Accidental Discoveries
Don't you love accidental discoveries? I mean can we imagine our life without these accidental discoveries? I listened to a podcast once that talked about beer being the most important accidental discovery but that's probably not too appropriate for a teacher blog. Anyway, the point of this is that while researching the different features of Edmodo, Schoology, and Google Classroom for class this week, I made an accidental discovery of an site linked with Classroom that might change how I provide feedback in my classes.
I stumbled across this while researching the different ways to provide feedback in the three sites. I didn't get very far into Edmodo and Schoology because once I saw Kaizena I was hooked. I won't waste too much time going over how to set it up because I'll provide a video for that below. What I will say are the two words that have me so excited to use Kaizena: audio feedback. I was first interested in this when my instructor Marcia Jeans used audio feedback for my blog posts. It got me thinking how easy it would be to provide audio feedback on project, quiz, or test submissions so students get a one-on-one talk about what went right and wrong. I also teach a virtual math class with 38 students spread out across 5 schools. I see 13 of these students in person, 14 over a TV screen, and I never see 11 students in the recorded class except in their little profile picture when they e-mail me questions. You can see why providing feedback in a timely manner could be an issue. I can get a class worth of audio feedback done in a night and then spend less class time the next day going over the entire test. And this is true for every class! I've only used it in one class so far so keep checking back on updates of how it is going.
Before I share the video for Kaizena, I want to end with why I focused on the providing feedback abilities of the sites. My new superintendent this year (which happens to be my mother) shared with me over dinner an article she read about how the practice that had the largest impact on student performance was timely feedback. This got me thinking on how I could not only improve on that in how I grade, but how I deliver the feedback back to students. With these week focusing on Edmodo and Schoology, I thought I would explore any feedback features these sites had that Classroom didn't. Instead, I found that Classroom had my solution to timely feedback that students might actually use! I am really excited to see how students respond to ~2 minute clips of feedback rather than just small written feedback and blanket statements to the class as a whole on their performance. This will be a fun week testing it out!
I mentioned a video walking you through Kaizena and that is below. But I recommend you go check it out for yourself. The video didn't show how all of the Google Docs you post on Google Classroom automatically transfer over to the Kaizena page! That was my favorite feature and everything about the site was really easy to pick up and use!
Enter Kaizena!
I stumbled across this while researching the different ways to provide feedback in the three sites. I didn't get very far into Edmodo and Schoology because once I saw Kaizena I was hooked. I won't waste too much time going over how to set it up because I'll provide a video for that below. What I will say are the two words that have me so excited to use Kaizena: audio feedback. I was first interested in this when my instructor Marcia Jeans used audio feedback for my blog posts. It got me thinking how easy it would be to provide audio feedback on project, quiz, or test submissions so students get a one-on-one talk about what went right and wrong. I also teach a virtual math class with 38 students spread out across 5 schools. I see 13 of these students in person, 14 over a TV screen, and I never see 11 students in the recorded class except in their little profile picture when they e-mail me questions. You can see why providing feedback in a timely manner could be an issue. I can get a class worth of audio feedback done in a night and then spend less class time the next day going over the entire test. And this is true for every class! I've only used it in one class so far so keep checking back on updates of how it is going.
Before I share the video for Kaizena, I want to end with why I focused on the providing feedback abilities of the sites. My new superintendent this year (which happens to be my mother) shared with me over dinner an article she read about how the practice that had the largest impact on student performance was timely feedback. This got me thinking on how I could not only improve on that in how I grade, but how I deliver the feedback back to students. With these week focusing on Edmodo and Schoology, I thought I would explore any feedback features these sites had that Classroom didn't. Instead, I found that Classroom had my solution to timely feedback that students might actually use! I am really excited to see how students respond to ~2 minute clips of feedback rather than just small written feedback and blanket statements to the class as a whole on their performance. This will be a fun week testing it out!
I mentioned a video walking you through Kaizena and that is below. But I recommend you go check it out for yourself. The video didn't show how all of the Google Docs you post on Google Classroom automatically transfer over to the Kaizena page! That was my favorite feature and everything about the site was really easy to pick up and use!
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