeply and not only demonstrating mastery, but applied skills like problem solving.

When constructing a rubric for students, be mindful of the categories chosen and the levels of mastery within each one.  As you write each mastery level, take special care to choose your words carefully, making sure that each level is one step above the prior.  Rubrics should not be too cumbersome, but should be tightly written to ensure high standards and work towards applied knowledge.

As teachers, we can benefit from rubrics as well.  Many rubrics have been developed to help teachers establish rigor when planning lessons, projects, or units.  By keeping a rigor rubric handy, we can keep rigor at the forefront of our planning and thus construct better and more rigorous lessons for students.

Strengthening Rigor in STEM- Student Portfolios

Student Portfolios are a useful tool in increasing or establishing rigor in the classroom.  Through the use of portfolios, students can not only reflect and collect artifacts to display their work, but can also demonstrate their depth of knowledge and understanding of problem solving skills.

There are generally three types of portfolios in the process:

• A Working Portfolio
• A Display Portfolio
• An Assessment Portfolio

A Working Portfolio is just that- a sort of rough draft if you will.  It is a series of work or artifacts that the student may want to include in a final portfolio.  These could be diagrams, writings, or even works still in progress, but is not yet a final product. These pieces demonstrate both student strengths and weaknesses and will help both the student and teacher determine what skills still need to be worked on or refined.  More thought and care needs to be put into selecting the final artifacts that will be included in the final portfolio- a Display Portfolio or an Assessment Portfolio.

A Display Portfolio allows students to display the work that they feel is their best work, most successful project, etc.  Through this type of portfolio, students select a final group of artifacts (from their Working Portfolios) to share what they are proud of.  Careful thought and consideration should be used when selecting these artifacts as this portfolio represents the student, their effort and their accomplishments.  When most teachers think of portfolios, this is the type they usually have in mind.

The last type of portfolio is an Assessment Portfolio and a way to establish or maintain rigor.  Assessment Portfolios are not only to document what the student has learned, but they also contain reflective notes that reveal the student's thinking process about how or why a particular artifact was chosen.  During this process, students think critically about each piece chosen and show how it has helped them to grow.  With the use of these reflective notes, students reach a stage of more complex and purposeful thinking.

By using the portfolio process in the classroom, students can move through the stages of becoming more reflective learners and deepen their critical thinking skills.

Strengthening Rigor in STEM- Interactive Notebooks

In the Rigor/Relevance Framework, we learned that in order to establish and maintain rigor in the classroom, students need to be performing in Quadrant D.  In other words, students need to think in complex ways and apply their knowledge and skills to find solutions to problems.
One way to keep students performing at these higher levels of thinking is for students to keep an interactive notebook.  May teachers already do this, but just DOING it is not enough.  To establish and maintain rigor, we need to be sure that we are asking the right questions and developing higher-thinking skills through the notebook process.

First, though, before we focus on content, it's important to discuss the organization of the notebook.  Every Interactive Notebook should have the following components to help students get and stay organized:

• Table of Contents (either teacher-created or student-created)
• Numbered Pages
• Dated Pages
• Page Dividers for Different Sections (I personally like the self-adhesive kind like this)
• Glossary

You can adapt these sections to reflect different age groups or different subject focus, but starting students off by modeling the way that an interactive notebooks works is a good skill for students to learn and helps them to better understand the process.

Once students are organized, they can begin to use their notebooks to grow their thinking skills by putting elements in their notebooks such as:

• Drawings/ Diagrams
• Charts
• Reflections
• Graphic Organizers
• "Notes" to Solve Problems
• Investigations/ Labs

Depending on age group, the teacher may be responsible for deciding which elements are most appropriate for the skill that we are looking to develop.  Older students may be responsible for their own content, but either way,  choosing meaningful elements for the notebook are essential.  To help us to make these meaningful choices, the teacher or student can ask themselves key questions:

• What skill(s) do I hope to develop through this lesson?
• What element will best exhibit/develop/sharpen this skill?
• How will using a ______ (graphic organizer, etc.) help to further this skill?
• How can students leverage this ______ (graphic organizer, etc.) to take their learning further?

By selecting meaningful elements, we can help students start to think deeper, faster.  By asking key questions sooner and providing a notebook element as a scaffold, we help the student to spend more time thinking critically.