Category — Free

This is part II of my little mini-series on differentiating instruction in mixed ability classrooms. For this post, I want to discuss another little trick I’ve developed for using review time effectively in classrooms with many different kinds of kids. Some kids are probably in need of no review. They’ve sat through lectures, completed activities and homework assignments, and it all soaked in. Other students, might need some re-teaching or reinforcement of a few key topics. Other students may require intensive and comprehensive review work so they can solidify most of the content to be tested. How can we satisfy all of these different learners in one room all at the same time?

This was a problem that I’ve been meaning to conquer for some time, and I think I’ve pretty much done it. My school has a rolling laptop cart with a dozen computers in it. I break the students into pairs, hopefully in couples of similar ability / needs. Each pair gets a computer and I have them plug in their headphones (I have a few pairs to loan, but most kids have ipods in their bags).

Each pair of students is given practice problems / conceptual questions and the answers / explanations are all available to them on mrkadin.com. Students can work on the type of problem they struggle with the most. If they can’t seem to figure out the projectile motion problems, they can try samples and watch videos explaining the trigonometry and kinematics.

If they are struggling to understand the way acceleration and velocity chance when an object is thrown up in the air…

I’ve never seen the students more engaged. I’ve blurred their faces to protect the students’ privacy. They are all working, either watching the screens or completing math problems.

Making the videos was really easy. First, you make power point slides that serve as the visuals for the video. Then you add an audio narration. See this post for tips on doing that. Then, I uploaded the slides to authorstream.com, a really great tool that converts narrated power point slides into embeddable flash videos. This makes the videos watchable by anyone with a web browser; no power point needed. Word up.

I’ve written about what can be done with the kids’ cell phones here.  I was turned on to this site by my school’s technology integration specialist.

www.wiffiti.com (a terrible name that combines wifi and graffiti…i think) is a website that allows anyone to send a text message with some text to their number and have it displayed on the screen. Our class is studying projectile motion, so I had students text in examples from their experience outside of the class (outside hobbies, sports etc). Their examples were visualized in real time as the students text’ed them in. Here’s the results:

I intend to incorporate the students’ interests as they’ve texted them in into examples I use in class. This will help the students buy into the new topic.

I like the idea of keeping all of my documents up in the internet could and getting at them from wherever I am.  Dropbox is the only solution I’ve seen that makes that possible.  Google docs is almost there, but doesn’t include all of the features I want to see yet.  Essentially what dropbox does is it keeps your documents in sync across multiple computers.  Whenever I save a word document at home, it is instantly uploaded (without clicking a thing) to the dropbox servers, and then pushed to my computer at work.  All of my documents at home, therefore, are the same as my documents at school (with about a 2 second lag time).

Ever have to drive home quickly because you forgot to email yourself something?  Not me, all the documents on all of my computers are the same.  Ever forget to print something out but not have it on the computer in the classroom?  Even if you only have one computer, all of your documents are stored on the dropbox website and you can download them on any computer.

This would be good for any business, but there are a few features that make it totally great.  First of all, all the files are transferred over SSL (nerd speak for a secure connection) which means that if you want to get a movie file or an .exe through your school’s restricting BS network (deep breaths Kadin…deep breaths), you are all good.  Even nicer, inside your dropbox folder, there is a separate sub-folder called “Public.”  You can get a url (a link) to any file you place in this directory.

You can use this link when you send documents to students.  Rather than sending attachments in emails, the students can simply click the link.  This is really helpful for class blogs that don’t have a space for uploading files.  The link that you get points towards the actual file on your computer as well, not a temporary copy of the file.  Thus, if you post a power point on your class blog (like I do, blog.mrkadin.com) and then later make a change to one of the slides on your computer, the students will get the most up to date version of the presentation when they click the link later on.  Booyah.

Seriously, this is an amazingly powerful tool and it works for PC/Mac and….Linux!  The cost:  Free.99

Judging by the number of cell phones that I have confiscated in school, text messaging has become the ultimate way for kids to communicate.  Recently, it has become popular in the media to bring up insanely huge cell phone bills from parents who don’t realize their kids are texting an ridiculous amount throughout the day (news coverage). It’s true, the kids are texting with each other all of the time. And it makes sense. It gives nervous teenagers a medium (just like facebook, myspace, youtube, etc) where they can create a character.  It creates another protective layer for them; it isn’t their real voices there, it’s just text.

Anyway, maybe some teachers find it inappropriate, but I think getting into this realm, and interacting with your students there is of incredible value, and can be completed without making holes in the invisible barrier between adult and student.

I send out my homework assignments via SMS (text message) every day to all of my students, and it takes about 3 minutes. Here’s how:

Every cell phone service provider has an email address for each cell phone that you can email, and the email will be transcribed into a text message and sent out. Here’s a couple of lists of providers and email addresses.

For example, I have a lovely iphone, which is of course on At&T. sending an email to 6175551212@txt.att.net (that’s not my real number ladies…sorry) will end up as a text message on my phone.

I asked the students for their numbers, their providers, and had their parents sign off (in case of SMS charges), and now I have a huge list of addresses that I copy and paste into an email, quickly type the homework in and send it off. It took an hour or two to do the initial set up work, but since then it’s been really easy.

I’ve been criticized for this technique by some , not only for breaking a barrier with students (just like some would think communicating with students on AIM is inappropriate), but also for babying the students. They say that the students need to be able to write down their homework and remember it without my help. They say that when the students go to college they won’t be receiving text messages from their professors each day. I agree. However, at college, the students these kids go up against will have laptops (hopefully they will too), and the professors will have course websites, Blackboard/WebCT, moodle, whatever. When all of my students have internet access at home, I’d happily post the daily homework assignments on my website for them to check.  For now, sending a text message performs a similar function.
In addition, and almost more importantly, the use of text messaging is a real connection to students’ lives. It’s no wonder that the students have been texting me back with questions about the homework when I would have never dreamed of receiving emails like them. It’s no harder for them to type an email, but somehow communicating on the same level as the students helps them to feel more comfortable asking questions or making requests. Not to mention, the students can communicate with me from their couches while watching TV.  Using SMS shows them that you are willing to communicate with them at their own level, and since emailing the text message doesn’t give them your actual cell phone number, you are still maintaining some formal distance.

Since I started doing this, their homework completion percentage is way up, the communication with me via email/SMS is up, and their content understanding (as far as I can tell) is up as well. I can’t understand why a teacher wouldn’t be in support of a 3 minute action each day that has those effects. txt me l8r if you disagree.