What technology tools can I use to manage and track differentiated student progress in my class? #diffimooc

I was a little stuck on this question, which is why I am entering it at the zero hour, well almost.  I spent the whole week asking, “How is this any different from the last question?”.  Well I finally decided that this weeks question means, to me, how to “grade or score” the students who have different learning styles or at different places in their mastery of different topics.  A little brainstorming led me to ask, “What do I need to know from my students”.  Fact fluency, state name recall, writing ability, and essay response.  After reading a few of the tweets I was inspired to find a few of my own resources that would suit my specific classes.

The first really useful one that I found was Multiplication.com.  Specifically the online quiz and test section.  Students can work their way from zeros to twelves on the multiplication chart.  They can do this at home, in computer lab, or in class during free time.  The site offers random problems that the student must answer, and can then print.  The way I will set this up (yes, I plan on using this) will have a timer for the test, and a level of mastery (such as 80-90% correct).  Students who pass their tests will print, and turn in their completed sheet.  The site will correct the questions, and clearly mark incorrect responses.  Whoever makes forward progress from their last quiz will also print their quiz, these will be filed away to keep a record for their personal use.  I love the idea of using this site with our students!  The great thing is that students can work at their own pace in a multiple of settings.  They can work from home with parent/gardian signature, at a hotel on vacation, a friends house, or other classrooms.  Finally homework I can assign without email, website development, or lending out costly textbooks!

The next was inspired by technology that we have in our own building already, but I have not taken advantage of, because of a lack of effort to make the time.  Our district has interactive Promethean Boards in almost every classroom in every school.  There are a number of useful pieces of technology that is available if purchased.  Activotes are a great tool, so I’ve been told, and seem to have gotten easier to use with the upgrades to the board software.  The video shows a number of useful, quick ways to use the activotes in any classroom, and from what I can see could even be used in primary rooms!  I can see a room full of k-2 grade students using these is practical settings.  Younger students can vote on number sense, letter recognition, shape recognition, and after be shown a graph to see who voted on which answer.  Review the results, review the correct answer, then give everyone another chance to vote.  Older students can take graded quizes and tests while the teacher controls the pace, or students can participate in trivia games or group contests.  Once a template is created for a class I imagine that changing the questions could be easily changed, and I’m sure ready made games and quizes could be found at Promethean Planet.  

Having a working knowledge of the Geography of the United States is a requirement for our 5th graders, and finding the time to teach state recognition with our busy direct instruction schedule can be a challenge, so I found a site that quizes students, and keeps a running correct percentage of their score, and how long it took them to finish.  Students can right-click and print when done.  The good thing about this site is after a number of incorrect responses the student is shown where the state is and click on it to move onto the next state.  Encouragement and time to study before hand will of course be necessary, but if the student brain freezes on a particular state he or she can still salvage their score by clicking on the correct state and moving on if they don’t make too many other mistakes.  Like the math site students can print, hand in, or file away their results.  My last blog discusses Geospy, which also has a setting for finding states, and gives a score, this is just an alternative with percentages.  

Read Write Think has been a favorite of mine for about 10 year, but I haven’t used it for quite some time, and a few people mentioned it in the twitter feeds so I decided to go back and look at the site again to see what new resources they have.  Right away I found an activity that helps students keep track of their note taking ability, and has an animated/narrated demo to show them what to do!  I like this one, because often students are reluctant to take notes, because they don’t understand how to do it efficiently.  Students can practice with this activity, then print out their results for examination.  

The Comic Creator is an oldy that I used to use all the time.  Students can make the comics as simple or complicated as they want.  The options are number of panels, backgrounds, characters, and adding text.  Students can work toward a rubric and decide what score they can work toward most efficiently.  I have had students use these to write simple reports, write short stories, to even create their own blank comic book squares, print and create their own from complete free hand.  

When it comes to writing paragraphs and essays I always refer to a story about when I was in college, and had to write a 5 paragraph essay to get the financial aid department to grant me a tuition waver I had been promised, and upon writing the essay I received notice of a $4000 waiver per year for three years.  An hour of work saved me $12,000!  I use the Essay Map tool to help students organize their ideas before actually writing their essays, stories, or reports.  I always have the students fill these out, then print them out, and let me look at them before closing out their web browsers so they don’t lose their progress.  The next step is to compile the ideas to write the paper.  

I hope that everyone found a little something in this blog that could help them in their classroom!