STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEMS
Blog Post Agenda:
1. WHY STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEMS?
2. INFUSE LEARNING
-video tutorial
-screenshot guides
-10 great accessibility options
3. SOCRATIVE
-video tutorial
-steps for using Socrative
-Space Race
4. COMMON CORE
5. END OF BLOG POST BONUS (Poll Everywhere)
1. WHY STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEMS?
Do you believe that students need prompt feedback? Do you agree that too often students get feedback from their teachers way too late? Delayed feedback definitely causes assessments to loose their meaningfulness. The time that lapses between the moment when students take tests until they receive their scores is oftentimes too long. In addition, many times, all they receive is just a numeric score which tells them nothing regarding how they could have done better and what their mistakes were. We do spend a lot of time testing! Not only this fact seems meaningless to the students, but to parents, as well. They rarely get to see student assessments. Even worse than that, their need for released test questions is usually not met. They have no clue what the test their children are taking looks like. Many times I was looking at student completed assessment thinking about how greatly both parents and students would benefit to get the chance to look at the actual assessment, not just at the score. Assessment is indeed a topic that can generate a long and interesting debate. Literature claims that the primary goal of the education system should be helping students reach their fullest potential, as opposed to focusing on boosting test scores. What makes an affective assessment is what you do with it afterwards. I really think that teachers should take the time and use the data wisely; otherwise, all testing is a waste of time. The data gathered after each assessment should be used as feedback to modify teaching and learning activities. Utilizing the assessment effectively can make a huge difference because it represents the tool that can lead the way to successful instruction. In my opinion, assessment is much more than just neatly filling in rows of bubbles in order to get numerical results that will go in students’ report cards. It should be the mirror for where the students are academically, and where the teacher is professionally.
A solution to this problem would be the frequent use of student response systems during instruction. Why? Because the prompt use of data should be a critical concern. Student response systems are the antidote because they provide quick feedback that can instantly ameliorate instruction. Student response systems are interactive classroom assessment tools that help teachers instantly get feedback from students regarding whether they understand the concepts being taught. They also help teachers instantly track students’ quiz results. They captures real-time assessment data that can be used to gauge student comprehension as concepts are being taught, and as a result identify individual learning needs and alter instruction as needed.
The technology teacher at my school, Ms. Self, shared with us two great student response systems at a workshop and they immediately became part of our technology tools.
2. INFUSE LEARNING
A good place to start is watching the following 5 minute tutorial which very nicely displays both teacher screen and student screen at the same time, so that you have an idea regarding what teacher screen and student screen look like when using InfuseLearning. Watch this tutorial here (the following link I initially shared seems not to work at the moment video tutorial here.) 🙂
The previous tutorial might be enough for you to start using Infuse Learning right away; however, I would recommend you watching the following tutorial as well which covers a couple more different aspects. You Tube TUTORIAL 5 min.
If you prefer to use screenshots, you can check out the following 9 different guides provided by Infuse Learning here. They explain step by step the following aspects:
-how to use infuse draw
-how to organize assessments with InfuseLearning
-how to use InfuseLink
-how to share quizzes with InfuseLearning
-how to get started with Infuse Learning
-how to import students/classes into InfuseLearning
-how to create an interactive image with ThingLink
-how to run quick assessments on InfuseLearning
Note: Make sure you use a modern browser (Motzilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari, not Internet Explorer, which currently is not supported by this program). Also, note that when you or your students use the login links (http://student.infuselearning.com or http://teacher.infuse.learning.com), THERE IS NO WWW!!! If, your browser automatically inserts “www”, just get rid of it and you’ll be directed to the right screen. You might think this is not a critical tech tip this tip might save you a lot of time!
Steps for using InfuseLearning:
Step 1: Sign up here.
Step 2: Join a common InfuseLearning Virtual Space.
Teacher login screen (teacher login link http://teacher.infuselearning.com; like I mentioned above–no “www”):
Student login screen (student login link http://student.infuselearning.com; like I mentioned above–no “www”): :
Step 3: Initiate and Activity
Teacher InfuseLearning homepage screen:
Step 4: Export and share quiz results.
10 Great Accessibility Options provided by InfuseLearning: 🙂
You can add classes or leave it as OPEN ENROLLMENT (1). I’ve always left the enrollment open, which means that all I needed to share with my students who were to take a quiz was the room number, and all students who accessed the site using that room number, participated in the quiz.
An awesome accessibility option offered by InfuseLearning is the option for the students to use the AUDIO feature (2), as well as the translation of the quiz questions and answer choices in 5 LANGUAGES (3) (they get the audio feature with the translation, as well): Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish. Bellow the answer choice you can see “navigation”, “languages”, and ‘audio”.
Other things that are up to you, the administrator of the student response system, is to allow the students to shuffle the question (4), to filter the bad words (5), or to display the results (6). When you create a quiz, all you need to do is set them ON or OFF (shuffle question, bad words). If you choose to display the results, you’ll be able to show to the students while they are taking a quiz, whether they are getting right or wrong answers. Make sure you don’t embarrass the kids and they would love this feature because they get instant feedback! Green means ‘correct”, red means “wrong”.
Another great accessibility option is the QUICK ASSESSMENT (7). This allows you to check on student understanding on the spot. So, you don’t need to plan ahead at all! At any time during instruction you can decide to ask you class a question and what you can do is, for instance, choose a true/false type answer, or a multiple choice answer by writing on the board your answer choices (A, B, C, D). All you students need to do is open Infuse Learning and type A, B, C, or D and you’ll instantly see how many of your students got the right answer, and then you can decide whether you need to re-teach that concept or whether you can move on. Great quick tool to measure student understanding while teaching!
This screen can be seen on the left side of the teacher Infuse Learning homepage screen.
The image attachment (8) is another great accessibility option. It allows teachers to be creative and design engaging quizzes. I used it even with newcomers (students who just started learning the language) by importing images and asking the kids to type the name the pictures or decide what the picture was by choosing among multiple choice items. Students loved it!
Also, one of the most distinct features is the option for students to reply by creating drawings or diagrams as responses (9) on their iPads, Android tablets, laptops, or their desktop computers. This is a very popular feature among many math teachers or kindergarten teachers.
Last but not least, a great accessibility tool is the possibility to export the quiz results (10) by either emailing them or downloading them (excel spreadsheet). This option represents a great tool to collect data for student progress monitoring and also for adjusting lesson delivery and lesson planning.
3. SOCRATIVE
Start by watchig an 8 min video tutorial here, or by reading about Socrative below.
Teachers and students can use Socrative on any device with a web browser (tablets, smartphones, laptops, iPod Touches, etc.). Their website provides users with succinct, to the point, step by step explanations for each tool as you open them (all you need to do is hit “learn more”). Also, they provide those intersted in printing out a hard copy of instructions with a great User’s Guide, which can be found on the web just by typing “User’s Guide Socrative“.
Steps for using Socrative:
Step 1: Joining Your Virtual Learning Space
Once you’ve logged into t.socrative.com
Tell your class to go to m.socrative.com
Next, tell them to join Room Number XXXX to participate in your session.
This is your “Virtual Room”. You don’t need to memorize it. It will always be on your home screen.
Step Two: Initiate an Activity
Answer a Multiple Choice Question
(e.g. How well did you get it?)
When the students respond to the questions, you’ll see the results on your screen.
You can choose between
– Simple Question Activities and
– Quiz Based Activities (three types):
-start quiz
-exit ticket
-Space Race
Step Three: Collect Data (print student results) and Share Your Quiz
Make sure you take advantage of the great accessibility option of sharing your work with other teachers if interested. You can also import quizzes that other teachers have shared and let others utilize your quizzes. Go to “Manage Quizzes” then select “Edit Quiz” to make your quizzes sharable!
Note: Socrative is limited to 50 users per activity
The most popular Socrative Quiz Type (also my favorite) is the SPACE RACE. 🙂 It turns any quiz into an exciting engaging experience for kids. They just love it!
Space race is a competitive quiz between teams in the classroom. It is a fun, interactive game where individuals or teams compete by answering questions. When they get a question right, the rocket moves forward. When they get a question wrong, the rocket stands still. It is fun for the students to see how they progress answering the questions on the screen, so make sure you display the results so that they can see in real-time their performance.
Here’s how to create a Space Race game (as explained on their website):
-Design a Quiz made of multiple-choice questions.
-Open Space race, and select the Quiz you want students to use for the game from the drop down.
-Enter the number of teams and either auto-assign students to a team, or let them choose colors for each team. You can have up to 10 teams competing.
-Once all the students have joined the teams, hit “Start Space Race”. The team(s) whose rocket travels the furthest wins.
-When all the teams have finished, hit “End Activity”, and choose how to receive the results.
What is really great about this activity, besides the fact that is truly engages students, is the fact that you get a graded score after you end the activity, the report is sent to your email, and you see how each student did. Even though students have no clue how each member of their team did, and all they know is if they finished the race first, second, last, etc, you get a record of all students’ results.
4. COMMON CORE
Since student response systems help ameliorate instruction and serve teachers in their journey to reach instructional standards, these tools may target all Common Core Standards.
5. END OF BLOG POST BONUS
POLL EVERYWHERE
I included Poll Everywhere in the Bonus section because it is a tool that doesn’t require a lot of explanation. These polls are very easy to do. Students can use all types of devices (cell phones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers. The Bring Your Own Technology initiative (BYOT) made it even easier for teachers to use student response systems. You can go to Visual Settings and change the Look and Feel of your poll, you can allow each phone to vote multiple times (you might need to enable this feature if you have students work in groups and use one device per group), and you can decide how people respond: text message, web devices, tweets, or private link. You can allow free text polls (students type their answers), or multiple choice polls (students select one of the answers).
Students, who don’t have text messages, can simply use a web voting link to express their vote. Teachers can distribute the web voting link via email or a web page, and the audience can respond in a regular web browser (if the link is too long and complicated, just shorten it using http://tinyurl.com/ or https://bitly.com/). Text message, web, twitter, and smart phone responses are instantly combined. You can group very easily your polls by selecting them, choosing GROUP (top navigation bar), and naming your group. You can also download the results as a spreadsheet. The polls can be easily distributed and published on blogs or websites.
Until next time, get creative, be inspired, and grow! 
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Fondly,
Margo
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