K-12 School Zone

Belmonte Middle School in Saugus, Ma recently put togehter a massive MCAS Math Review competition for their whole 6th grade class.   The Jeopardy game template available online was used with about 30 to 40 math questions across the full range of strands covered by our curriculm.  Point values were added to each slide to correspond to the Jeopardy values.  We added some Jeopardy intro music to give it a little pizzaz. 

Process Improvement for Low-Performing Schools

Join APQC Education for a FREE Webinar to learn best practices to support your low-performing schools. Dr. Tina Rooks with Turning Technologies will discuss how process management can be applied to assessments to assist with turning around low-performing schools. Carolyn Talasek with APQC Education will explain DMAIC and some results .   Register Today!>>

Learn from this free Webinar:

Last chance to register for our K-12 Webinar with Dr. Mike Schmoker: Impact EVERY Student - Simplet Strategies that Provide Big Improvement.

Date: Friday, April 30th
Time: 2:00 PM Eastern
Cost: None

Learn more and sign-up to attend.  >>

I work with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture Cooperative Extension Service (sorry for the long title - I didn't name us).  Last year our SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (used to be the Food Stamps Program)) department purchased a set of 30 clickers, RF receiver, Response Anywhere Receiver and program software.  After a day of training, I was ready to go out and just click away.  Well after the clickers and all sat under my desk for the next 6 months, our directors asked about evaluations and how we were using this program toward evaluations.&

 After receiving the grant and using the responders for 4 months now, probably the most valuable thing I've used is converting Exam View tests into Turning Point Presentations. I have PowerPoint 2003

Steps

1) Create test in Exam View

2) Under the File menu Export the test in the WebCT 4.x/Vista3.0  format

3) Choose Formatting  HTML click OK

4) Open Turning point 2008

5) Under Tool choose the Turning Point Parser then click on the QTI Document

6) Choose the exported test file

If you are using TurningPoint and TurningPoint Anywhere with the same group of students, keeping the participant lists updated for both software products can be challenging. A better approach is to point TurningPoint Anywhere default folder stucture to TurningPoint folders. Take a look at the attached guide and let me know how it works!

I have attached two presentations, one for K12 and one for Higher Ed that show cases our new features.

If you are using GradeSpeed for your online gradebook, you can easily export a roster and import the roster into a TurningPoint participant list. I have attached two cheat sheets for each step of the process.

Join in on the content sharing beginning in our K12 Forum at http://www.turning-talk.com/forum/viewforum.p... Please share you content for other teachers to use and download content that can help with your students.

I had the pleasure of coming across the Jason Project which is an exceptional science program. In order to do it justice, I have copied their description from their about page:

I am interested in getting started to see what things can be done with some imagination and the clickers.I am also interested to try the response card which seemed to be a great way to do field trips and other types of quick responses

I had a lot to say the first time I tried to blog.  I just don't have it in me to repeat it all.  I am confused why it never showed up.

My first graders had their first experience with the clickers last week.  They seemed to enjoy it and caught on very quickly.  I look forward to learning more and putting all my new "toys"  (I mean tools ) in action!

Attached is an interesting article that was published in Educaiton Week regarding assessment. Let me know if you agree or disagree with these myths!

My first graders had their first experience with the clickers last week. I have to say they caught on quickly and had fun with it.  I was assisting Mr. Veon and it really seemed easy to manage. 

My first graders had their first experience with the clickers last week. I have to say they caught on quickly and had fun with it.  I was assisting Mr. Veon and it really seemed easy to manage. 

I wish I would have had the clickers when we went on our field trip to Hale Farm and Village.  It would have been an easy way for me to check on the students listening.  There was so much info pertaining to our Social Studies, it would have been a nice way to check understanding.

Maggie

Have you used Turning Point with Examview?

Which version of Examview? Any tips?

Can anyone smell the turkey and stuffing yet?!?  Hmmmm...that may not be my imagination.  I think it's one of the crockpots for our annual company Thanksgiving potluck coming up in just a couple of hours.  Yum!

Also we wanted to let you know a couple of adjustments in our standard hours.

Turning Technologies will close today at 5:00 pm EST and be closed both Thursday and Friday this week (November 26 & 27th) in observance of the Thanksgiving fun and festivities.

We will also close Friday, December 11th at 5:00 EST.

Bring...

1. Pretest of 20 questions

2. Multiple Choice or True/False

3. Questions are on something you will be teaching between Dec. and May.

4. Questions are based on specific benchmarks

5. You can bring the questions in any format you like. We will put them into Turning Point Format.

This technology has revolutionized the way teachers should look at assessment and understand how much deeper their teaching can be with the availability of time.   With the instant feedback, teachers are able to differentiate much sooner and more effectively.  I am excited to see what Turning Technologies has coming next.

I am a new user of Turning Point. I have had no difficulty in making a participant list in powerpoint 2003 but I cannot find any button or drop down list to then select the participant list. Where is it? thanks

Well, it seems my Halloween presentation I posted recently was well received, and I've gotten many requests for more of these presentations.  So, without further ado, here's my new Thanksgiving Trivia presentation.  Please feel free to download it and use it however you like.  There are notes at the bottom of many of the slides, describing how the hyperlinking, scoring and competition is working.  You can also change categories and questions to fit your needs (I created it with questions at the high school level).   

If you haven't heard the news, we have a new student response device option available - ResponseCard RF LCD.

ResponseCard RF LCD works with your existing receivers and includes an LCD screen that provides students with visual confirmation of selected response, channel setting and battery life.

For more info check out the Hardware Specs or contact your Account Executive.
-K.

Katherine Kahn
Communications Manager - Education Division
Turning Technologies

I am looking at the technical side of TurningPoint anywhere.  I need some information conerning installation and software requirements.  For instance, does TurningPoint Anywhere also require the installation of Turing Point? 

Any information would be helpful at this point.

How would you get to the Airport without a car of your own? (You cannot ask mom or dad to give you a ride)

Google offers a Librarian Quiz which is fun to use with faculty and students. Attached is the PDF of the quiz and answers as well as a TurningPoint presentation that can be used to easily administer the quiz with your TurningPoint systems.

We've just posted Dr. Mazur's 2nd TurningTalk article, Making Peer Instruction Work, which provides great strategies on how to successfully kick-off his effective teaching methodology with students.   

In addition, Dr. Mazur will be one of our keynote speakers at our Higher Education User Conference at UNLV, Las Vegas and our Featured Educatored in our next newsletter!

Does anyone know of any sites that has already made powerpoint presentations for Turningpoint?  Or just templates?

I looked at this sight and used Question Point but their seems like there would be much more out there.

For some of us the school year has already started and others the school year is just beginning. I really encourage users to start using participant lists as soon as they are comfortable with basic polling. This way you'll be able to track data and progress over time, from the beginning to the end of the school year. For those of you that have more than one class, consider this little trick for creating rosters without having to hand enter the device ID's for each class.

During a few recent meetings with teachers in the New England area, I learned of great ways to use TurningPoint Anywhere in the classroom.  One school uses this software to review homework assignments just by launching the software.  You don't really have to be connected to a projector.  Use the TurningPoint Anywhere Receiver to receive the answers from your students so you can decide which homework questions to review in more details.  Another school uses TurningPoint Anywhere to review a recent test in a similar fashion.  TurningPoint Anywhere is a quick and easy

I thought many of our users may enjoy my top fifty free Edugames PowerPoint. User our TurningPoint Anywhere Toolbar to transform these games into exceptional learning tools for whole class activities. Click the following link to access the PowerPoint http://www.box.net/shared/static/gr4hfgo9bv.pptx

Years ago I was a kindergarten teacher.  I loved to hear my students discuss their answers and ideas with each other.  However sometimes a simple direction like "discuss your answer with a neighbor", can lead to off task behavior.  Attached are some templates I created to help guide the discussion part of Peer Instruction (P.I.) with k-12 students.  If you try P.I. and use these templates, please provide any feedback so I can improve them for other users.

The Ed Tech Action Network is providing an easy way to support EETT funding which congress is about to cut by 63%. Use the following link to send a pre-composed email to your senator. The name and email of you senators will be provided after entering your contact information.

http://capwiz.com/edtech/issues/alert/?alertid=13735446 

We just now downloaded Turning Point Anywhere 2.0. It is a big improvement over the old version. What are some good ways to use it?

Turning Technologies is hosting an Edugaming Workshop July 21st in Orlando, Florida (Click here for more information). As I am preparing for this workshop, I thought many of our users may be interested in the free educational games we will be discussing during this workshop. I will begin by posting one of my favorite free games, Timez Attack.

We've just posted some great presentations and resources specifically for our K-12 users.  Last year's grant participants submitted multiple classroom TurningPoint presentations.  Thanks again!  In addition, we've posted a variety of TurningPoint game templates.

We will continue to add more resources over time, so check back!
-K.

Katherine Kahn
Communications Manager - Education Division
Turning Technologies

Even though it is summer, it's never too early to start thinking about the new school year.  We all know what the first week back for is really like.  So if you have a few minutes this summer try creating some TurningPoint PPT's or you can also use the new Question List feature in TurningPoint AnyWhere 2.0!

Here are just a few ideas for using clickers at the beginning of the school year:

-Getting to know you questions

-Class rule review game

-Clicker introduction/orientation

Interested in learning more about edugaming?  Dr. Chris Dede and Dr. Tina Sartori will be hosting a full day workshop - Serious Results From Serious Games - July 21st at Ocoee Middle School (30 minutes outside of Orlando, FL) focused on edugamings positive impact to student achievement.

Space is limited so get your registration in soon!

Learn more about the edugaming workshop. >>

-K.

The K-12 & Event Turning Team's are all geared up and ready for NECC next week!  If you're heading to DC, make sure you stop by and visit us at booth #3236.  We're having plenty of giveaways - which no one would let me snag! lol - and a some great featured presentations listed below.

Featured Presentations:

For anyone who still hasn't updated to TurningPoint 2008, please read the end of life notification for TurningPoint 2006.  Beginning August 31, 2009, TurningPoint 2006 will no longer be available for download or sale either domestically or internationally.
-K.

Woo-hoo!  If you haven't heard yet, TurningPoint AnyWhere 2.0 is available for download for both Mac and PC.  It has a variety of new updates/enhancements, and the interface really looks great.

It's Friday.  School is either out or almost out, so I'm sure most of you are probably reaching for your beach towels about now, but...

Next week Study Island's offering a free webinar related to their integration with our student response systems.  If you're interested, details are below.

Don't forget the sunscreen! :-)
-K.

Date:  Wednesday, June 17, 2009

We're working hard to get these tutorials completed for TurningPoint Anywhere Mac and PC.  We're nearly finished with the Mac tutorials, and hope to have them done by the time the software is released.  The PC ones might be a few days behind, but I think everyone will be pleased with them. 

As for me, I'm getting ready to head to NC State next week, and will continue with a very busy month on the road.  This looks like it's going to be a crazy summer in the training department!

Clayton Christensen's book "Disrupting Class" is a call to action for educators to use technologies in innovative ways in order to customize their teaching to meet the needs of the students. Clearly the implementation of iPod Touches or iPhones can offer K-20 an innovative tool for disrupting the norms of education.

Webinar resources from our Spring 09 Series are now online.  I've also posted all questions submitted during the webinars to the TurningTalk forums for feedback and further discussion since we were not always able to get through the entire list during the one hour sessions.

Over 1,000 users registered to attend.  Thank you to all attendees for your  valuable feedback.