Purposeful Padding in the Math Classroom - Post 4

We are full steam ahead in iPad integration. Before the bell rang today, our iPad helpers had the iPads handed out and Socrative, an assessment app, was up and running  with students eager for the daily bell ringer. Today the iPads were no longer a novelty, but just a part of the tools we use to get our work done.  That is exactly the goal, transparency!

However, just minutes into our bell ringer activity, an unusual thing happened.  Half of the students got the bell ringer for today, while the other half got the activity from yesterday. So strange!  We even logged out and back in, still getting the old quiz. After class, I tapped my Twitter network and @danbowdoin suggested that we completely close the app with the red - sign.  Thanks, Dan.  We will give that a try on Monday!

Stukenholtz shows Socrative results.

Instead of letting that slow us down, we just forged ahead.  Gina Stukenholtz, 7th grade math teacher, seized the opportunity to show them the results from our Socrative on Monday.  She took the time to show the students what the results looked like and how many people got all the problems correct and how many incorrect.  “We can see that we need to step up our game so we have more people getting both questions correct,” Stukenholtz said.




We continued to use Doceri for notes, but went a step further and had students do one homework problem in Doceri!  The kids were enthusiastic to get started on the problem and got to work just like bees flocking to a soda can. I was impressed  with how the students showed all their work using the cake method to find the LCM and GCF!  An added bonus was students started to spontaneously switch colors!  Color coding is a simple intervention and made it so much easier to find the numbers they needed to work with.   Doceri also makes it simple to erase and try again.  No more smudge marks!  As usual, the clock ticked down too quickly  and the bell rang before we were able to record and e-mail the Doceri homework.  That will be on the top of our list for Monday!

Lessons Learned
1. We need to log out of Socrative and also CLOSE the app! (double tap home, hold down until the apps jiggle, then tap the red minus sign).  
2.  Students are now feeling more accountable for their bell ringer work because the results are immediately available to the teachers via Socrative.
3..  A new classroom workflow is developing.  Socrative and Doceri are making the classroom paperless.
4.  We need to allow time to record and e-mail homework/notes.  Although the app is intuitive, it does take time for students to learn the workflow.

Resource:
Great post on Socrative by @danbowdoin at http://timeproject.edublogs.org/2012/11/19/12-technology-integration-tools-socrative/