Procrastination Project

The Procrastination Project!

Raise your hand if you like to write report cards! Don't be shy... If you do, than you are in the minority.  Now tell me, who likes to clean and organize their house from top to bottom? Not many.  BUT, I bet if you are like me, your house is spick and span just before report cards are due.  Three times a year, I could put my house on the market, with an all day open house.  I call it the procrastination project!

I dread writing report cards.  First, you have to remember how to use the report card program.  Don't forget your password!  Next, is the never ending, time consuming, data collecting, followed by searching through the multiple pages of anecdotal notes (spread all over the couch, your bed, the dinner table...) BLAH! My stomach is in knots thinking about it.

Not this year!!! iPads in the classroom has changed my outlook, on what use to be daunting a task (for me anyway).  This time around, it was simple and satisfying.  Maybe, because everything I needed, was at my fingertips.  Anecdotal notes, photos, voice recording, movies etc... all accessible, all in one place, from my Google Drive (I love you iPad). 

I think too, because the students in my class have to create presentations in Explain Everything, I have seen them "explain" their thinking on a specific task, more than once.  You walk around the room while they are working/creating, you watch it as a whole group and listen to the accountable talk and peer feedback that follows, and sometimes you watch it again. You get a better understanding of your students abilities, with lasting images in your head.  Creating Next Steps wasn't so bad, all I needed to do was close my eyes and picture my students in the classroom.  Or, as I like to call it, a picture of a picture (picturing student work created on the iPad and displayed on the Smartboard).

Happy Writing!

Explain Everything

Many of my students have begun to use Explain Everything as a means of communicating their thinking in mathematics.  It provides kids with the opportunity to record their thinking in a variety of ways (i.e. orally, visually, and in writing).  It also lets students record and then listen back to their own explanation so that they can self-assess to determine if they have clearly articulated their thinking.

Strengths: Students find the app easy to use, they can use the "screen capture" function from other apps (such as "Geoboard" or "Protractor") and embed the pictures into their Explain Everything file, then annotate their work with arrows, captions and other 'bits' of information.  Students can write directly onto the screen or use the keyboard option (this is important when you are working with students who lack fine motor control.  When students can only write directly onto the screen, they end up using up the screen space very quickly, making it difficult to organize their work).  Students can audio record their thinking at the end of the working time or while they work at solving the problem so that I can "listen in" to their thinking at my convenience.  When it comes time to consolidate, there is solid documentation of what has been tried so that others can benefit from the problem-solving that has occurred. 

Limitations: We haven't figured out how to edit the audio so that long pauses and unnecessary dialogue can be deleted.  It would be helpful to have access to a shape creator and other math components on screen so that students could be very accurate without importing from other apps.  

Students are able to share their work with me via Google drive as an MP4 file.