Sunday, September 21, 2014

First online math test

Hi everyone,
Welcome to my paperless classroom blog where I will discuss what I am doing in the classroom as well what works and doesn't in my quest to find the perfect balance in room 209.

I should start off by saying that I teach grade 6.... After having spent 2 years with the 8's, these cute little students are a bit inexperienced.
I have spent the first 3 weeks of school teaching them how to use google apps and the iPads in our classroom.  I am most frustrated with the fact that not every student has the same windows or options when I try to model how to do certain tasks.  Having said that, I wouldn't trade this for the world because I love trying new things and teaching students new things. :)

Friday we had our first Math test on patterning.  It turned out great but there were some things to note.

1. Platform for tests.  I am still having trouble with this one.  I was going to do a google form until I realized that you cannot show the test back to students nor give feedback in a visual way.  After looking through multiple sites on giving tests, i concluded that the technology has not evolved yet to a point that we can go away from traditional style tests.  Therefore I made a test on Microsoft word, imported it as a pdf in google drive and had the kids access it from there.

2. How do they write on the Pdf? Well in my class, students use GoodNotes or Notability as their work folders.  I have each class use a different app so that they aren't confused with each others work.  So far this works well because they only need to toggle between google drive accounts.
The students can annotate the pdf and do everything they would on normal paper.  The kids love it because they can choose to type or write with a stylus, whatever is more comfortable to them.

3. How does the teacher get the test back?
Now once the student finishes, they need to export the test back to google drive and put it in a shared folder that we had previously created called "Math Tests".  I am shared with it and off we go!

4. How does the teacher mark it? Well I haven't got there yet but I would assume the same way in that I can import the document to Goodnotes and use a different colour to mark.  Ill let you know what happens.

Now the great thing about this is that I always have a copy of the test in case the student "loses it".  I can email parents with the attachment or trust that the child shows it to them via google drive.  Regardless, I will send out an email to tell them the tests have been marked.

I haven't figured out if this process was hard for the kids or whether they are just slow at tests because this basically took the whole day on Friday....

Please leave feedback if you are more tech saavy than I am. I welcome any comments in order to better my practice!

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Paperless Classroom

So I've been Mia for 2 years but I am back and now Paperless! Grade 8 has been fun but Im back with the 6's to teach them the ins and outs of technology!  Yes, they need it! They are a generation of point and click but they need to learn the other parts so that they can function in the world out there!
This year, I have been fortunate to be able to have 27 iPads to teach with.  My subjects are English and Math and from what I hear, no one around does math paperless.... I guess I'll take the challenge!
Please stay tuned for my hopefully weekly posts on projects or sites to be of use for 6th graders!