Technology in the Classroom: Four Apps to Enhance Learning at Newman

Socrative, Interactive Classroom, Micromobs, Livebinders... the list goes on and on. The opening months of the 2011-12 school year have seen the influx of a number of new digital tools designed to increase student engagement and expand the walls of the classroom. Newman teachers are using the tools mentioned above and many others to reach out to their students and solicit their thoughts in new ways.

 

Socrative is a brand new tool that allows a teacher (or student) to gather thoughts and feedback from every student in the class simultaneously and share that feedback in real time. “Check-ins” of this sort allow teachers to effectively gauge the level of understanding among all students, not just those that are called on or who raise their hand. Because the collected responses can be shared immediately, students also gain insight into where they stand relative to their peers on a particular issue and may reveal where additional attention is needed.

 

Similar polling functionality can be found in Interactive Classroom (IC), a new product from Microsoft that seamlessly integrates Microsoft’s popular Power Point software with OneNote, a digital note-taking and organizational tool employed by many of our students. Instructors prepare lectures in PowerPoint and then share their lectures, along with real-time ink and text annotations and live polls, with students through a wireless network connection. The availability and delivery of a framework for note-taking has been much appreciated by many of our students, and teachers have noticed increased student engagement in classes where IC is employed. Claudia Shuba, who uses IC in all of her general chemistry classes, notes “Interactive Classroom helps me ensure that all of my students receive the same structure for their notes for them to fill in and provides me with the ability to immediately gauge student understanding with the polling feature. Polling requires students to constantly focus on the task at hand, greatly reducing the possibility of them getting distracted. I have already noticed a significant improvement in student understanding and academic performance.”

 

Outside of the classroom, teachers are leveraging an online discussion platform provided by Micromobs to extend their class conversations. Essentially a stripped-down blog, Micromobs, like Socrative, requires very little time or setup to use effectively. Students not only respond questions posed by teachers but each other’s posts as well, creating a dynamic digital environment where the students drive the conversation. To supplement these online discussions, several teachers are organizing digital content for students with the help of Livebinders. With this tool, teachers and students can share videos, live websites, presentations, graphs, PDFs, and more – all in one place. In the near future, a few teachers will be challenging their students to create their own digital portfolios as a way to share information they have collected with their classmates.

 

The tools and applications described above are just four of the many different ways that teachers are employing technology to enhance learning at Newman. “Educationally relevant and meaningful technology use is becoming more and more a part of the everyday culture at Newman and will only continue to grow as additional tools become available,” says Director of Technology Nowell Hesse. Stay tuned for more stories on how technology is revolutionizing learning at Newman.