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Filed under: K-12

10 SAT Study Solutions

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College entrance exams are seen by some to be the great equalizer.  In an attempt to counter grade inflation or resolve grade nonequivalence across schools, many universities turn to these exams to determine acceptance.  The debate rages on the fairness of these exams, but they currently remain a part of our nation's high-stakes testing giving both students and parents alike a grand dose of angst.

With the next two test dates approaching (May 5th and June 2nd), so loom these tests for many seniors, maybe juniors, and perhaps even the intrepid sophomore. What are your study options? You could hire a personal tutor or take an online preparation course, but perhaps all the prepping you need could be found in one of these online tools, or how about an app making it easy to study on-the-go. Check out this list of 10 possible choices:

 1.  Collegeboard.org - this should be one of your first online stops to get prepared for the SAT.  From getting registered to getting insight on specific test sections, the site can give you the information you need to develop your plan to attack your studying.  The site provides free sample questions to full SAT tests for you to practice your skills.  The clear and graphically -filled site provides you with the practice, practice, practice that can get you to that score you've been hoping for.

 2. Quizlet (free) - online flashcard generator.  No need to create your own bank of SAT vocabulary flashcards just choose from the hundreds of created flashcard banks to pump up your personal dictionary.   One of the more difficult challenges that students face on the reading section of the SAT is the vocabulary.  Quizlet provides a number of ways to learn ranging from the traditional flashcard look to games and tests.

 3. SAT Connect (free, currently) - this app is available for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. Provides a comprehensive review with diagnostic tests, practice, and review opportunities. The vocabulary builder has a flashcard-type mode or a list format.  It is also full of little tidbits like test format, timing, order of difficulty, pacing, and so much more.
(Available at Apple App Store)

 4.  SuperKids - if you're old school, try this site.  It provides a guide to some of the traditional software available for college board exam review.  The site gives you a review of the software's capabilities, compatibilities, and cost.

 5. Adapster ($9.99) - if your math needs brushing-up, here's an iPhone app that creates a personalized lesson review based on the results of a diagnostic test.  Practice, review, and test according to your needs with this app, since it monitors input to create output that suits you.  
(Available at Apple App Store)

 6. SAT Vocab Challenge Vol. 2, by the Princeton Review ($4.99) - challenge yourself on the 250 most frequently encountered words on the SAT.  There are games, reviews, and monitoring within this app.  Wonder how you're doing, this app will track your progress so you can review the vocabulary you've learned.
(Available at Apple App Store)

 7. Kaplan SAT Flashcubes (free) - gives you many ways to study your vocabulary, self study, multiple choice, or custom lists.  Increasing your SAT score may rest on improving your vocabulary, and this app helps you do it by keeping track of your responses and generating reports to refocus your study.
(Available at Apple App Store)

8. SAT Sentence Prep TestBank (4.99) - Here's an Android app that helps with the sentence completion section of the exam.  Although this app has many great features, such as multiple choice questions, tracking of your performance, and advice and tips, what makes it even better are the explanations why answers are correct!

 9. SAT Math ($4.99) - this is your choice for Android users.  This app provides quizzes, solution explanations, and monitors a users performance to continuously provide review of areas of weakness.  If even the word "math" makes you break out in a cold sweat, then a mobile app may be your solution to everywhere, anytime studying.

 10. Flash of Genius ($2.99) - This Android app has been written by SAT and GRE Harvard and MIT tutors.  This app tracks your performance and also gives your audio for correct pronunciation of words. 

Good News for Promethean ActivBoard and ActivInspire Users!

The latest version of Promethean's ActivInspire software now supports the ability to embed HTML in your Flipcharts ... so what? Well, that means you can now easily integrate Poll Everywhere with your Promethean interactive whiteboard!

Here's how:

First, you want to make sure you've updated to the latest version of ActivInspire (1.6.47432 at the time of this post). You can do this by opening the help menu and selecting 'Check for updates...'

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Next, you'll need to grab the necessary embed code for your poll. This can be found under the 'Share and Publish' menu when viewing a poll by clicking the 'Blog or webpage' link. You're going to want to copy the code for the 'Live Chart Widget.' (Note: The width and height parameters of the poll are contained in this object. You may need to adjust these to make the poll legible when embedded in your Flipchart.)

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Now, open the Insert menu in ActivInspire and select 'Embedded HTML' from the 'Link' section. Then just paste the code copied from the 'Live Chart Widget'. Notice in this example we've changed the height and width parameters to be larger, so our chart won't be too small when embedded in the Flipchart.

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Success! The embedded poll will receive and display live votes as long as you have an internet connection.

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You can edit the embedded object in ActivInspire by clicking the blue bar or clicking and dragging to select it. This will allow you to move, resize, and adjust the object's properties.

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Is Open Source an Option?

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It isn't a secret that school budgets are shrinking, and often one of the first areas hit is the technology account.  The question is how to create a 21st century learning environment while still balancing the costs that go with it.  One alternative may be to turn to open source software (OSS) in place of commercial software.  Although the open source choices that districts have before them are immense, many districts still prefer commercial software.  Maybe it's the name brand appeal, a concern about the quality of free software, or just a lack of knowledge about what is available for use, but the choice does exist, but is it right for your district?

Maybe it's economy driven, but the popularity of open source software in schools continues to grow and may hold the answer for some cash-strapped districts.  The Journal provides a great review of Learning Management Systems that many school districts have turned to.  Through an analysis of Moodle vs Sakai, or even cloud-based solutions, this article makes the argument for open source remedies that can save districts money and provide freedom from licenses. Learning Management Systems can enhance content delivery but can also be costly, running into the thousands, making OSS an attractive substitute.  

Open Source Schools is a site that focuses on the possibilities that open source software can provide to schools.  Whether your district is looking at full or partial acceptance of open source, the "Software Directory" on this site is worth giving some time.  It gives free alternatives to some expensive proprietary software including great introductory programming software such as Scratch, and vector drawing programs such as Inkscape. 

This site for the Kim Komando Show has a list chock-full of freeware and web tools for both school and business.  It covers stargazing, calculators, and plagiarism, to many, many more topics.  Here's a no nonsense listing of useful tools that any district could find useful.  It's also a user-friendly site with links and operating system compatibility.

Does it meet the needs of the district?  The answer to this question is of course the most important element to consider.  If an open source alternative can be substituted for costly commercial software, perhaps this is the time to give it some thought before students are left out of the technology loop.  Although there are some districts that have been fortunate and able to purchase entire suites for their schools, the problem remains what happens when students leave school and those applications are not on their home computers?  Open source can bridge the gap between home and school.  Perhaps the idea of switching a district's entire operating system to an open source alternative is not appealing; however, the pressure on a school's budget can still be eased with individual open source solutions. 

Our students must compete with a global population, a population that will not stop learning and innovating because U.S. districts have stagnated funding.  Finding new ways to continue to keep our students competitive is vital and OSS has grown and matured to become a viable consideration. 

No Email Address? No Problem! - Registering Participants or Students Without Email Accounts

There are two main ways to register and identify your respondents: An invitation link that you share and importing participants via uploading a list. (Need a quick review? Check out our last participant post here.) This post will discuss how to register participants, when you don't have an email address for them.

You can also identify voters in a quick & easy (but less formal and organized) way by using free-text polls to gather personally identifying information and cross-tabulating responses across other polls by using our reporting feature. Read about this more casual, quick approach here.

Presenters, meeting planners, and teachers already have a full list of who should be allowed to participate on their polls. Registering your respondents allows you to identify their responses and restict your polls to only allowing votes from people on the list. To upload this list into the system you'll need to create a .CSV file with your participant data seperated into specified columns. We show you the necessary order of these columns.

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Only email, first name, and last name are required. You can also include a password, a US phone number, and a "responding as" identifier for example a nickname or student id. Remember, you can set a default password for all of your participants or even copy the last name column into the password column on import to make login easier as well!

Hold the phone! You just said "No Email Address? No Problem!" What if I don't know my participants' email addresses, or they don't have one (like some K12 students). 

Well, turn that frown upside down gentle reader. While we do require an email address, we don't require that email address to be certified or even real for the account to function. What does this mean? It means if you have participants without a known email addresses, we suggest you make them up!

How do they login to the system to then vote?

You would to tell each participant what email you used for them if they don't know which one it is already. If you set a default password for all imported participants, you'll also need to tell them that too. The one exception to this is if people are responding via text message and you have supplied a valid US phone number. In that case, the mere act of responding via text message from that handset means our system knows who they are from your uploaded list (no "logging in" or "password required" in the case of sending a text message).

Won't they need to be able to receive email when they forget their password?

Here's a suggestion. It's simple to create one email address that can act like hundreds by using the plus sign. That way a password reset link can find it's way to you. For example:

Besides, in the event of a forgotten password, you can always reset it for them from your list of registered participants.

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Looks like you have a .CSV file to go work on. Cheers!

 

 

 

SOPA PIPA and the Classroom Use of Digital Media

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Wednesday's blackouts by companies like Wikipedia and Reddit have raised much needed awareness about the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Act. If you would like to do your part to support freedom of speech and prevent internet censorship, please visit americancensorship.org. As the debate continues, let's take some time to review the current state of digital media in the classroom.

The Internet provides access to a vast source of information, some of which ends up in classrooms. Multimedia projects have become a popular addition to classroom assignments. Their use, however, raises questions about the legal and ethical use of images, video, and audio obtained from the Internet. What are the limitations and restrictions to the use of media in the classroom? What are teachers allowed to use for instruction and what are students allowed to use for classroom projects? These questions and their answers need to be considered by teachers to avoid messy copyright violations.

Teachers can visit the site of the United States Copyright Office to read about the law that should be followed in the use of digital media. Although the site is full of legalese, there are a number of other sites that provide a quick reference chart for classroom use. Teachers should make students aware that not everything on the web is free to copy, download, and use at their discretion. Although education has been given a somewhat greater leniency with regard to the use of copyrighted material through fair use, it is vital that teachers know what those limitations are.

Teachers should encourage students to search and utilize media that is within the public domain or with creative commons licenses that provide freedom of use explicitly stated by the author. The exploration, ideas, and creativity of students does not need to be stifled by copyright laws, instead they can be redirected and schooled in the ethical use of material originated by others.

 

Some Practical Applications from Educators

The end of the year gives us a chance to recap a year of innovation, as well as recharge for a strong, six-month push to the end of school year. Whether a teacher, parent, or student, check out some tech education issues, catch up on educators in the classroom, or add to your digital backpack with some tech tools!

Sample Poll from Article
The blog post, Musing Mathematically gives a great example of content-area-specific uses for Poll Everywhere : "What is the slope of a line passing through (-6,6) and (-4,0)?"  When the focus of a professional development meeting switched to SMS text message polling, this math teacher explored the Poll Everywhere site and quickly found the ease with which polls are created. Best of all, this post outlines "Five Benefits" derived from using Poll Everywhere in the math class that can easily be translated to any subject area.

Economics textbook
The ideas continue with Musings about Teaching Economic.  An Economics teacher suggests Poll Everywhere as a backchannel using the sites open-ended format.  An instructor prompts students to submit questions or comments during a lecture, which can be included in the lesson either in real time or when the instructor chooses.   A backchannel also provides an opportunity for student-to-student discussions, all occurring before their eyes.  It provides the ability to interact with all students texting in or provide a collective experience for distance learning.  This is a great suggestion that can help a teacher get a sense of how well students are understanding a lesson.


Interested?  Watch this demo on creating a poll and receiving results.  This video goes beyond the free version that many teachers currently use; so if you've ever wondered what a paid plan would include, then check this out.  From registering participants for assessment purposes to creating spreadsheets for data comparison over a period of time, this video can give you that info.

Fairfax Times
 A teacher in Virginia made the news in the Fairfax Times! Frank Franz of Madison High School posed a question of the day to begin his class and had his students respond by texting responses via their cell phones.   Using Poll Everywhere, Mr. Franz displayed his question and the entire class watched as responses were displayed on the screen in front of them.  His motivation is about "Attracting students’ attention and getting them to focus early in the class," and students have responded positively through engagement and connection with his lessons.

Mr. Franz wasn't the only tech savvy teacher featured in the Fairfax Times, two Hayfield Secondary School teachers, Ken Halla and Deirdre Forgione, are using blogs to connect with students.  Mr. Halla has increased his students' engagement by incorporating blogs on history and government in his lessons.  Ms. Forgione uses blogs and Twitter to display and promote her students' artwork to others.

Technology is a tool that teachers can use to capture the interests of students. Once interested, technology can be used to transform passive students to active students that are taking responsibility for their learning through the analysis, manipulation, and presentation of their skills.

 

Sites to See

Quick and straightforward, this post suggests five sites that are a great way to introduce and use cell phones in the classroom.  Familiarity with cell phones makes their integration seamless and students become excited at the prospect of their use.   As school budgets tighten, cell phones can serve as an alternative to expensive technology.

 

Battling Bans

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Two teachers, Lisa Nielsen and Willyn Webb, have united to coauthor a book, Teaching Generation Text: Using Cell Phones to Enhance Learning. Fighting the ongoing battle of cell phone classroom bans, Webb has integrated cell phone use to enhance her instruction.  She silently pushed the restrictions by adding cell phone activities in her lessons, and quickly found them to be engaging tools for her students.  Her successful implementation eventually won over her principal.

Nielsen's obstacles are greater in a citywide, school cell phone ban imposed by local government.  Nielsen argues that schools are missing out on the resources available on the web, many of which can bridge the digital divide between the haves and the have-not schools.  She identifies Poll Everywhere as one of those resources that schools can be substituting for expensive clicker response systems.  She also has found administrative uses for cell phones.

This article reminds us that teachers are looking for innovative and creative ways to provide instruction daily.  Cell phones are a practical means to achieve that goal.  Allowing teachers to incorporate them in lessons provides another way to increase student achievement and empower teachers.

 

Attitude Switch

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This is an insightful article by Eric Sheninger.  Mr. Sheninger is the principal at New Milford High School in New Jersey and writes about how his attitude on the value of Web 2.0 tools in schools has dramatically shifted from one of wariness to one of promotion. He candidly admits once enforcing restrictions to technology that many districts implement today and explains how he came to move from that position.

Although school districts, within the past few years, have made great financial investments in technology, these purchases have come with restrictions that have made it very difficult for teachers and students to properly utilize the devices to their potential.  In fact, many districts proudly point to their purchases as evidence of their commitment to 21st century learning.  The question remains, is a purchase evidence of a commitment or is it merely an interest? 

Mr. Sheninger has moved beyond interest and truly committed his district to developing 21st century learning with his students.  He has also reached out to the district's stakeholders with this same commitment and has engaged them through Twitter and Facebook.  His philosophy on the use of social media in schools is refreshing and perhaps can help other districts develop a greater level of comfort with their own technology uses.  Additionally, he has promoted the use of Poll Everywhere as a tool to engage and create enthusiasm in students.  As part of this article, Mr. Sheninger provides a link to an event where he speaks to this issue.  Not only is this article a must-read, this video is a must-see!

 

Calling All Educators!

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What is your opinion about the use of cell phones in the classroom?

Whether in a K-12 or university setting, this is ongoing debate. There are many educators that find them to be a distraction for students while others who find them an invaluable technology that enhances lessons.

"Power Up" or "Dead Zone" - Weigh in with your experience!

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