Jennie Tookoian is a Teacher Advocate at Edulastic working with our teacher community to share their ideas and contributions. She brings with her 15 years of traditional and non-traditional teaching experience. After receiving a Masters in Education from Stanford University, she’s taught and written curriculum for public and private schools including after school enrichment programs.
When we think of assessments, most of us instinctively think of an exam. A final, a chapter test, a quiz…something to measure what was learned in the past. While the terms adaptive testing and data driven assessments have started to change our thinking, when I first encountered Edulastic I heard “testing tool” and I stopped there.
Ahh, but our users are smarter than me. It turns out our teachers have been using Edulastic in some really creative ways. Below I have highlighted four “out-of-the-proverbial-box” uses for Edulastic.
#1 The Sub Day
Why bother writing up a bunch of plans when you can pre-load and assign an activity for your class on Edulastic? The sub only has to direct the students to the assignment, with minimal room for misinterpretation of your instructions.
This works really well in a middle or high school setting where you have a period to plan for, but it could be incorporated into elementary too. You can keep track of who is staying on task, who paid attention, who was absent, etc. You can even do this in “real time” if you are sick at home with your laptop (I am almost laughing as I write that, but I KNOW a few of you would do that!).
#2 Stations
This one is great for those that have iPads or laptops that can be brought from station to station as students rotate to answer questions.
Each student is logged on into their own account and as they rotate as a small group or individuals, they can answer questions as they go. And, if it is group work, each student is held accountable. You can pre-load videos or excerpts that enhance the station using the advanced technology question types.
It has all of the kinesthetic learning benefits of having the student up and moving while they learn combined with the accountability of an individual assignment.
#3 Group Work
Similar to stations, if you have your students work on questions in small groups, you can create the activity in Edulastic. The advanced technology question types like video or Prezi can really enhance here too. You save paper and, again, each student is accountable in a group setting.
#4 Pre-Load Activities
Most teachers do pre-loading and background building activities at the start of a new unit. Edulastic is perfect for the “check what you know before we begin” type of lesson.
Using free response or any of the classic question types you can explore your students’ knowledge prior to beginning the unit. The tech enhanced items can help if you want to front load information from a video clip or presentation.
Do you have any other great ways to use Edulastic? I’d love to hear about them! Drop me a note at support@edulastic-web.snapwiz.net.
Would you like to be a guest blogger?
We are always looking for expert advice and tips of the trade to pass along to our community. We’d love to hear from you. If you are interested, send us a note at support@edulastic-web.snapwiz.net