Reviewing Interactive Systems for The Classroom

In my Education Technology class we spent a week exploring various unique interactive systems that can be implemented into classrooms to make activities and learning super fun and engaging for students. In this post I am going to have four categories, Student Use, Diagnostic Feedback, Flexibility/Variety of Questions, and Teacher Use. These were the categories we used to rate the interactive systems. I will be discussing which of the interactive systems I liked the best and thought fit into these categories the best as well as some of the ones that had features that didn’t work so great. The interactive systems that we tested out include Poll everywhere, Padlet, Socrative, Spiral, Plickers, Pear deck, Kahoot, Quizlet.live, Wizer, and Smart Lab activities.

Student Use

I found that all of the systems were all generally really easy to access for students to participate. All of them are accessible from a mobile smartphone or handheld device such as a tablet as well as desktops and laptops, depending on what grade you are teaching and if they have their own phones to use. One of the best system as far as students use and inclusion goes I would personally say is the Smart Lab activities. This is a feature that comes along with the program Smart Notebook that teachers can download. Teachers can pick some already pre-made templates for games and customize them with questions that relate to what the students are learning. The Smart Lab activities include students of all ages whether they have their own device or not. Teachers can pull up the activity on a smart board and students have the option to connect with their hand held devices and answer that way, or if it is a younger elementary grade students can take turns going up to the board to answer that way. The only interactive system that I found more difficult to use as a student on a hand held device was Padlet. It was much slower on a smartphone or iPad versus a computer and the viewing abilities were limited.

Teacher Use

The great thing about all of these interactive systems is that the large majority of them are FREE for teachers to create accounts on and use. Some of them provide the option to pay to upgrade for premium features however, there are so many creative options available for teachers by just using a free account. Socrative was one system that is free to use and also has a paid version for around 39.99 a year. The paid version allows the teacher to keep more than one classroom open at a time instead of switching in and out of the online classrooms. I personally found the teacher version of this program had a confusing layout to create and work and would not recommend to anyone who is a beginner with technology. Pear deck is another program that has a free version and a more expensive version and what I found to be an advanced program. Pear deck costs 150$ for the year for all of the features. Pear deck is a very unique program that really allows you to customize your lessons and activities from scratch, if you are up for the challenge and love technology it is worth the money! However, if you are not super comfortable with technology and looking for a cheaper, easy to use option that still provides a lot of variety all the other above programs are great alternatives!

Flexibility/Variety of Questions

Wizer is a really neat way to customize worksheets for students and make them more interactive than just handing students a piece of paper. I found out of all the programs this one was the best well-rounded program as far as a variety of questions. Teachers can create multiple choice questions, short answer, matching, sorting, and labelling and use maps. The website also has a community feature where you can access an assortment of worksheets made by a variety of people on various topics that they have shared to allow others to use. Some programs such as Kahoot and Plickers only allow for multiple choice questions. With Kahoot, as much as I love this program, also only puts the answers in word form on the screen at the front of the class and students can only seen the matching colours on their devices. For students who like to have the words right in front of them, Wizer eliminates this problem.

Diagnostic/Feedback

Almost all of the programs provide feedback for the teacher on a separate viewing screen that they can evaluate separately on their own time or freeze the screen at the front of the classroom and view the students results right as they come in or immediately after everyone is finished. Student answers on Pear deck, Poll Everywhere, Plickers and Spiral are all programs where students can answer and have their results presented anonymously if the teachers wishes. The teacher of course can still see each students individual answer on a separate viewing screen or at the end in the collected data. Kahoot is one program where the teacher cannot view how the final results of each student. The results of how many questions were answered correctly are sent to the students handheld device that they use and allows the students to provide feedback on the Kahoot and this is available for the teacher to view. Smart lab is another program where neither the teacher or students can see individual scores. Smart lab is better suited as a fun class activity to complete together.

 

Overall, each interactive program will have its pros and cons depending on what you wish to use it for and teach. I have personally tried and used each program and I found that each one has something unique to offer that another doesn’t. Incorporating these programs into your classroom will definitely introduce some new creative lessons and I highly recommend that every teacher tries Plickers (that one was my favourite). The best way to discover which system will best suit your lesson and ideas is by trial and error. Research ahead of time various reviews by other teachers and then creating an account and seeing what the program has to offer is the most effective way to discover if the program will best deliver what you want.