Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Introducing: Quizlet Diagrams

Quizlet recently released their Diagrams feature, which allows teachers and students to create the same dynamic learning Quizlet is known for, but with drawings instead of just flashcards.

Here is my favorite example so far:




While it may take a little time to build one, this is a nice new tool in the tool box for contextual vocabulary study.

Enjoy.

Monday, August 21, 2017

Feedback given = feedback received?

We often talk about how much feedback we give students, but John Hattie argues that it's more important to think about how students receive our feedback.

With technological tools making it easier to provide more rubrics, more comments, more audio and video notes and more feedback generally, it can seem like it's virtuous to give more feedback to kids and let them sort it out.

But, it's far more important, according to John Hattie, to "worry more about how students are receiving your feedback . . . than increasing how much you give."

In a previous post, I introduced the idea of cognitive load: that kids can only handle so much information and that overdoing feedback is literally a waste of time.  It's a great reminder that kids are humans, busy, sometimes even overwhelmed, humans, who need you to provide focus and direction for them to learn what they need to.

Besides, if we only think about feedback being "given", we miss the point. It's not really what we write on the paper that matters, it's what the students do with it.

From this short piece on feedback, here are a couple of take-aways:

1.  Feedback is hard to use.
2.  Students need a chance to use feedback in order for it to be effective.
3.  We should try to help students see that improvement is possible.