Padlet is an excellent example of an app which we can repurpose in lots of different ways to support student learning. You can use it in simple ways to quickly crowdsource ideas from a class to more nuanced uses where you want to track growth in student skills and to support feedback.
Below are some examples and some geeky tips to get the most use out of Padlet. As a teacher you can sign up for free on their website and then share the link to any Padlet you might make with students via the Online Learning Platform. Make sure you check the sharing permissions so students can contribute or toggle authentication and commenting if you want to track student participation.
A approach lots of people are exploring this year is how do we scaffold students towards conceptual understandings and track and assess this growth. In the work of Lynn Erickson and other theorists, this begins with the idea of concept formation or concept acquisition.
What do we mean by concepts?
As explained by Erickson, concepts are mental constructs that are abstract, timeless and universal. (Erickson & Lanning, 2014, p.33) They can be either broad in their context such as the concepts about change, interdependence or systems which are potentially interdisciplinary in nature or subject specific concepts such as velocity, unemployment or herbivores. These are also distinguished as macro or micro concepts, where micro concepts become evident in the depth of subject knowledge in each discipline.
Teaching to support conceptual acquisition:
One activity I see and utilise frequently is the classic sort, organise and group activity where you provide a wide arrange of examples relating to the concept and get students to identify similarities, differences and connections. In this Economics example, I was scaffolding students towards an understanding that:
products are related and the price change in one product can impact demand of related products. eg. complements and substitutes
In this case students quickly sort examples of products being substitutable or complementary to each other, but they often muddle the nuances of the relationship and the relative strengths of connections between goods that is evident when prices change.
Consolidating understanding: The Frayer Model
A perfect follow on activity is to use a diagram called the Frayer Model to get the students to record their understanding. The Frayer Model is essentially a graphical organiser you can use to capture either prior knowledge about a concept as a pre-assessment, to capture thinking after an activity, or as a tool to revisit and refine as students learn more about the concept through an inquiry.
an operational definition; in subject terminology what does the idea mean?
characteristics; what are the unique properties of the word that are shared by the examples.
examples; in what examples are these properties clearly illustrated?
non-examples; in what examples are these properties not illustrated?
The prompt asking students to list non-examples is really important as this is where you can identify some misconceptions. For instance peanut butter and jam (or jelly) might seems to be a complement for some people, but might be substitutes for others and a non-example.
Capturing the thinking: Google Slides
You can of course facilitate this in different ways e.g. pairs, groups on poster paper, but I have found using a Google Slides template as an effective way of scaffolding the students but also being able to track their work. It is a good tool where you can give comments, and where students can go back to as the learning progresses and make changes. It is also useful if you want students to scroll and see other students examples and ideas.
Together the two approaches are an important tool to help students build understanding which can later help them transfer and apply ideas to other situations.
Other related posts to explore:
The following are posts written by colleagues at the East Campus of United World College of South East Asia in Singapore. These cover the same ideas but from different subject angles.
The challenge with assessment is giving targeted and goal directed feedback quickly to students so they can improve and move forward with the learning. Our Online Learning Platform (Teamie) can help streamline this process for both teachers and students so you can spend less time worrying about finding student work and copying and pasting feedback and work more efficiently.
This blog post outlines how to;
Take a rubric containing reportables and our new scale and add this to Teamie
Create an assignment to collect in a Google Doc
Associate the rubric with created assignment
Give targeted feedback based on your reportables
If you want to video version of this guide jump here.
Why are rubrics an important assessment tool?
This is an example of a rubric that we are creating to help give feedback to students. The example shown here illustrates the connection between our five point scale and what is possible for each learning outcome or "I Can Statement."
For instance it is hard for students to demonstrate an exemplary ability in some of the communication skills goals such as writing a claim, so the box is greyed out.
For the rubric to be an effective assessment tool the task itself needs to be designed and written in such as way that it aligns with the learning outcomes we have chosen, thus giving students scope to reach the top levels. The alignment of assessment method such as a selected response, written or performance task to the learning outcome is always crucial in giving students clear opportunities to succeed.
Getting started with Rubrics in Teamie:
You can take the same text as shown above and add this into Teamie to create your own rubric which can be attached to an assignment. Assignments allow you to collect in one or more documents from each student and track attempts, deadlines and send notifications.
There is no magic button where you can import any random rubric in a Google Doc into Teamie as the formatting is always different but the online editor is easy to use.
Firstly, you need to first make an assignment from which you can attach a rubric to as shown below.
You now have the option to either search the rubric bank for ones that colleagues have made. (search by name) or to create your own one from a blank template. Click to create from top right corner.
You will always be able to go back and reuse your rubrics when you next make an assignment.
The following screenshot shows the rubric editor. You begin with one criteria and four levels which you can all adjust. All of the text boxes are editable but when you actually mark the work online you can see the criteria title but need to hover to see the detailed criteria.
To take the original rubric I began by copying the learning goals into the heading and some of the other detail into the descriptor. I then copied the scale descriptors into the boxes as shown below. Once complete there is a clever duplicate button which saves time when adding the next criteria.
Then duplicating allows you to add subsequent criteria but keep the same scales. Some departments might choose to give more specific guidance for each scale specific to assessed learning goals or "I Can Statements" but you can equally keep this the same and simpler for students to use.
Using your rubric to provide feedback on student work:
Once you have made the rubric you can step to open a submission and give feedback. You can open the rubric from the right hand sidebar and you can drag it around the page. Once you click on the level it will automatically save your selection.
You can also leave more precise feedback on each learning outcome by clicking on the add comment option at the end of each learning outcome title. This will save you comment in either text or audio to the sidebar comment stream so students can see. You can hide these comments from students.
Publishing and viewing assessment data from your Markbook
For students to see you final feedback you will need to go back to the assignment submission page and select all and then publish grades for them to be notified of the feedback. A clever trick is to publish these all at once in class and ask students to reflect and add their own learning goals into the comment stream for you to refer back to.
The collated data across multiple assignments that you mark within Teamie is available in your markbook and you can select on one student to see an overview of the year. Eventually you will be able to see a mastery overview of how students are progressing against all of your learning goals for multiple assessments but you might have to wait until next year for this !
Quizlet remains as one of those Swiss Army knife style apps that you end up repurposing and going back to time and time again. Last year it got a significant revamp with the Quizlet Live game feature and now there is a clever addition called Quizlet Diagrams.
In essence using Quizlet is a perfect approach to get students to revise new terms or develop and broaden their vocabulary. In Economics I want student to use the appropriate terms and words to explain the nuances of complicated concepts and models. For instance we want our students to confidently use the term 'appreciation' rather than trying to just say that a currency has gone 'up' In my experience Quizlet is a pretty good tool to help develop this basic knowledge.
The new diagrams tool goes further adding a really clever visual layer. You can pin a term to a specific part of the diagram and then the students use the match or learn tools to revise which term matches which part.
How do I use?
You need to sign up for a free Teacher account with your GApps account
Search the diagrams examples for your subject
Duplicate an existing set of flashcards or create to start a fresh
Drag a screenshot or image into Quizlet
Use the pin icon to add terms.
Are there examples I can look at?
There are lots of really clever examples already created and available online. You can share any of these with your students by posting the link into our Online Learning Platform (Teamie)
You can copy the link directly from Quizlet and send this to your students with the Online Learning Platform (Teamie) The two best modes from students to practice diagrams are Learn Mode or Match Mode.
Learn mode is very clever and randomly gives students either match or multiple choice questions based on the set of flashcards you have created and it helps students track which ones they find easy and those which are harder. Match mode is probably the best supported to diagram and give the students a random challenge based on the flash cards you have added to a diagram. See below
Padlet is an excellent example of an app which we can repurpose in lots of different ways to support student learning. You can use it in simple ways to quickly crowdsource ideas from a class to more nuanced uses where you want to track growth in student skills and to support feedback.
