4 Ways Teachers Can Encourage Online Interaction

Online Quizzes

These can be a good way to help your students learn easier. If you use them as pop-up quizzes at the end of a presentation, chances that students remember what the course was about raise considerably. You can find a tool to create complex online quizzes that will answer all your needs and results will probably improve immediately. Working with custom made quizzes is easier that to search for ready-made ones. Online quizzes are a great way to keep your students focused, to evaluate them and offer them the chance to test their assimilation capacity.

Feedback Forms

Feedback forms can be a great chance to find if your tactics actually work. Feedback is a great way to find what students actually think of your course. The odds that they will fill such a form are higher if you allow respondents to remain anonymous either if you have personally met them or not. You can focus on data and put your efforts in finding what is relevant for improvement of your online course.

Surveys

Surveys have a lot of applications in the classroom. Use them to discover the general opinion of your class, to learn about new trends and better adapt your teaching style or prepare new courses. Online surveys will generate statistical data that can help you reach further and understand the needs and requirements of present and future students. These are perfect for research, especially if you desire to create a new course and test the water to see if there is a demand from students.

Polls and Ratings

Conduct regular voting and let students participate in decision making. For example, let them choose the projects they are about to do or the topic you will discuss on a special lecture. There are many variations, the important thing is to enable them to feel they are actually part of the course you are teaching and that their opinion actually matters. If you don’t have the luxury of adjusting the course as you go, you can add ratings to your course with grades or rating stars to learn an immediate reaction of your students.

Read More at Source

App: Haiku Deck - graphing feature

Haiku Deck is a great FREE app - I wrote about it briefly in a previous post here

If you are not familiar with Haiku Deck it is an app similar to Power Point that lets you create slick and simple slide shows. The best feature is the ability to search 1000's of creative commons pictures within the app that can be easily added to the presentation. I certainly suggest checking out all the app can do but for this post I am going to focus on the graph feature. (which is new!)

When you first open the app you will be given a brief tutorial and then land on a screen similar to the one below. Click the plus sign to get started with your first deck.

Here is how I used the app in my class to graph our favorite ice cream flavors. First, we made a list on the white board of different kinds of ice cream and from that list I picked five for our graph. As you can see in the image below I used the "Tt" (blue arrow) option so the first slide would have a format with a title and numbered choices. To edit the text on the slide all you have to do is touch the area you want to edit or type on. Once we had this slide complete I had my class vote for their favorite flavor and I collected that data on the whiteboard. Using that data we moved to the next step of showing the data in a graph and added a new slide to our deck using the plus sign (yellow arrow.)

For the next slide I picked the image option (red arrow below). Next select the graph option (orange arrow) and then pick the type of graph you want to use. We used the bar graph this week (green arrow) and will work with the pie graph next week. Last click the "Done" button to create the slide. Also want to point out that you can switch between the slide you are editing at the bottom of the screen (blue arrow)

After you finish the step above you will see a screen similar to the one below. Editing the data is super simple with Haiku Deck which is why I love this app. To add more columns to the graph click the plus sign (red arrow) and to delete a column press the red "x" (green arrow.) Editing the label for each column simply by clicking the word under each column (yellow arrow.) Changing the number or total for each column by dragging the dot at the top of each column (blue arrow.) I know it seems like a lot of steps but if you practice it once it is very simple to repeat. The last tip is to edit the units for the graph (orange arrow.) This will allow you to change the Y-axis units to better match the data in your graph.

Sharing the deck is also very easy by going back to the main menu (top left of the app) and then pressing the share button for your deck. When you choose share you will be given the options below. Click here to see the finished Haiku deck from this post.

 

This post is from http://www.technologytailgate.com/ by Matt Gomez. You can connect with him on mattBgomez.com, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest.

Vancouver Sun: Support for Public Education, but higher taxes?

This post was interesting to me. I agree if government was more fiscally responsible there could be more done with less, however, to make any real changes, there needs to be more money.... higher taxes is the way to achieve that, but not all are willing to fork over more gmoney, and especially not to a government who mismanages it.

I wish they would explore the corporate taxes further before hiking taxes for the public. I am not opposed to a tax increase if it would help with public services, however, I feel the corporations are let off easy when it comes to taxes and I really think there is something to explore there that could improve public services such as education - for all.

British Columbians indicated strong support in a recent poll for increased spending on public education, but they were sharply divided when asked if they were willing to pay more taxes to accomplish that. In the poll, commissioned by the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, 43.6 per cent of respondents said they would accept a small tax hike to improve education and hire more teachers, but 41.8 per cent said they do not want to pay more. The remainder were uncertain. Leslie Turnbull, a partner with Viewpoints Research of Winnipeg, the firm that conducted the poll, said it’s not uncommon for Canadians to indicate a preference for more government spending but also an unwillingness to cover those costs through taxation. “Most people feel that if government streamlined its spending, better managed it and focused on the key things that are important … then the public could get the services it needs,” she said in an interview. “That’s probably not realistic.” Nevertheless, BCTF president Susan Lambert said she was heartened by the results because they contradict suggestions from the Fraser Institute, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) and the Liberal government that there’s no appetite for a tax lift. “What this is saying to us is that parents and the public are open to a conversation around tax increases, especially if it goes to priorities that they’ve identified … (such as) public education.”

Read More here

BC Fed Survey shows public support for teachers

Monday February 28, 2012 Teachers across B.C. will participate in a Provincial Day of Action.

This weekend's survey shows the public also support teachers...

The B.C. Federation of Labour released a public opinion survey today that shows British Columbians are on the side of teachers, and overwhelmingly support a negotiated settlement through mediation or arbitration.

“British Columbians are absolutely clear - they want government to negotiate a fair settlement with teachers,” said Sinclair. “They do not want government to act unilaterally.”

“If Premier Clark is on the side of families, she’ll listen to those families who are telling her to support mediation, and if necessary arbitration,” said Sinclair. “On Monday, we expect the Premier’s appointee to the Labour Board to approve mediation and that she’ll abandon her plans to impose a contract through legislation.”

Key findings in the poll include:

•89% support for the appointment of an arbitrator, with the power to end
the dispute
•82% support for the appointment of a mediator
•61% say teachers should hold out for at a least a cost of living increase
(only 32% believe teachers should accept no wage increase)
•63% of parents believe that their children’s learning has not been
affected negatively by the teachers’ job action


Read more at The B.C. Federation of Labour website. See the public opinion survey results here