Sign Language and SRS

I have just stumbled on to the work of Rick Morris, in particular his use of the one handed American sign language in his regular classroom.

To paraphrase, Rick gets his students to use the signs for "I" (for I have a question), "A" (For I have an answer), and "C" (for I have a comment), when they their hands. In a small group this lets him prioritise his dialogue with his students and helps with the flow of his lesson. He has added more sign language in his classroom to help with other management issues.

This has to be one of the most useful and practical teaching techniques I have seen in a long time and I'm keen to try it out next time I'm training a group.



How dose this relate to clickers?


One thing that many people forget is the "?" button on many Student/Audience Response Systems. On TurningPoint it silently but visually cues up people who would like to ask a question or make a comment - the teacher/trainer/lecturer at any time can pull up the list and see who is next to ask their question or to comment.
If you use Responseware, those questions can also be written by the participant so that in large groups they don't have to stand up and be heard (embarrassing for some and logistically difficult with AV and large rooms).

Ten things to do with your (hopefully TurningPoint) Student Response System

So you are thinking about a student response system (or you already have one), and you are wondering if it is a good investment. You may have seen it in use at a conference and thought –
“This has possibilities in my school or classroom.”

But if you are looking for ideas; here we have my top ten out of the hundred or so uses for the Student Response System from TurningPoint.

1. Use the conditional branching tool to show a class based choose your own adventure story. This was one of the ways I got my year five boys into reading, “pick a path” and “choose your own adventure” stories. Using TurningPoint you can create these stories in a power point complete with multimedia, and the whole class chooses the direction of the story. The real power of this is when you get the student to write, collaborate and create their own. This lets them brainstorm and explore plots and characters rather than just complete a linear progression of draft, draft, final draft, good copy.

2. Collect data quickly for discussion of statistics, use the mean, mode, and variance tools to discuss what they mean. Statistics and measurements abound in our daily lives, so it is a good idea and is part of a maths program to discuss these measurements of statistics. Unfortunately sometimes gathering the data for this exercise takes up a large amount of time – I’ve seen a class go out and count cars in the car park and then count cars as they go past for a whole maths lesson. Using the SRS students can quickly produce data sets based on the answers from the peers in their class. This gets collected in seconds and the data analysis can be completed quickly and efficiently, giving more time to discuss what they mean and how they are calculated.

3. Facilitate peer teaching with paired questions that shows the difference between two answers. Jeffery Stanger is a great leader in the use of this technique, especially with student response systems like TurningPoint. By asking paired questions and using the peer instruction technique students can achieve a deeper understanding and therefore achieve better recall during assessment by being able to learn from and teach their peers.

4. Get the audience involved in a debate by using the moment to moment slide to do “the Worm”. As we will see during the year (in Australia) audience responses to public debates are very important to our politicians. Why not use that technology in a class or even interschool debate where your audience can feedback how effective the debaters are at persuading the audience to their point of view. The moderators and adjudicators can then use this information as part of their calculations of score for effectiveness. This can then be analysed through the report function so that the debaters can find areas to improve their delivery.

5. Use them at P+C meetings and parent/teacher nights to identify areas of concern and to celebrate positive programs in the school. Sometimes involving parents in the school community can be tough especially if you have a couple of dominant power players in the existing mix. By introducing TurningPoint to meetings and information nights the school gets honest and representative feedback from parents in a non threatening way that lets every parent have their say on an equal weight.

6. Teach time and project management by using the ranking wizard or the weighted response slides. Both of these tools can be used to help students manage projects and priorities both in their academic and personal lives

7. Use the system to have a “peoples vote” at events such as science fairs and exhibitions that the wider public are invited to. This engages the community around the school and gives them a feeling of inclusiveness in the school.

8. Put one keypad on each table at a fundraising quiz night and do all your questions through the system – with no marking and automatic leader boards it gives you more people to help in other aspects frees them completely to be part of the experience. I have helped with a range of these nights and both the audience and the committee members involved love the ease of use of the system. If you use the speed scoring you reduce the effect that the use of smart phones have on the outcome of the event.

9. NAPLAN (National numeracy and literacy tests for Australian students) test preparation and data gathering – pre test your students on last years NAPLAN test to find areas of concern and address them before the actual test. Using a student response system means you get the results instantly and can drill down to individual students or merge data sets to find whole cohort patterns. Using this technology can also reduce student (and teacher) test anxiety when the test comes around as the students are used to the format and the types of questions that they will encounter.

10. Prior knowledge probing – don’t just assume, ask. You may be surprised what your new batch of students know and don’t know. By using an SRS to gather data, you can work from their strengths and identify areas where concentrated instruction may be helpful. It’s also a great way for new students to get to know each other without singling students out. You can then use that data to form a profile of your class.

Like any tool in the classroom whether it be an IWB or a pencil, there are great ways to use a SRS such as TurningPoint, just as there are ways to use it badly that makes no real positive difference to the outcomes of the students. But I encourage you to use your creativity and your professional know how to get the most out of this technology that might just help you understand what is going on in their heads.

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Clicker questions for Phet and Philosophy

Powerpoint 2007" style="border: medium none ; display: block;" height="177" width="240">Image by Paul Watson via Flickr

I was having a look at all the new simulations on PhET. and came across some of the resources that teachers had made based around the resources and interactives provided by the site.

A couple of teachers have made PowerPoint presentations with clicker questions ready to go. These two are for the projectile motion lab.

I was also reading Dereck Bruff's blog and he has found some presentations for philosophy with clicker questions in them.

These are great resources and some publishers are now providing presentations ready to go with their text books.

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Why use Keepads?

This was on Derek Bruff''s blog the other day, and it got me thinking about why we use ARS/Clickers/Keepads/SRS/CRS.

I have been going back over my old educational psychology books to see if there was some research from the past that validates the use of ARS now. Obviously Derek has written the book on CRS in use now, but I'm talking about some of the past research on questioning.

My ed psych book from university was the Imaginatively titled "Educational Psychology" by Maltby, Gage and Berliner. I was able to glean a few key points that relate to the use of ARS now.

Why use an ARS in your teaching mix?

• Improves “wait time” I and II (Rowe 1974) - pre set counters give the right amount of time for students to formulate an answer- showing responses on screen and talking about them give time to reflect.
  
• Reduces unintentional Bias (Rowe 1974) - Everyone has the same amount of time to answer.
  
• Gives “Question Notice” to all students (Brophy and Evertson 1994) - everyone is attentive to the question because everyone has to answer it.
  
• Allows question probing through the branching - The presentation can branch to probing questions to get more detailed responses.
  
• Encourages “Intelligent Guesses” (Cole & Chan 1994) - It reduces loss of face due to a wrong answer - great for students to want try out an answer without embarrassment.
  
• Can provide academic feedback without identification (Good & Brophy)(Cole and Chan1994) - immediate feedback is important - but it doesn't identify the person with the wrong answer in front of peers.
  
• Increases perceived preparation and structure but allows flexibility. Reduces digression but provides opportunities for branching and customisation.

Using an SRS/ARS/CPS is not a toy, but a way of truly changing the way we look at questioning our students about the stuff they know and don't know to help them gain deeper understanding of what we are teaching.

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More PowerPoint resources - Science

NASA has a huge range of free PowerPoint resources for science - Here are a few I have picked up recently.

http://sunearthday.nasa.gov/2006/promotional/powerpoint.php

http://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/download-view.cfm?Doc_ID=236

http://www.mainsgate.com/spacebio/modules/lu_teare.html

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/K-12/airplane/topics.htm

Obviously these work great on their own but if you team them up with TurningPoint Questions peppered through the presentation you can get an idea of your student's understanding on these topics.

TurningPoint Anywhere

TurningPoint Anywhere for both Mac and PC has been upgraded!

TPA is now more Mac like for the PC - with a larger toolbar and more options. It also allows you pull reports in HTML format. So you don't need MS Excel to get your reports out of the data. There are obviously less reporting options but it does mean that if you do want to bypass MS products but still use TP you can.

So what does this mean -
Well for all of you who use Open Office or any of the online programs such as Google Docs (used with gears you can do some stuff offline), it still means you can get feedback from your audience, and get your reports.

Added to this is the opportunity to set up the questions, answers and correct answers from within TPA before running you presentation. You can still use the participant lists as well. This give a less on the fly feel to your presentations and fills out your reports with more information.

All this adds up to TPA being a great tool to add to your ARS/SRS grab bag.

TPA can be downloaded from TurningTechnologies.com

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Powerpoint Games

TurningPoint ARS/SRS/CRT (new one I discovered - Classroom Response Technology), uses PowerPoint 2003/2007 to display questions, answers and responses as well as run the session. If you want to add a bit more competition in to the mix there are the team and individual leader boards and the new wager slide.

What you can also do is replicate game show styles - Jeopardy, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and even the Price is Right - and adapt them to your learning area. Again it is a way of engaging your students and making learning more about participation rather than just listening.

For a range of game templates here is a great source

Power Point Games

Adapt these for use with TurningPoint and the subject you are teaching and add a little fun factor to your formative assessment.

Links to Universities using TurningPoint ARS

This comes from my colleague over in Sydney. Several universities are using TurningPoint extensively in their courses to get engagement from their students.

here is some more information about HOW they are using it

The following links have information about TurningPoint:

University of SA: Macromedia vodcast on preparation and use of TP Keypads in lectures:
http://breeze.unisa.edu.au/ars

University of Sydney: Faculty information on how to set up receivers on lecture room equipment. (out of date – TP 2006)
http://www.usyd.edu.au/ict/audiovisual/elearning/interactive_technology.shtml

Macquarie University: General interest site on TurningPoint (largely reference to US site)
http://www.mq.edu.au/learningandteachingcentre/blog/2008/10/03/turningpoint-student-respons
e-system/

Aboriginal Students and ARS

I got a great email recently from two of my clients Terry and Christine Hinchcliffe. Both of them have "retired" from teaching and are traveling up through the north west of Western Australia. As they pass through some of the remote communities, they offer their services as relief (supply/substitute) teachers and as professional development consultants. This gives them the opportunity to keep their hand in and to give support to those teaching in isolated areas that don't usually get to have a day of PD in their own school.

They took with them an eBeam and a Turningpoint IR kit. Here is what he wrote to me recently regarding his use of TurningPoint Audience Response System.

We have had considerable success with Turning Point at La Grange, Derby and
Wananami. As I suspected, the aboriginal kids love it. We have developed a
series of interactive stories where the kids "pick their own pathway" by voting
for a choice of decisions then hyperlinking off to other slides.

As educators who have specialised in Aboriginal education for most of their teaching careers, this is high praise. They have used the technology to engage students, and give them control of the lesson, something that most kids would love.

It's always great hearing success stories from clients, so if you have a success story you would like to share, please feel free to leave a post or drop me a line.