Vox Vote for Large Audience Voting

By Bruce Janu

The CinéStudent Film Festival is coming this Saturday with 11 student films from Elk Grove, Prospect and Hersey. As part of the program, each film will be eligible for an “Audience Award.” The audience will get to vote on the film they think is best.

The problem is: how do we conduct that vote?

Of course, the standard is paper and pencil. But this involves manually counting the ballots. We want immediate feedback. I have used several survey apps and websites over the years, such as Survey Monkey, Ballot Bin and Easy Polls.  Most recently, I have used Socrative during large presentations. However, I wanted to try something different—something more like an actual voting app.  One thing was for sure: the digital option was essential and, since most people have phones at least, a film festival can simply be another BYOD event.


That’s when I discovered VoxVote.

VoxVote is a newer company, offering a mobile voting platform in which real-time results can be displayed via a projector or computer. It works on all platforms, from Apple to Android, and was designed specifically for large presentations.

It is free for teachers, too.  And now it is set up so that anyone with a “d214.org” email can make a free, unlimited account.

Here’s how it works:

After creating an account, click on the “create a new event” button. Then, write questions that your audience can answer using their devices with appropriate responses.

My event is set now with one question: “Which film of the 2015 CinéStudent Film Festival gets your vote for the "Audience Award?"

When I am ready for the audience to begin voting, they need to take out their device and go to live.voxvote.com (or use the free app). They will be prompted for a pin number.

After entering the pin number that you give them, this is what they will see:

On my end, I see a graph and a running total of the votes. This graph can be displayed on the projector, giving a real-time vote count. However, you are manually required to hit the refresh button in order to update the results. This is built into the system on purpose, so that early votes do not cause undue influence on the voting during your event.

Once the voting starts, you can refresh the screen periodically to show a running total of the votes. 

VoxVote seems to be very flexible. I can add questions on the fly if needed. I can change the types of questions asked.  How secure is it as a voting platform? I am not sure. According to the website, VoxVote prevents users from voting more than once. But, like anything, I am sure there are work-arounds. However, I have control over how long the voting continues and can cut it off after a certain amount of time. 

Mobile voting is one way to make presentations more engaging by forcing audience participation. As someone who does a lot of forums throughout the year, a quick way to display questions with immediate feedback can add much to a presentation.

I have used Socrative for “quizzes” during forums. But VoxVote may offer something a little more unique for larger gatherings of people.

And, hopefully, this will be the ideal tool for our film festival.

We’ll see on Saturday. Next week I’ll let you know how it all worked and if Vox Vote is worth the time.

Timelines Apps & Student Engagement

By Kim Miklusak

Traditionally I have had my AP English Language students create a timeline for the plot of Slaughterhouse-Five.  The book is written out of chronological order as the main character, Billy, is "unstuck" in time.  Students often struggle with this fact; not only do they frequently have difficulty seeing the events in order, but they also have difficulty partnering up events to analyze why Kurt Vonnegut would structure his novel this way.  After the students brainstormed their timelines, we would create one master timeline on the board and use it as a jumping off point for broader discussions and clarifications.

I wanted to try this same technique on the iPad; however, I was debating with myself whether this was simply a matter of substitution of iPad over paper.  I ultimately decided to go ahead with it and see what else I could do with it.  What I ended up finding is that the individual yet public nature of the assignment helped students to more personally connect with the ultimate goals.

On the suggestion of my coworker Kristen Guth, I had my students download the RWT Timeline app.  It is free and very easy to use; I highly recommend it for anyone who wants to work with timelines in class.  Students could organize their timeline by event, add short and long descriptions, and add pictures if they wanted.   It was interesting to hear students work through the timeline with their partners.  They engaged in debates on placement of events, which led to them making individual connections between relationships.

Student sample

In the end I had students upload their timeline into a Schoology Media Album, so everyone in class could review them.  We then shared them on the screen and discussed the differences between one timeline and another.  While I can't claim that it's completely transforming through technology, I'm still happy with the way it turned out and the increase in individual student engagement.

Having Fun with Standardized Test Practice...Kahoot!

By:  Rachel Barry

In my math courses, students complete a series of 10 multiple choice questions, based on the PLAN or ACT tests for each standard of our curriculum.  For much of the year, I have used the app Socrative because to engage students in test practice because it provides students with immediate feedback and gives the teacher helpful tools for data analysis.  You can read more about this in my previous blog post.  At this point in the year, however, I felt a need of a change for fourth quarter and also to reengage my students.  Therefore, I decided to make this 10-question activity into a Kahoot!

Kahoot is an easy and quick interactive game for students to play on their iPad or a phone.  I used the quiz feature and made them all multiple choice.   The negative here (though a positive for the kids) is that Kahoot only allows for four answer choices, while all standardized tests provide five answer choices.  The teacher projects the problems from their laptop or iPad, and the students view this screen on their phone or iPad:
                                                                  
I also provided students with a paper copy of the questions to allow them to work out the problems.  In the Kahoot quiz, I randomized the questions, so students never knew which would be next.

After each question is answered by all students, a bar graph shows up.

I use this immediate feedback to go over any question that most students did not get correct.  

After the activity is complete, I am able to download the results into a spreadsheet.  I can then use this data to determine which topics I need to spiral back into the curriculum.

If you have any questions on how to build a Kahoot, please stop on by the Collab Lab or contact me!

Video Reflection

By Mark Heintz

A few weeks ago, I posted on the creation of my first video.  You can read about it here.  I have since created about twenty videos that cover the age of imperialism, WWI, WWII, decolonization movements in India, South Africa, Ghana, and a number of other topics in the 20th century.

I commented on how making the videos made me feel like a historian.  While creating the videos, I have learned so much history. For instance, Chiquita Banana paid known terrorist groups in the 2000s to protect their interests in South America, or the history of the United Fruit Company massacre 

But the process of refining the information and providing visual examples has been challenging and really impactful in the classroom.  I have found when I make the video, I have such a clearer goal of what I want my students to know.  I have struggled with how to cover WORLD HISTORY in a year that is global.  Even if I use the AP standards, they are intentionally open ended to allow teachers to use different examples.  There is so much content, it is impossible to cover all of it in one year.   Having clear goals and information you wish your students to know, makes the class manageable for students and myself.

The students who watched the videos have a much higher retention of the content than from just reading the textbook.  They have visuals of the information.  Although there are great visuals in the textbook, they often skip over them in the reading.  When students see maps, charts, or pictures in the textbook, they are relieved because that means less reading on a page.  Having the images in the videos forces the students to see the visuals. 

Additionally, I created a quiz for each video and now have used the feedback function in Schoology. 

The feedback function on a quiz allows the user to provide instant feedback on why the answer is right or wrong.  Since I am creating these questions, I am providing a quick few words on why the answer choice is wrong. The students who have used it, found it to be a great resource if they comprehend the information.    

I still do not know how I am going to use these videos in the future. I am not sure if it will become the primary homework or just use as a supplement.  The videos take a lot of time to prepare and research, but are quick to make once I have all of the prep work finished. Also, the quizzes take time to make.  The whole process can be time consuming and I advise those wishing to start making videos that they should NOT have the goal of making all of them in one year. 

The students enjoy when I put a superhero or Star Wars character behind me.  They always seem to notice those changes depending on my location of where I film them.  

Multiply Learning with #EG1to1!

By Kim Miklusak and Linda Ashida

The other day on Twitter someone shared the idea of what if every teacher tweeted one idea or moment from class every day.  Imagine the community building, the collaborative experiences, and the instructional sharing that could go on if each of us could do that!  Think how much we could learn from and be inspired by one another!

As we move to full 1:1 implementation at Elk Grove next year, the Collab Lab is encouraging staff to Tweet resources and examples of learning in their classrooms using the hashtag EG1to1.  The use of the hashtag will allow us to easily search and curate all of these tweets, and we will multiply our opportunities to learn from one another. For example, just today several teachers tweeted out strategies, student samples, and experiences from their classrooms! The use of the hashtag also gives us an opportunity to share and build our connections with parents and communities beyond our school. We're looking forward to continuing to build this momentum for next year.

We enjoy seeing student Tweets, too, about the ways they they are learning with iPads, like this one today from Gillian Guerra. We'll encourage their use of the hashtag EG1to1 as well!

Schoology Quizzes as Bell Ringers

Written by Linda Ashida

A recent visit to Lindsay Bucciarelli's Human Geography class revealed a great way to use Schoology quizzes as a bell-ringer activity to activate prior knowledge before learning new content, or as review before an assessment.  It also reminded me about the collaborative benefits of Professional Learning Teams, since the Human Geography teachers take turns creating and sharing the quizzes with other members of their PLT.  For example, in the lesson I saw, Lindsay was using quizzes that had been created by her colleague Kristen Gierman. 

In the illustration below, you can see that the students were given three bell-ringer quizzes, and they were directed to complete as many as they could during a 5-8 minute period.  They could do the quizzes in any order (though sometimes the teachers do set the order, and expect mastery on one before moving on to the next), and they were given multiple attempts to repeat each quiz to strive for mastery. These bell-ringer quizzes are a great way for students to get quick practice and immediate feedback. They can move through the quizzes at their own pace, and even repeat the quizzes outside of class, or easily access them if they were absent.

 The visuals below give a couple examples of what the quizzes look like for the students.  If you have other ideas for the ways that you have used the Schoology quizzes, we'd love to hear from you!

Comprehension Checks without Quizzes

By Kim Miklusak

My American Literature students are currently reading The Great Gatsby.  Since we just started, I wanted to do a comprehension check, but I didn't want to give a pen-and-paper quiz, so I decided to try out something that I have heard other people in my department doing.  The students' assignment was to create a visual representation of the main characters and events in chapter 2.  While I suggested apps like PicCollage or a comic book app, students were also free simply to use NoteTaker or Notability.

I wasn't sure how this was going to go.  There are a handful of students in this class who I could tell would scoff at an assignment like this, but I decided to see what would happen.  The scoring was simply based on completion of the major events and characters, not creativity.  Some students, as the one below, only produced one scene, which would receive a limited score, while others showed a progression throughout the whole chapter.

In the end I was happy with how this assignment went.  In a traditional class, we would have spent time talking about plot and characters  to be sure students understood the key events.  What this assignment did, however, was it required all students to take ownership of highlighting the key events and work through it on their own.  I could hear them asking each other questions like, "Why did Tom hit her?" and "How do I know what Myrtle looks like?" or "Whose apartment was it?"  I won't tell you that every student had so much fun, but there certainly was a higher level of engagement than if we were doing a large or even small group assignment for the same chapter.  We will now use this foundation to instead spend time focusing on analysis of the literature than "did you understand."

At the end of the period students uploaded their collage into a Schoology Media Album, so their peers were able to see it.  I projected the album up on the screen and would refresh it to share progress.  We started class the next day by looking at each collage.  Again, this brought up more conversation.  Some students asked, "Why do people keep putting a picture of a car or garage," which let us talk about George Wilson and his situation, etc.  It also let us correct some misreading such as in the first collage above where the student said "Nick bought Myrtle a dog" instead of Tom.  Overall, I was happy with the engagement and outcome of this assignment, and I look forward to working with it later on again in the novel on a more thematic level.