Using Merlot

I had used Merlot to search for OER materials, but prior to the CoLab, I had never tried to contribute to Merlot. I'm pleased to say that my first experience with uploading material (my textbook preview Prezi) was a success.

Setting up the member account was easy and the confirmation email did not take long to reach my inbox. Contributing material took several steps, but the process was not lengthy. The hardest part was deciding on an attribution for my presentation, but that is an ongoing internal debate and a topic for another post.

The main thing that I don't like about Merlot is it's interface. I find their website to be incredibly busy and dense. The scrolling text at the top of the home page is distracting, and there are too many links, tabs, etc. The iPad app is not much better - it also is very text-heavy, with almost no graphics. I'm glad to see that a website redesign is about to be released.

I also created a Connexions account, but I haven't tried to upload anything there yet. Stay tuned...

Reading Survey with Google Forms

One of my biggest challenges when it comes to integrating technology into my classes is keeping my digital life streamlined. Always in the back of my mind is a concern about introducing too many applications / passwords / websites / etc. into my own digital workflow; I try to be especially mindful of what I ask of my students. This is difficult for me, as there are so many cool resources out there, and I want to try them all! Ideally, I'd like to have one online "hub" that connects multiple resources behind the scenes - thankfully, Moodle works pretty well for this, and I've been learning more about connecting and integrating resources into Moodle.

One way in which I've streamlined my digital world is by trying out different digital resources in different ways with different classes, and seeing which ones "stick" - those that are useful and user-friendly enough to support content rather than overwhelm content are those that I continue to use. The other way in which I've streamlined recently is to switch over to the Google family of applications rather than using the Office Suite, Dropbox, and a host of other applications. I don't love everything about the Google world, but the convenience and connectness outweigh the downsides for me. Most recently, I've been experimenting with Google Forms as a platform for surveys. 

In the past I've used the free version of Survey Monkey, which is easy to use but limits surveys to 10 questions. After watching Barbi's video post on using Google Forms for quizzes, I decided to create a survey using this platform. For this first form, I decided to create a reading survey that I can use with my Core College Reading students at the beginning of the term. Previously, I've given a similar paper-and-pencil survey in class, but I wanted to digitize this for several reasons. First, I wanted an activity that would help introduce students to Moodle. Second, I wanted an easy way to compile and display the responses to the survey. Creating an online form accomplished both of these tasks. 

Creating the form went very quickly. The Google Forms interface is intuitive and easy to follow. I found that the tools were adequate for what I wanted to do, though I did wish for a larger response box for "other" responses. (I think it's easier for students to type a longer response when they can see all of their text on screen, as opposed to having it scroll through the box.) The most time-consuming part of the process was typing the questions and options. 

My favorite thing about Google forms is that I can revise and update my form whenever I like without having to upload another document or change the link in Moodle. I will definitely make use of this tool again in the future.

Socrative Computer Lab Activity

Socrative is a "student response system" that can be accessed by teachers and students online at www.socrative.com or via the free Socrative iDevice/Android apps. Socrative offers teachers varying levels of question types that require varying levels of preparation:

• "quick exercises" - the teacher asks students a question orally and students are given a simple multiple choice (A/B/C/D), true/false, or short answer option screen with which to select a response [this is similar to using clickers]
• quizzes - these can be prepared in advance, saved, shared, duplicated, etc. Quizzes can be self-graded and results compiled in reports.
• exit tickets - like quick exercises; can be created on the fly or in advance
• games - students race to answer questions prepared in advance

What I like about Socrative is that while teachers need to create a (free) account to use the service, students do not. Rather, students go to the website or open the app, then enter a "room number" for their teacher. One less user name and password for students to have to keep track of! 

I've used Socrative as a glorified clicker in my classroom (I usually have to pair students up because not everyone has a smartphone with which to access the web or app), but today I decided to have students access it through our computer lab. For this particular activity, I wanted everyone to be able to participate, and the activity required somewhat long short-response answers, so it was helpful for students to have keyboards.

Before class, I created a ten-question short-answer quiz on addition / time order sentence relationships. The quiz requires students to write a follow-up sentence to a given sentence, using either an addition or time order relationship pattern. Short answer responses can be set to auto-grade, but I did not use this feature.

I saved my quiz and enabled the share feature. This makes my quiz available to other teachers using Socrative. When you share a quiz, you also gain access to a spreadsheet listing all of the available shared quizzes, which you can then import and use yourself.

During our class time in the computer lab, I logged in to Socrative and projected my screen for the class. Students logged in using my room number. Quizzes may be given either student-paced or teacher-paced; I chose to control the pace on this quiz because I wanted to discuss each sentence example as we went along. During the quiz, students could see the quiz question and their own response on their screen; the teacher can choose to share responses in real time. Again, for this activity, I wanted students to see and discuss each other's work, so I projected student responses. (Responses are shown anonymously, but are posted in the order in which students sign in, so it is possible - with careful attention - to figure out whose responses are whose.)

Overall, this activity worked well. Everyone participated, and there were no real technical glitches. (We did have two screens freeze at one point, but a simple screen refresh fixed the issue.) Students liked being able to read each other's responses and seemed comfortable sharing, as there were no names attached to the answers. As the students got more comfortable submitting answers, they were quicker to respond and incorporated more humor and personality into their sentences. 

Following the quiz, I was able to download or email myself a quiz report with each student's responses, broken down by student and question/prompt. The information is presented in a spreadsheet, so I could actually go back and grade this, put comments on it, and give individual students feedback in that way. I don't plan to do that for this assignment, although I did notice some consistent errors and trouble spots as students were posting responses and I will review these in the report and address them in a future class.