secretly blogging during the institute
posted by: acarr
….so it’s Day 5 of Bioeyes (the last day), and the teachers are now filling out the surveys. I don’t have a survey, so I am secretly blogging at one of the computers….
I think it has been a good week. Today, the teachers saw their GFP paintings. Everyone’s worked except for one, which was probably due to painting with a negative colony (non-GFP).
So, all the supplies are going back to the Jordan stock room until the late summer. But, during the summer the Bio-grad fellows are going to think about how to make the GENO lab more efficient in the classroom. We got a couple new ideas, such as making pre-and post-quizzes.
This idea was suggeset by John Gensic who uses google apps often for students to take quizzes and tests on the computer. He then can see how the students answered on each question, and identify the problem areas. This week, we got a chance to witness this process when the Bioeyes teachers had to do a 10-question pre and post quiz for the modern lab. The post quiz definitely showed that the teachers now understood some of the vocabulary and techniques for the lab, and we could identify the topics that still needed attention during our discussion.
Imagine how this tool would be so useful in the high schools! Since we are only in the school for 5-7 days, we are sometimes not sure if all the students grasped the concepts. We do give them a quiz at the end (paper copy), and go over the questions. But, the computer method may be a good way to collect “data,” on what was learned…and to also have instant grading (not checking things off with a red marker during the class time).
ok…it’s time for lunch:-) i’ll be back later to blog!
June 24th, 2011 at 1:10 pm
Arprell, you secret blogger:),
The idea of instant-response quizzes for our classroom visitations is an interesting one. Would you have to have a computer? Suppose we used a hand-held system tied to a single computer? Regardless of the technology–or, rather, supposing we could solve any tech problem later–what good could we accomplish with instant-response systems of this sort? I’d like to see comments from each collaboration, perhaps beginning here in this blog comment stream, and/or carrying over into a biweekly meeting discussion topic.
June 24th, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Well I think there will be 3 good things: 1.) The quiz provides a visual for the whole class. Instead of everyone staring at their tests or us…they are looking at the projector and seeing the questions/answers. They also can see how many people selected a particular answer. For example, today we saw that a certain percentage marked “choice A” which was wrong or right. Then, we had a discussion over what was the right answer. 2.) We always have the students keep their tests, and never really record how the class did (i.e., grade book.) This online quiz allows us to keep record, and to know what subjects to target better in the future. 3.) This eliminates short essay questions, etc that we normally ask…the students always have a variety of answers. We could do multiple choice, etc. We could do multiple choice, etc. Although, nothing really stopped us from doing multiple choice, true/false before