MQlicker - Previewing a lesson

This week, in my technology class for Spanish teachers, we were talking about Standards for students and teachers in relation to the use of technology in the classroom. The chapter we read in the book: DuBravac (2013), Technology in the L2 Curriculum, discussed the ACTFL standards and the ISTE NETS for students and teachers. We also talk about the ACTFL 21st century skills map. Students read the chapter at home and I prepared a presentation using Empressr to discuss the topic. Before the lecture, I previewed the lesson by eliciting from students words related to the standards for students and teachers. For this preview of the topic, I use the tool: MQlicker. I found out about this tool via Nick Peachy. He wrote a wonderful post talking about the features MQlicker offers to teachers in order to assess/poll students using their mobile devices or laptops. I prepared a quiz with ten questions. Some of the questions were open text, students had to provide words associated with the standards. Other questions were multiple selection in which students had to report about their findings in a survey they administered to their students about the use of technology in the classroom. I also included an open text question about a surprising fact they found out about their students' use of technology. At the end of the survey I included a short video about what 21st century students need in their classrooms (Engage me!) and asked students to provide names of tools to address what students in the video needed - open text question.

When students finished completing the quiz, I showed the results to the class. For the open text questions, I selected the option Word Cloud to show the results. A word cloud presented the words they provided related to the standards so we could discuss the more frequent ones and what they meant.

For the open question related to the surprising data in their surveys, I showed the results as a sticky board to read the different comments and elaborate on this information.

For the multiple selection questions, I showed the results as charts that showed the most frequent option selected by the students. We discussed about some trends like the fact that students did no want to use Facebook in their Spanish class.

I believe that showing real data from the participants in the class and their students for a quick analysis and discussion was a refreshing way to preview and discuss the topic of our class. Participation was greatly encouraged by the data collected and presented through MQlicker.