Part 1
My innovation project is on social media in the classroom. I have found many uses of social media class in to be effective. These include Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, remind 101, and poll everywhere. I have seen all of these used in an academic setting and have found that they all can be effective and helpful in the classroom to engage students into discussions, keep students aware of upcoming dates, getting a greater community, and a better connected class.
One platform I recently used was Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere is an online polling system where users can create a variety of polls in which students can interact via phone. There are various types of polls, but the one I tried was a simple multiple choice poll. I found that if introduced correctly, the class will take these seriously and will require them to provide a result for their thought, but there are still faults in the system. Students may vote to be funny or to skew the results; however, there are many options to deter this. For example poll holders can limit the number of entries.
Other styles of polls include free response and idea bubbles. All can be very useful if projected on the board while students responded.
Lastly, I have researched remind 101 which is a one-way text messaging notification service which teachers can use to notify students with. I believe that the service has classroom potential, but to find that, a new and innovative idea must be identified.
One platform I recently used was Poll Everywhere. Poll Everywhere is an online polling system where users can create a variety of polls in which students can interact via phone. There are various types of polls, but the one I tried was a simple multiple choice poll. I found that if introduced correctly, the class will take these seriously and will require them to provide a result for their thought, but there are still faults in the system. Students may vote to be funny or to skew the results; however, there are many options to deter this. For example poll holders can limit the number of entries.
Other styles of polls include free response and idea bubbles. All can be very useful if projected on the board while students responded.
Lastly, I have researched remind 101 which is a one-way text messaging notification service which teachers can use to notify students with. I believe that the service has classroom potential, but to find that, a new and innovative idea must be identified.
Part 2
I use online pulling sites in my class so that I can collect data about my students like beginning of the year questionnaires and mid-unit assessments to check for understanding. I have found that online polling sites could be useful for many other ways in class as well. Polling sites are great cooperative learning resources for entire classes and small groups. With these interactive sites, I have the ability to make polls for an entire class and pose the class a question where they can give anonymous feedback to the question. The polling site I use is polleverywhere.com. At polleverywhere.com, I have the ability to make my own polls where students can interact with their phones. Students can make their own to use for group project collaborative learning. Polleverywhere allows responses to do several things. Responders can provide results to a multiple choice question, provide short answer responses, and collectively make word clouds. I am going to have my students do a project around a question that Shakespeare focuses on in Hamlet and will have each group make use the site to collaboratively work together, use the site to ask the class a question during a presentation, and also make a word cloud as a group for their question.
I have found this site to be very useful and a great way to collaboratively work with others. I will definitely use it in the future. |