This week I tried using a Plickers quiz activity with my students as a new formative assessment, then I also had them complete a Google forms quiz the next day on the same topic. Plickers went alright, but I still had quite a few students ask if we could do a Kahoot instead. I think the main problem is that this activity is a little slower paced, especially in a class with thirty-three students. It takes forever to get everyone scanned in. They also changed the app and I didn't realize that. I certainly pushed a couple wrong buttons which seemed to annoy my class. There were also a few students in that big class who just sat in the back and did not participate. Plickers might be best for smaller classes or very short reviews.
I also tried a Google forms quiz this week. I used some of the exact same questions that were on the Plickers quiz. The students who took the Plickers quiz seriously did well on the quiz and the students who didn't really participate did not do as well on the quiz. This was not surprising. Google forms is great because it cuts down on grading time for the more rote quizzes that are sometimes necessary. It went alright for the students who actually know how to get into the computers, but I had to print a few out for those who could not get into the computers. Yep. They still can't get in and it's almost October. Overall, I think the quiz was a success and I would do it again even if the students have a hard time with the computer lab.
3 Comments
Annotated bibliographies and literature reviews are very different, but I think writing an annotated bibliography can help make writing a literature review much easier. The first time I wrote an annotated bibliography was in sixth grade for my national history day project. We had to hand write every citation in MLA format on a note card and write our annotations on the back side of the card. Fast forward twelve years later and that method is just tattooed into my brain. I write down a source or put it into a bibliography on the computer and I automatically want to summarize the article so I can remember it for later. It makes sense to make some notes right away that are connected to the actual citation sense that is the part I am going to keep forever for my literature review references section.
Even though I think annotated bibliographies are great now, I definitely hated them in middle school. In fact, I never appreciated taking notes or writing itself until much later in my educational career. Doing an annotated bibliography and a literature review might seem like more work than just doing the lit review, but for me it actually reduces the amount of work I do overall. Sixth grade Rhea was not aware of this and just thought it was a lot of writing. My plan for this bigger literature review is to annotate my sources in Zotero and then use those annotations to guide my thematic literature review. That way I won't be up until 1 am the night before it is due, scrambling through my sources like I did in sixth grade. |
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