New school year, new way to communicate with students

For several years now, I've been looking for a good way to text message students. Students today are much more likely to check and respond to text messages than to emails, but privacy concerns have made texting students difficult. At one point I heard a rumor that my college was going to give faculty the ability to group-text entire course sections, but that has yet to materialize. So this year, I went on a search for a service that 1) would allow me to message students in a way that masks my phone number, 2) includes an app for sending and receiving messages (rather than requiring a log-in to a website), and ideally, 3) allows students to text me back. Oh, and of course, free access is always preferable.

My search led me to the Remind service (formerly Remind 101). Remind is built for teacher/student communication, so it's easy to set up classes and invite or add students/parents to the appropriate groups. Sign-up was easy, and I had my classes set up in minutes. Remind meets my first two criteria - both teacher and student contact information remains hidden, and there are Remind apps for both iOS and Android (students can also use Remind with basic feature phones, though they may need to watch out for texting charges depending on their plan). Also, Remind is free, with no limits on the number of classes or students you can add.

A few other nice features of Remind include the ability to attach files, audio clips, or photos to messages. This will be handy the next time I realize that I forgot to hand something out in class or modify an instruction to an assignment. Messages can also be scheduled in advance, so you can organize and plan your messages ahead of time.

The only thing I wish Remind would do is allow students to message me back, and according to their support site, there are no plans to add this feature. The most recent upgrade of the app does allow message recipients to "stamp" a message with one of four icons -  a star, a checkmark, an x, or a question mark, which could allow a teacher to collect limited responses to a posed question. For example, I could send my students a text asking them to reply with a star if they felt like they understood the day's lesson or a question mark if they felt like they needed more class time on the topic.

I will say that in the short time I've used Remind, I've been happy with the results. When I email students, I know that some will see the message and some will miss it. The first time I texted students this term (reminding them about a quiz the next day), several came into class the following day and told me that they'd received the message and had appreciated the reminder. This week, I had a few students who I suspected were skipping class; I sent them a text (messages in Remind can be targeted to certain students), and wouldn't you know - they were back the next day. When I've emailed wayward students in the past, my results have not been as good.

I've done some further research on other texting options, and there are two other services I'd like to check out: ClassPager and Kikutext. Both of these services allow two-way texting, but both also limit their free plans, making a subscription necessary if you want to use the service with more than one class or more than a handful of students. Still, I plan to run the free trials to see if the monthly fee is worthwhile. Stay tuned for more information...

Fun With QR Codes

You've seen them around - those little pixel-y squares on posters, brochures, and tags. They're QR (quick response) codes, and they offer an easy way to link to information on the web. One of my projects this summer is to work QR codes into some of my teaching materials, so I thought I'd share some of the ideas I have.

First of all, a little 101 on generating and scanning QR codes. There are many free apps for both idevices and Android that will create and scan QR codes. For creating codes, though, I like to use a free Google tool - the Google URL shortener (find it by typing goo.gl into your browser). Edgalaxy.com has a great video tutorial on creating QR codes with this tool - scan the QR code above to go there. Lifehacker also has instructions for a variation on this technique - scan the code to the right for this page.

QR codes can be scanned using an app such as QR Code Reader by Scan or QR Code Reader from Kaywa. I've tried several of the free apps, and they all work well. The apps I've tried all work basically the same way - when you open the app, you'll see a camera window similar to your phone's camera app. With most apps, you need only scan the QR code with the camera (sometimes you need to tap to focus; some apps do this automatically) and the app will open the site linked in the code. It's that easy. You can scan codes from a computer screen or printed on paper.

One thing I've already done with QR codes is add them to my contact card. I created business cards with information on my blog, website, and YouTube channel - the URLs are printed out on the front of the card, but on the back I've added QR codes that link to my blog and website.

My next project is to add QR codes to my class handouts. I often ask students to watch YouTube videos or complete an online activity as part of their homework; other times, I direct students to additional resources that will help them understand class material or complete class projects. Rather than giving students an address that they have to retype correctly or providing them with a link on our class Moodle page (which requires them to navigate to Moodle, log in, and then follow the link), I can now print a QR code on a class handout for students to scan. I haven't tried this yet, but I'm pretty sure that I could also project a QR code in the classroom for students to scan during class. I know that I'll still have to provide more "traditional" links to content as not all students have smartphones, but I think that QR codes will make life easier for a majority of my students.

I'm just getting started with this, but I'm working on other ideas for using QR codes in class. Have you used QR codes in the classroom? Have any fantastic ideas to share? Share your experiences and ideas in the comments section below.

My Big MOOC Adventure

MOOCs have been a hot topic for a little while now; I've read a lot about MOOCs and I have friends who have taken several MOOCs for personal enrichment and just loved them. As a person who would become a professional student if I could, I've been curious about the MOOC experience, so I decided to give one a try.

I started off by Googling "MOOC" and checking out the course offerings on various sites, like Coursera, edX, and Udacity. Fortunately for me, I'm particularly interested in STEM topics - MOOC offerings seem to be heavy on the math and science. I wanted to find a course that would be interesting and self-paced, as I wasn't sure that I'd be able to stick to a regular schedule of study. (Some MOOCs are more like traditional classes, in that they have set schedules and require submissions of work at certain times.) For this initial experiment, the ability to work independently was a higher priority than the possibility of interaction with other students.

I eventually ended up looking at courses on iTunes U, Apple's "store" for educational materials. I settled on a Calculus course [Calculus I (MA005)] offered by Saylor via iTunes U. I chose this mainly for ease - because of the Apple connection, I'd be able to easily download all of the materials onto my iPad, so I'd have them with me all the time. I've been interested in reviewing Calculus for a while now (since it's been years since I've studied or taught it), so that seemed like as good a subject as any to start with.

I was pretty excited to get started. I bought myself a new grid paper notebook, got out my favorite pencil, and set up a schedule for completing lessons. The materials provided for this course included textbook sections, practice exercises (with answer key), and a link to a graphing calculator app. This was a truly self-paced, self-study course, and I was ready to go...

Until I got incredibly bored. Several lessons in, I lost my enthusiasm entirely, and I knew exactly why. The text was pretty good, and the exercises were interesting enough, but there was no human element to the course. In addition to being self-study, this particular course did not even include any kind of video instruction or messages from the instructor. One thing that I know about myself is that I'm very much a visual learner, and I really missed watching an instructor explain concepts and draw out supporting charts and graphics. The text was not very visually engaging, either, so it was even difficult to do the reading.  I missed the interaction with other students and the opportunity to ask questions or listen to the questions asked by others. Wow, I thought - if I can't stay motivated to do this, how could students ever stay motivated through a course like this? I've heard people advocate MOOCs as an option for developmental students, and based on my experience, I'm just not sure I can see that working.

So, my intitial experiment with MOOCs was an utter failure in terms of reviewing Calculus, but I did learn some important lessons about virtual classrooms and independent study. I've since downloaded another Calculus course (also from iTunes U) from Ohio State, which is much more engaging - in addition to a text, dozens of videos are provided, and they're well-produced and fun to watch. The instructor, Jim Fowler is animated and has clearly thought about how to keep students engaged online. I'll post more on this course when I get further into it - stay tuned.