Why mark?

Wow, it's been a while. It's really easy to forget to post on a blog, what with all the other social media options for sharing information. This is my attempt to 'start again'. So, here goes...

Over the past year I have tried to minimise my marking efforts and make the collection of grades less invasive to students.

Unfortunately we still have to have  grade for a student to either 'pass' or 'fail' a course, but that is another argument for another time.

So, as with many of my posts, here is a top list of collaborative assessment tools, according to me.

1) Kahoot

Kahoot's tagline is 'Make learning awesome!' and, in a nutshell, that is what it does. Cross platform, device agnostic and easy to use Kahoot offers a lot to the classroom, especially for formative assessment and entry/exit tickets.

Free to use, all a teacher has to do is go to getkahoot.com and sign up for an account. There are no API logins, yet.

Once in the process is simple, create your own quiz, survey or discussion question and click play. If you don't feel like creating from scratch there are shared/public Kahoot's available to use by doing a simple search. Use them as is or duplicate and adapt them for your personal needs (Please remember to share back).

Once your Kahoot is ready just click play to set up your options. Your students will be directed to kahoot.it and asked to enter a pin code for your game. There is no login required for students.

The questions are displayed on a screen (Data projector, TV, anything your computer can connect to) and the students device becomes a 'clicker' for choosing their response.

Simple and effective. Once a game is complete the results can be downloaded as a csv or save to Google Drive.

2) Quizizz



Like Kahoot, Quizizz is and online, cross platform quiz making and delivery system. Unlike Kahoot, Quizizz displays the questions on the students device. This allows for a few different options.

The first is to change, randomly, the order of the questions. This means that it is unlikely that students sitting next to each other will be answering the same question at the same time.

The second is to set the quiz as homework and have the students respond over the course of a night, a few days or a week (Kahoot has also recently allowed homework to be set). This is really good for gauging understanding and for finding weaknesses that need to be focussed on. It is a time saver to know what to teach and only briefly touch on area's of strength.

The site also allows the teacher to use meme's between questions and my students love this.

3) Flubaroo

You will need to have a Google Account for this tool, even better if you have a GAFE account.

Once added to your Google form Flubaroo works magic. Create a Google Form (forms.google.com) and collect your responses. Run Flubaroo in the response sheet and up pop your marks!

The most recent upgrade allows open text and teacher marked questions too. This means that flubaroo can be used as a formative and summative assessment tool.

I have seen our Art and History Departments run final assessments and reduce the marking load considerably.

The are plenty of how-to's on Flubaroo including the video below.

4) Playposit (formally known as EduCanon)

Ever sent a video home for your students to watch? Ever wondered if they did, or if they understood the content?

Wonder no more!

This brilliant website allows you to add questions to videos from a range of sites including YouTube, Vimeo, National Geographic and Kahn Academy amongst others. In fact, there is hardly a video site that can't be used.

Make your own or use a video that already has questions. With over a million users this site is popular.

Copy the video link to playposit, add your questions, create a class and get your students to watch videos with purpose. The video pauses at each question and students may rewind but not skip forward through the video.

After they have watched you, as a teacher, are able to review the class as a whole or see how each individual student has performed, check for weaker understanding and export the results if needed.

This platform also has heavy integration for LMS's including Google Classroom (Strictly speaking not an LMS), Moodle, Blackboard, Edmodo and Schoology.


5) Mathgames

Practice Mathematics using games or post interactive questions to your Google Classroom.

Mathgames will assign, check and mark your math questions. Students can do working out, answer questions in all the math area's from Grade 0 -12 and you, as the teacher, can track their progress acroos the curriculum.

Mathgames uses the slogan 'Practice with purpose' and the site definitely allows for that.

6) NoRedInk

Much like mathgames.com, NoRedInk is aimed at getting students to practice English Language and Writing skills more effectively.

This site has free and premium features but the free version will work for most teachers.

Probably the best thing about NoRedInk is the fact that when the student first log on they are asked where their interests lie. After that all the assignments use writing that reflects the students interests rather than using one piece of text across the board.

This makes the practice and assessment relevant to each individual and therefore, more meaningful too.


There will always be a need for teachers to physically assess a students progress, however these tools allow us to focus on more in depth assessment and guidance rather than the daily slog of marking basic work.

If you have any more great sites, especially for science and natural science, feel free to comment and post.

GEG South Africa...and all it's branches

Whoop, Whoop! GEG Dainfern launched today.

GEG Dainfern founder members

'Google Educator Groups. Learn. Share. Inspire. Empower.' is the calling cry of GEG's all over the world.

Recently the GEG program was launched in South Africa. With local partners SchoolNetSA and a group of enthusiastic and dedicated leaders and trainers Google hopes to establish and maintain a training and development program that could change the way teachers and schools approach technology.

According to Google:

'Google believes that the best inspiration to educators are other educators. It is for this reason that Google helped start a community of passionate educators, who bring the benefits of technology to schools, classrooms, and communities across the world.

GEGs provide a platform for educators to collaborate with one another, allowing them to pick up new creative ideas from one another, and to help each other best meet the needs of their students with Google solutions. GEG activities take place both online and offline. Online GEGs provide a space for educators to discuss together and learn about one another through Google+; offline, locally run events and workshops are a way to learn and share face to face.

Anyone is very welcome to join GEG. You may be a principal, a school administrator, a professor, a student, or just someone interested in using Google products to help people learn. Each group is organised by a local volunteer (GEG leader) and is entirely independent from Google, the corporation.'

This means that although Google provides resources, in terms of tools and training, it has no influence on the direction and thoughts of the GEG participants.

But what does this all mean? Does a GEG just talk Google, are they limited to what Google provides. In short, no, I do not believe this.

GEG's are device and platform agnostic (although GAFE helps), they admit anyone who is interested and do not look at background, means or even connectivity. The idea is to embrace #edtech and run with it.

What Google have foreseen is a rapidly changing world in which teachers and schools need to adapt to changes on an ongoing basis. The GEG is designed to be a place where teachers receive training and advice that provides the tools they need to cope in a modern classroom. One where knowledge is empowered by the use of research, analysis and critical thinking around any given topic. A place to share ideas on teaching philosophy, on networking (both physical and social) and on being in the classroom.

The best thing so far about the process of establishing a GEG is the training I have had the opportunity to receive. A mad weekend of getting to know 25-30 passionate teachers and administrators from around South Africa (Abrie Pepler,  Nomusa Keninda, Anthony Peters and so many others), a Google+ community that is growing fast and provides solid advice and discussion on a variety of topics and a local group of teachers from Crawford's Fourways, Lonehill and Italia, St Peters School,  Dainfern College, Cedarwood School and Rivonia Primary.

What I look forward to is getting more schools involved. The more the merrier. No-one 'owns' a GEG and they can evolve, split and reconvene, as long as the needs of the teachers are met.

Over the next few months a network of GEG's should be established around South Africa, take the opportunity and join one. It might change the way you teach!

Thanks to all the teachers who were present. If you are interested please contact me to join. We are especially keen for government schools to join us. So far there is only one.

10 things I will be taking from the za.gafesummit.com

On the 26th and 27th of September I was privileged enough to attend the first South African/African Gafesummit in Cape Town. Held at Parklands College (Thanks Guys, awesome conference) the conference was Google exemplified!

Parklands and Schoolnetsa invited the http://www.edtechteam.com/ to present the conference and the team blew us away with their knowledge and energy, considering many of them flew in from all over the world I am sure that energy was hard to find.

The sheer amount of learning made this conference, in my opinion, the best conference I have been to this year.

So what did I take away form the conference besides some new people to follow on twitter (@followmolly, @scubagirl812, @rushtonh and @markwagner among many others) and Google+?

Well, lets try narrow it down to 10, starting with some observations and then some cool tech:


1) Amazing Video's

In every presentation there was a video to make you think! What it brought home was the power of a video used in the right place at the right time. As teacher we tend to see you tube as a time waster (and it can be, I just spent 10 minutes following recommended links) but to our students it allows entry to a world of knowledge.

2) Sheer Enthusiasm!

Over the 2 days of the conference there wasn't a moment where the teachers were not talking, connecting, sharing ideas or just plain whooping at new ideas and technology that just blew us away.

3) Boomerang

...and it's pal The Email Game, both brilliant and both so simple. If you haven't already you really need to check them out! The goal is inbox zero (9000 odd to go, wish me luck). (boomeranggmail.com)

4) 45 tips for Google Apps for Education

A short presentation by mark Garrison that gave so many new ideas that I had to read it over and over.

5) Flubaroo

Self marking Google forms, what could be better. Well, emailing the results automatically at the same time!!

6) Maps Engine Lite

Customised maps of anything on earth. @scubagirl812 showed us how to bring Google Maps to life. Although I had heard and seen this before it was brilliant to see how much could be done. This session was so inspiring that you could nearly hear the new teaching idea's popping into people's heads.

7) Productivity

Dozens of tips and tricks provided by @markwagner to make Google Apps work faster for you (and other program's as well). I especially liked my introduction to AlternativeTo.net which gives, you won't believe it, alternatives to favourite pieces of software for various platforms.

8) http://search.creativecommons.org/

Thanks to @rushtonH for this, all creative commons resources all the time! This search engine along with the Google reference tool that can be switched on in Google Doc (Tools --> Research) are very powerful for everyone who is concerned about plagiarism, did anyone say Matric?

9) Customisation

What I was most reminded of during the conference is just how flexible Google is. It is, at heart, designed to try and make every individuals life easier. Tell it how you like to do things and it just does them. Even better, Google is starting to figure out things for you. The seamless integration across technologies and platforms is just brilliant.

10) The Demo Slam

Great staff development tool, each teacher presents an idea for 3 minutes. Best is it can even be used outside of 'tech' and just to blast several idea's at one sitting. I loved it and well done to @KShermanTweets for the outstanding win. Big applause by the partisan local crowd.

All in all this was a brilliant experience. What struck me most (even above the 10 things I took from the conference) was just how easy it is to customise Google for each user's needs. Every teacher, IT guy and 'other' at the conference could probably write a completely different but just as relevant and exciting '10 things' list. If you do please let me know about it, i would love to read it!

SchoolNet Blending the flipping classroom presentation

Blending the flipping classroom presentation for SchoolNetSA presentation 2013

SchoolNet BYOT presentation 2013

Bring your own device presentation for SchoolNet conference 2013

Blending or Flipping?

The rise of technology in the classroom has given impetus to two major trends in the average or above average (depending on your point of view) classroom or lesson.

The question is how to make this change effective?

At a recent conference I (briefly) presented a talk on flipping and blending the classroom, during the preparation for that talk I did a bit of research on the exact definitions of the two models. The conclusion of most of the sites that I visited was that the change must happen and is happening in many schools and tertiary institutions but that there is not really a common consensus on what both models are or how best to use them.

Picture from Wikipedia

Lets start by looking at the blended classroom:

This type of classroom combines 3 types of learning to try and achieve a model of learning that allows different types of learners to access information in a way that they are comfortable with. In other words, "The goal of a blended approach is to join the best aspects of both face to face and online instruction. Classroom time can be used to engage students in advanced interactive experiences."(http://weblearning.psu.edu). It further allows students to access information at their own convenience and at their own pace.

To help explain I found a great little video.

I, personally, love the idea of a blended learning model and see many benefits for students in an institution that has the scope to provide the material in various ways. The video describes it as a cheaper way to educate people but that, i would guess, depends on the quantity of people who access the material (UNISA are you reading this!)

And then the Flipped classroom:

I love this explanation! Watch it and you will understand why I am not going to say any more. PS I don't just use video's to explain things in my classroom.

The flipped classroom lets the students gain 'content' at home and then arrive at school to develop that knowledge through teacher facilitation.

In other words we take the cognitive development aspect of learning out of the parents hands and put it back in the hands of the people who are trained to do it. This might also, hopefully, lead to a recognition of the true skill of an educator. Their ability to engage a disparate group of kids and make them want to learn.

Finally the question must be: How do we use these models to enhance learning in our own classrooms?

Some teachers who have been doing this longer than me gave the following tips (Commentary by me):

(http://campustechnology.com/articles/2013/01/23/6-expert-tips-for-flipping-the-classroom.aspx)

1) Use existing technology to ease faculty and students into a flipped mindset.

Don't expect every teacher to be immediately comfortable with using either of the models. Encourage then to try it in a controlled way. Baby steps...

2) Be up front with your expectations.

The more honest you are  the more successful the change will be. Use examples to show how it works and, maybe most importantly, let them know that it won't work properly every time!

3) Step aside and allow students to learn from each other.

Probably the toughest part of the process for the 'traditional' teacher. We need to step back and allow the learners develop their own knowledge through debate, discussion and reflection with their peers. There are great examples of teachers who have managed this and seen incredible success in transforming the way the kids approach their lessons. We, as teachers, need to step aside and allow the students to make the decision on how to approach the application parts of learning.

4) Assess students' understanding of pre-class assignments to make the best use of class time.

Use quizzes that are completed at home (we use Edmodo at our school) to lead you in how to approach the content in the classroom. There is still space for a lecture now and again, especially for more complicated idea's, however don't expect the parents to have to develop the understanding of a topic. That is the teachers job.

5) Set a specific target for the flip.

Make sure the pedagogy is in place to enhance the learning experience, use the correct technology to support that pedagogy and finally, let the student decide which part of that technology suits them best.

Use critical thinking along with Blooms taxonomy to help plan a 'flipping' route for your own classroom.

6) Build assessments that complement the flipped model. 

The traditional assessments have their place but it is important to allow other, more cooperative ways of assessing the development of knowledge. Use sets of questions that can be answered in pairs or groups. Use   online quizzes and allow Google (research skills are vital). Use a debate. Make something up that suits you.

The most important thing is to use the technology available to enhance and drive your teaching. Do not use the technology for technologies sake but rather use it to transform the way you teach!

Good luck.