LOTEHAT 2 PROJECTINVESTIGATION SHOWCASE 2012Name: Felix Siddell

School Name: St Columba’s College, Essendon

Investigation Title: Using Apps for Motivation and Formative Assessment with Middle School Language Students

WHAT I DID:

Surveyed my classes to find out how many students already owned portable devices such as iphones and ipods

Arranged with Help Desk to provide wifi connection for these students

Developed some simple Socrative activities based on the materials covered in class (Italian 9 but also French 9)

Practised these activities in class using ipods and laptop computers

Purchased seven ipod touches to supplement devices which were not available at school, ensuring that all students had access during my Italian and French classes

Used Socrative activities extensively for practice, revision, checking of class work, correction of homework, exit ticket, competitive games such as space race

WHAT I LEARNT: The Socrative app provided me with a more detailed picture of

how well my students understood the structures and vocabulary covered in the course by tracking the accuracy of their answers

I could also discern the level of engagement in real time (as Socrative shows the number of participants)

These activities were useful for engaging the class in some of the repetitive “drilling” activities which are necessary in a Language class

While the distraction factor was greatly reduced, there were nevertheless some students who were not fully committed even when working with technology, so ICT is not the silver bullet but a new dimension to the resources at our disposition

Teachers wishing to use technology in class still face obstacles, even in schools which are highly committed to ICT. These can relate to the administration of the budget, the reliability of wifi connection, imperfections in the apps or programs being used or accessibility of hardware

WHERE TO FROM HERE:

Continue using the Socrative app to find more ways of integrating it with other more traditional resources (verbal instructions, whiteboard, writing, textbooks) to create interesting combinations of teaching and learning strategies

Get a small team of committed students to work on developing their own simple apps based on the course content covered in Year 9 this year

At the conclusion of the project see what effect this project has had on retention of Language students from Year 9 to 10