Dervin’s: From the Mind’s Eye of the User:
Sense-making is used to study the needs, images and satisfactions of users and potential users of information/communication systems Sense-making is the term which is used to describe a set of methods developed in order to study the making of sense that people do in their everyday lives. What humans perceive to start with can be translated differently by different parts of our body, & therefore, people get different messages. There are many different ways to judge things – people see things differently. Through discussion and observation humans can arrive at more stable observations. Not all information is fully accessible to all human observers due to time constraints and intellect. Human information systems and use of human information needs to be studied from the perspective of the end-user not the observer. Questions are asked which start in the observer’s world, not the end-user. Designers of the system give order to the system, not the people that are using it. Sense-making focuses on internal and external behaviors & is all about how things are interpreted. People interpret things differently according to past behaviors and experiences. When entering a new situation people try to use past experiences to help them ‘bridge the gap.’ People also interpret things differently depending on when they happen and what happens. Life is unpredictable – humans create different responses according to their class, income, education. Chpt 4-6 Baggio: The Visual Connection: The brain works in patterns; prior knowledge context and expectations influence the way people learn Using prior knowledge to help us learn involves the use of NAPs, which are previously travelled pathways in the brain. It’s beneficial to try something different as new pathways are created in the brain Prior knowledge is the place in the closet where we hang new thought. Simple visuals are the most effective Context is important to adult learning because it provides relevance. If something is really different in contrast to another, we tend to remember it. Our expectations are things we imagine might be true or are likely to happen. Imagination is one of the most powerful words in learning. Learning styles are approaches to teaching and learning that presume that the learner has a way of learning that is dominant. You are influenced by the way you take in information. People tend to know what their learning styles are/what works best for them from the feelings they get inside. Most of us are attracted to visuals – 85% of us are visual learners. There is a limit to working memory – this is why chunking information is important when learning. Visual design for learning should not be overwhelming or overshadow the content & should act in harmony with it. Otherwise people may tune out rather than tune in. When designing visuals make sure that the learner’s eye is focused on the important part of the screen. When creating/designing a visual you need to be cognizant of the fact that the reader takes the visual in all at once - objects, space, light, angle, distance and brightness are combined to form a total effect or style. Clark Chapters 1-2: The technology of training Poor job training results in a loss of productivity for businesses. Instructional Technology is built on the ISD (Instructional Systems Design) model which is used to plan, design, develop and evaluate training. Learning outcomes can be guaranteed. ISD model – stages; needs analysis, task analysis, definition of assessment, development of learning materials, try-out & revision & implementation of the final product. The training has 4 major parts; the information of the training, the performance outcomes, the instructional methods and the instructional media. Information = content of training program Performance outcomes = what the trainees will do with the information provided & are defined in learning objectives. The instructional methods are what causes learning to happen; informational displays and practice with feedback Instructional media = the delivery devices of the instructional methods. None are better. Use cost effective media - instructor/video It is a myth that learning is occurring if there is an instructor present and a chalkboard, or taking a course on the internet. Trainers can’t just have knowledge of the technical information, they need to know how to impart the knowledge successfully. Some training is really no use and can have adverse effects on trainees. Business need to adopt sound training programs. Often products are designed (ie software) but training on how to use the product is an after-thought and inadequate. It is important to spend time in the analysis and design of the lesson as it avoids problems later. Instructional systems development – ISD Model = analysis and design, development, evaluation & implementation When designing a training program, you need to assess and identify appropriate solutions, assess needs, define the content of the training program and then write clear learning objectives. Writing these objectives is very important. Structured lesson design; technical lessons should include and introduction, supporting information, the key lesson task and a summary. Questioning techniques – open and close-ended. Direction of questions individual (targeted), group, relay (starts from trainee to another trainee), reverse (questions thrown back to the asker) and rhetorical questions. I can relate to many of the points here related by the authors and they are all in some sense intertwined. All of our students are different, and their attitudes and learning abilities can often be affected by how they perceive things, which is in turn affected by their class, education and intellect. It is very complex. As educators, we need to try and reach every student and not deliver a one-size fits all type of education. When designing lessons we need to think about learning from our student’s perspectives and not from our own. We need to effectively try and put ourselves into our students’ shoes. Sense-making makes a lot of sense in that it effectively defines how people go about interpreting situations and then trying to use their former knowledge to solve problems. Baggio focuses on visuals and how important they are. In World Language classrooms we often have signs on our walls with simple phrases & pictures that students can use in everyday situations. They are very easy to interpret, and so whenever a student has a common need, i.e. they need to tell you that they left their homework at home, or that they need to use the bathroom for example, they can do so using the foreign language by looking at the picture and reading the phrase underneath. After a while, students just need to look quickly at the picture and then will remember the phrase. Also when introducing new vocabulary, I use a lot of visuals. I try and use unusual pictures so that the word associated with that picture might stick in a student’s mind over another word. We repeat the word, then I ask students is it this, or that, and then finally I will ask them “What is it?” Generally, by that point they can remember the word or phrase. Students are only taught vocabulary words in smaller chunks say 13-14 words in the hope that they will enter their working memory and then be transferred to their long-term memory if we keep reviewing them periodically once they have been taught. Many students also do projects on different cultural projects and will make a google slides or powerpoint presentation. When presenting, I generally tell students to make the slides as simple and succinct as possible, and that they should use each slide just like they would a flashcard, in that each phrase is a spring board for them to talk to the class about something. When there is too much information on the slide I have noticed that some students do tend to zone out, whereas they seem much more focused when the presentations outwardly look more simple. The technology of training was interesting to read about as it showed things more from a business perspective. A key point that was made was that a trainer can have much technical knowledge of a product, but that is not enough – the trainer needs to know how to impart that knowledge to others. From personal experience, I remember having a Chemistry teacher at high school who had come from Industry and seemed to have much in depth knowledge of the subject matter, but we found it very difficult to understand the concepts that he was trying to teach us. It was very frustrating. The ISD model made a lot of sense too; when designing a course and writing a syllabus it is so important to effectively define its content and give clear learning objectives. Too often as teachers, I think, at the beginning of the year we define the course objectives, but then later get bogged down in some of the minutiae of the course. At our school we have started using backward design; we have our course objectives clearly mapped out on our UBD (Understanding By Design) templates, and we also design our final exams nearer the beginning of the semester to ensure that we are effectively teaching the course that we had originally mapped out to teach. It requires a lot of work initially, but it is good at keeping you on track and focused on what the main requirements and important objectives of the course are.
0 Comments
The digital tool that I chose to evaluate was the app called Educreations. I have been using this app for a couple of years now on and off and my students really some to enjoy using it. Basically I think the website wants you to use their app like a whiteboard with sound and record a lesson. It has an arrow feature at the bottom of the page so that you can get a new “white board” when you have run out of space. You can record your voice while you are writing/drawing on the app, and then at the end you can save your video as a draft or a finished video. In my experience it is better just to save it as a finished video and then you see a screen with all of your previous ‘saved lessons’. I have never actually used this app to record a lesson of my own. What I like to do is pair students up and get them to use the app themselves. They have been using the IPAD to do this. For example, in French 1, each student prepares a basic description of their pet, giving information that their partner could represent in a drawing. When they have finished preparing, they take it in turns using the app. Student 1 draws and records what student 2 is saying and then vice versa. They then can upload the link to Schoology so that I can watch it later. Once they have finished recording each other, I then get students to look at the pictures that they drew and they then have to describe their partner’s animal in the third person so that they get practice talking about someone else. As a teacher you should create an account for yourself, and I also get students to make themselves an account too. Here is what my page looks like. To make a new lesson, just select the plus button on the top left of the screen. Once you have selected the plus button, you then get to the screen below. You then use the red record button in the top left to record, and can color and draw using the pen and color selection at the top. The colors look quite limited, but if you select a color you can change them. Having chosen a pen color you can then record and draw and press the stop button (the play button becomes the stop button while recording) when you are finished. You can also hit the pause button part of the way through if you need to stop for a bit. Once complete, you should save the finished video using the button at the very top left of the page by giving your lesson a title and description. When your students have saved their finished video, they then have to upload the video (button on the top right) so that you can see it. One disadvantage is that you cannot open the app directly into another program unless you buy the Pro version, but you can copy the lesson link, or email the link to your teacher. My students copy the lesson link and then post that to the assignment in Schoology which I can then open. This is really a great app for students to use for recording themselves or others and drawing, and it’s really simple to use. It didn’t take me long at all to learn how to use it and my students also have had very few issues with it - I just had to tell them about copying the lesson link and to not directly upload to Schoology/google classroom. Once their account is set up (I didn’t use a classroom code as I think that comes with the Pro version) they can just add lessons. I haven’t really used it to make a lesson myself, but if I did I would just copy and post the lesson link so that students could watch it later.
According to Common Sense Media “Digital Media is part of Media Literacy”. Both of them together are included in the idea of Information literacy which is “the ability to effectively find, identify, evaluate, and use information from the internet, smartphones, video games and other non-traditional sources.” This website also gives us good pointers as to what our students need when using digital resources such as the ability to search effectively, to protect their and others’ private information, to credit others’ work, understand what a digital footprint is and respect others’ thoughts and opinions.
This is a huge range of topics to teach our students, but it is most important that they are aware of these things when using the internet. Our school has an advisory program, and in August as the Freshman enter the school one of the first topics they cover is digital citizenship, the honor code and plagiarism. This is a great introduction, but the time allocated is quite small, say only 20-30 minutes for each session, which still leaves a lot to be taught be individual teachers. Where I teach we use Schoology as our platform, but teachers are at various stages of using technology – some use it sparingly, whilst others use it every day. I personally do use technology every day with my students, as I find it really enhances our lessons and gives us the ability to really do something different. However, having read through the information that we really do need to impart to students, it is somewhat daunting! I would normally approach digital literacy on a need-to know basis – ie depending on the assignment in questions and I hope that students have acquired the basics from their advisory sessions and experiences at middle and elementary schools. In French 1 we do very basic presentations, for example students talk and give basic facts about their pets or they choose a city in France and present information about it to the class. All presentations have clear rubrics that students have to follow and adhere to if they want to get the maximum points for the assignments. When students presented about their pets, they needed very minimum information from the internet, since most of the photos had been taken by them. However, some students did need images, so we reviewed why it is necessary to give credit to sources and how we should go about citing them. I have a presentation of my own and show them how the copyright should be given on the images themselves and then in the bibliography at the end of the presentation. Students discuss the MLA format and how to implement it. Students are also made aware of the website Easybib, which they can use to help them cite their sources, and are shown how to look for information and to not give away personal information to websites. In Spanish 4 my students tend to do cultural presentations on topics such as Hispanic Music, poetry or different Spanish-speaking countries of their choice. Again I give them an outline for the project with a rubric to follow. These students are mainly Juniors and Seniors so they do have a lot more experience with the internet as opposed to the Freshman. I tend to review how to cite sources using the MLA format, even though I know they do this in other classes, and sometimes I give them links to websites where I know they will get accurate information. I know that I probably need to do more, since the use of technology is growing more and more in our everyday classrooms, but it is a question of balancing the time we devote to that compared to our own subject matter. It’s a tough call! According to the Oxford English dictionary sense-making is “the action or process of making sense of or giving meaning to something, especially new developments and experiences.” The Dervin article that we were assigned to read was complex with a lot of unfamiliar technical language and references which made it very difficult for me personally to understand. When I first started to read the article I really struggled to work out what it was talking about, so after reading the first few pages, I then googled the word sense-making and took a look at diagrams explaining it, dictionary definitions and I also watched a couple of short YouTube videos. Having done that I returned to the article which I continued to read, systematically trying to underline and highlight some key concepts and then made summaries of those points at the side of the document. For me the important thing was to try and break it down into basic concepts in an effort to understand what was being discussed. Here are some images that I found helpful when initially looking for insight into what sense-making was: I continued to read and these visuals did help me somewhat but it was still really tough going. There were several concepts that she was trying to convey, but they all seemed to come back to the same thing. At the beginning of the article she described sense-making as “a set of methods which have been developed to study the making of sense that people do in their everyday experiences.” She explained how we all see and interpret things in a variety of ways and how what we perceive initially can be translated differently by different parts of our body and we can get many messages to interpret. She suggests that by discussion and observation that humans can arrive at more stable observations. She tells us that sense-making really just focuses on behavior and the steps taken to understand the world around us. When we have a new situation to solve, different people will want to resolve them in a variety of ways depending on their past behaviors and experiences. Situations can also be interpreted differently depending on when they happen and what the actual situation is.
According to Dervin life is unpredictable and we create new responses to situations depending on our class, income and education. As humans we are trying to bridge the gap, by using former knowledge and behaviors, to solve a problem. Dervin is trying to define what actually helps us do this and she gave 6 exemplars to demonstrate this; from the 1st exemplar she determined that race can predict what channels and sources would be used to get answers. She shows us that people’s predisposed opinions affect how they perceive people and places. She suggests that sense-making has both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research. Certainly the key to understanding this article is to break it down into bite-sized chunks. If I were to introduce it to a group of high-schoolers, first of all I would find graphics and videos that explained the concepts succinctly so that they would get an initial impression of the theme of the article. I would then get students into pairs and I would assign them a small part of the text to read together. I would get them to underline and highlight the main ideas together and then get them to discuss what was being said in their portion. While the pairs were working as a teacher I would circulate the room in an effort to give them advice and guidance and act more as a facilitator. Once they had formed their conclusions I would then ask them to present their findings to the class by making some kind of PowerPoint or visual aid to describe what they had understood from their part of the article. They could also share this document with the class for later reference and review. While listening to these presentations, students would then take notes and ask questions. At the end of all of the presentations students would have complete notes on the full article. At home they could then read the article themselves and ask further questions during the next class. This was a very informative day and well worth attending, from Jon Corippo as the keynote speaker showing us how to use Socrative with Emojis to get students to improve their writing schools to workshops on google classroom and using QR codes and M-learning.
All of the presentations I saw had good takeaways for teachers and gave inspiration for further thought. F for Feedback was one of those such presentations. Matt Kelly and Kelley Miller showed us the importance of rubrics and how those can be used in the class as a whole to give feedback and then used more individually in pairs. A further discussion with Dr Redmond gave me ideas on how I could use this type of feedback as data in my capstone project, which was very exciting, as I’d not thought data could really be evaluated in this way for my research. I will certainly use this idea in my class when students are working on projects/presentations. I already provide a rubric to show students how they will be graded. Taking samples of good and mediocre projects and projects that need to be worked and showing them to the class and getting students to grade prior to being complete will be invaluable I think in getting students on the right track to what is needed. Kate MacMillan and Jennifer Baker introduced us to many digital resource tools that we as teachers can use in our classroom. I was excited to learn that Encyclopedia Britannica is available in Spanish, and so students can use this directly to access information about projects they may be researching. Tumble books, available through the public library, also has a collection of stories in both French and Spanish. It would be really interesting to read a story in class and then get them to design a story of their own. My Spanish 4 students attend Napa Valley Language Academy where they help out in the classroom. It would be nice for them to be able to present a story of their own, as they often spend time reading short stories with the students. Kate MacMillan also offered to come to our school to help look at the resources we have at our school and how we might go about using them, which was great. I also attended workshops on google classroom where we were shown the basics on how it works, how assignments are added, and how we can go about adding a grade for our students. Google are still apparently working on some kind of a grading program/ how to link it to a grading program. At Justin-Siena we’ve had some teachers who have piloted Google classroom, but we currently use Schoology as our platform. I’m not sure which direction we are ultimately headed, but it was certainly useful to gain an insight into how we might go about using the program. My favorite workshop was probably the last one that I attended, the QR codes and M learning. I thought that the presenter was going to focus mainly on QR codes but I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of apps he included as part of M learning. He talked about Ed puzzle, Quizziz to name a few, but Flipgrid was of real interest. The presenter showed me how you can locate teachers in different countries and make connections with them and their classes. I have been looking for a way to easily find other Hispanic or French classes to correspond with, either just by skype/video or even email so that students can get a chance to practice their language skills with a real live native speaker – this was awesome! This really was a great opportunity to network with other teachers, collaborate and get some great new ideas on how to incorporate more technology in our classroom for the benefit of our students. The use of technology has become key in our everyday lives; therefore it is imperative that students adopt digital citizenship and behave on line as they would face to face with an individual. There are two important mottos that we need to instill in our students when online: “Treat others as you would like to be treated, and when in doubt, talk it out” and “if it isn’t right to say it isn’t right to post.” Fortunately for educators, ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) have listed standards that they would like to see resources adhere to; games and learning apps, educational learning software, online courses, professional development programs can all apply for the ISTE seal of alignment which can be posted on their website/product if they are compliant. This is a way of helping people know that the resource is trustworthy and aligns with the standards set out by ISTE.
I teach both French and Spanish to grades 9,10,11,12 and generally I ask students to research using the internet when they are going to work on a project and gather potential information about topics of their choice within a certain area. For example, we could watch a movie about a pop star such as Selena, and then students would be expected to choose another Hispanic group, whose music they liked, and make a presentation about them, including a history of the musician, samples of their music, details of awards won and a comparison with an American artist. It is important that students are able to recognize if information that they are given on the web is authentic, otherwise they will be presenting false information to their peers, and potentially outsiders as their presentations sometimes get posted onto the school website. I already review with my students a little how to get authentic information, but I know I need to do more. Looking through the common sense website I found many lesson plans which I could incorporate parts of into my teaching. For example choosing good key words when searching for authentic information. We would try some potential searches together and try and ascertain which websites looked legitimate and which didn’t. I normally tell my students that they should find other sources that back up information they find to make sure that it is accurate. Having attended an interesting conference at the weekend, I found out that the school district has access to search engines which help filter out websites which are not legitmate – this could be an invaluable resource for my students. It is really important to make issues personal to students, as they will be able to identify with them much more readily. Therefore I would ask students to give examples of when they had not taken the time to corroborate the information that they had found out that the information was not correct. How did that affect others? If they had shared that information/website with others, when it was incorrect, potentially what problems could that cause? It will be interesting to get their take on those issues. Copyright is also another area, where sometimes my students struggle, especially when trying to find their information on a legitimate website and accrediting it correctly using MLA format. The common sense website had some good lesson plans on this topic. Potentially as a class we could discuss why it is important to give credit to sources from a legal and ethical perspective. I would ask students how they felt when another plagiarized their work and get them to explain what happened and why it wasn’t ok. Going over the law and fair use policy is important so students can get an understanding of why they should accurately give credit to resources from legitimate websites. Looking through the curriculum on common sense website, I found that some of the lesson plans were in Spanish. These also provided worksheets for students in the Spanish language. It would be interesting to introduce some basic vocabulary surrounding the topic of digital citizenship and then get students to discuss some of the issues. There was a survey asking students several questions in the Spanish language about the advantages and disadvantages of using the internet with Spanish language statements to choose. It also talks about digital citizenship and digital media. I think it really helps internalize some of the issues when they are given the time to discuss them in depth with their peers and then have an in class discussion. I want students to speak in the foreign language as much as possible, so these Spanish lesson plans/survey could really enable my class to have lively discussions in the target language. Personalized learning seems to be coming more and more important in today’s classroom. As described in Katie Varatta’s article “Students co-determine with the teacher what learning targets they need to accomplish and how they could show evidence of their learning.” The problem is that there are many different interpretations of what personalized learning actually is; some districts are ploughing ahead and implementing it in their schools, whilst others are just waiting to see how things progress before they actually go about incorporating it into their classrooms.
Personalized learning is really where students have more choice in their learning and are able to work more at their own pace, moving ahead when they are ready or getting help when they need it. Students can choose content that interests them and are able to present what they know in a variety of ways. Teachers need to plan carefully however and define the content carefully, which takes time. Often students are not so good at managing their own time, so will have to be monitored. There needs to be some kind of built in framework, so that students aren’t able to fall between the cracks. I teach foreign language – both French and Spanish - to high school students (grades 9-12). There are some apps out there that help with language learning, but the selection is quite limited. In the articles I read, it seems that there may be more personalized programs specifically available for Math which define what a student needs to work on and so can help them plan a series of lessons. In French and Spanish I have used the Quizlet app before with my students which certainly does give them more freedom to work at their own pace and choose the kinds of activities they would like to complete. Each class has a page where I load the vocabulary, so that each member can see it. I like to work this way because I can make the vocabulary specific to the chapter that we are working on in the book. Students can then choose from a series of activities; they can just review the flashcards, or they can play the matching game. There is also a way for them to be tested on the new vocabulary that they are trying to learn. I paid for teacher status on Quizlet so that I can see records of how much the students have played the games and what their success has been in learning the vocabulary. This application also allows the class to play the game Quizlet Live. This is where students are put into teams and then they all work together to define the vocabulary words given. Each student has specific answers. I have used personalized learning in other ways in my class too. For example, my Spanish 4 students completed projects about music/bands that they were interested in. They were told that they had to make a presentation about a Hispanic band/musician, and that they had to include some kind of a history, examples of songs/music, influences on the musician/band, and a comparison with a US musician/band that they were familiar with. They could choose how they wanted to make the presentation, and this was how the use of Educational Technology came in. They could use google slides, PowerPoint or Prezi and present to the class; they could make a video of their presentation to the class, or they could pretend to be the musician themselves and talk about their music/history in front of the class playing examples of the music. In my French 1 class students had to make a presentation in pairs about a famous person they admired. They had to give five basic facts about that person in complete sentences in French. They needed to plan a short description but could choose their presentation medium. They could interview their partner in front of the class, with one person pretending to be the famous person, they could make a PowerPoint/Prezi/google slides presentation for the class or they could make a video either of them presenting information, or interviewing their partner. In this way students were given many choices to make – the person they wanted to describe and how they would go about meeting their learning goals. The personalized learning that I have done in my classes has been successful and students seem to really enjoy being able to make their own choices about their learning styles and how they will present the knowledge that they have learned. I am really excited to learn about other modes of personalized learning that may be out there for foreign language learners. Last semester the driving question that I ended up deciding upon was “A Comparison of the Effectiveness of the Quizlet Application versus Traditional Teaching Methods in the Learning of New Foreign Language Vocabulary”. I felt that when I did the study I really only scraped the tip of the iceberg, in that the amount of data I was able to collect was so small, that really it was hard to prove anything one way or the other. This semester, I would like continue upon the same tact, but maybe approach things in a slightly different way. Last semester I taught students two lots of vocabulary, one set using traditional teaching methods, and a second set using traditional teaching methods plus Quizlet in class. My research questions were as follows:
1) Does the Quizlet application help students learn new foreign language vocabulary more effectively? 2) Does the Quizlet application engage students more in the classroom? 3) How do students perceive the Quizlet application? The issue I felt was that there were too many variables to really be able to get a concrete answer to all of these questions. For example, I taught students the first set of vocabulary without using Quizlet, but there was nothing to stop them using at home. When Quizlet was used, there was also no way of knowing how long students actually used it for. This semester I would like to try and control this variable a little more. When students are informed that there is a test, I propose to ask them to record how long they actually spent using Quizlet in the days running up to the test, and compare the results, in the hope that I would get something a little more accurate. It is also difficult to get a fast turnaround as each new set of vocabulary takes at least a couple of weeks to teach. In the study that I did, I did indeed find that Quizlet engaged students more in the classroom and when surveyed about the application, they were on the whole, very positive about it. This evidence was also corroborated by other studies that were part of my literature review. This seems to be the most researched area regarding Quizlet’s influence on the ability for students to learn new vocabulary more effectively. Other studies were also inconclusive when test scores were compared. I think my research could be continued with other language applications that are available for students; there are many that are starting to emerge - Duolingo, Busuu, Babbel – but I think studies needs to be done with specific parameters as it is hard to compare data when there are so many variables – ie the amount of time spent using the app, how the time was spent etc. This could be invaluable where the learning of languages is concerned; in our hectic lives often instructors do not meet with their students every day, but with these applications, students still get a chance to practice their language skills every day if they want to. My study is finally complete, which is exciting! I spent a lot of time reading over the research that is out there, which is not really significant, and trying to analyze it, but really no definite conclusions can be drawn. There have been few studies into my topic, and even less into the Quizlet app itself, although it does generally seem accepted that Quizlet is the app to use when learning new vocabulary. In my study I compared two pieces of data; a test that was taken after students had learned words using traditional teaching methods and a test that was taken once students had learned words using both the Quizlet app and traditional teaching methods. I feel as if it was just a dip in the ocean as far more studies need to be done to make this study bring more weight to the argument that Quizlet does in fact help students learn vocabulary better. What is evident though is that students really enjoy what Quizlet has to offer. They like the accessibility of online flashcards and the games that they can play on the app. This is clearly shown in other research that has been carried out, and was also apparent in the responses to the survey that I administered to my class.
When analyzing my data, it made me realize that there were more complexities to the analysis than I had thought. When students learned new vocabulary using the Quizlet app, I did not stipulate or record in any manner how much time they spent outside class reviewing using this app, so it was difficult to see if it made a difference. I know that in class we spent time playing the Quizlet game, but when we didn’t use Quizlet I spent about 5/10 mins with each pair of students before the test, quizzing them to help them prepare for the assessment, which I’m sure helped considerably. I had been absent the class before and felt that I wanted to spend a little time doing some serious review with them before the vocabulary test. Also, taking a test is neither cut or dried, there are so many variables that can affect the results besides just whether they used the Quizlet app or not. I think there are a couple of ways that this study could be extended; more test results could be obtained using the same methods as before (ie some vocabulary is taught with Quizlet and some without and the results are compared), or perhaps when students take a test they could provide information about how much they studied and what study methods they used. I could ask students to record the amount of time they spent using Quizlet as opposed to other learning strategies the day before the test and the day of the test and then use this data in a study. We could perhaps do this for tests over the course of a couple of months, to see what data we might come up with. It would be interesting to see the results. My research paper is still very much a work in progress and I have not yet been able to carry out the 2nd part of my study due to some time constraints and I am also awaiting the return of permission slips from many of my students. I do have some test results and these pertain to using Quizlet in the classroom when teaching new vocabulary – games, matching, review and so forth, and we also played the game Quizlet live and used the matching game right before they took the vocabulary test. Students were presented with another set of new vocabulary last week, and we have not used Quizlet at all to help learn those new words. Students made paper flashcards and during class we have used those to quiz each other. I am hoping to give students a test on that vocabulary either this coming Wednesday or Friday, but I am a little concerned that time is running out, as final exams our nearly upon us. I made a survey using survey monkey asking students about their experiences with Quizlet and will ask them to fill that out also this coming week and so I should have more data to report back on soon.
I am hoping that the data will show that using Quizlet has helped the students to acquire new language more easily, but I am wondering if I will have too little data to prove this, as currently I will only have one test where students have studied vocabulary without using Quizlet to compare with. I think if I was doing this study again, I would want to spread it out over a longer period maybe so that I could get more data. I also need to focus on how I am going to go about analyzing this data, and am finding that quite challenging. I’m not too familiar with the options available, so I need to spend some time thinking about this. What is certain though is that students certainly do enjoy using Quizlet when they are learning new words and the games really seem to engage them. There seems to be a real learning buzz going on in the classroom when they use it and I am hoping that the results of my study will support this. |
AuthorI am a French & Spanish teacher at Justin-Siena High School wanting to get new ideas to motivate my students. Archives
March 2019
Categories |