January 10 - Survey Says ...

We've survived the first week back from the winter holidays and it looks like everyone's hit the ground running. The focus for my lessons for that week was reflection. I had my students, using Survey Monkey if they were in grades 5-8 and using the SMART Board Senteo Response system if they were in grades 1-4, answer a few questions about how the scheduled ICT team-teaching model has been for them. I still need to analyze the results for grades 1-6, but I printed out the intermediate division results and sat down with a fistful of markers to highlight common threads. Here are some of the main findings.

From the list of nine technology tools we used in term 1, there were two items that ranked as "very useful to learning" by the students and staff: PBWorks Wiki, our online collaborative workspace, and the SMART Board Senteo Response system, our "clickers" for answering multiple choice questions on the interactive whiteboard.

Grade 7-8 students were asked what they liked about the structure and content of the collaborative ICT classes. Five common themes were:
- the number of teachers, having more than one teacher in the class
- the variety of programs used and the variety of subjects integrated with ICT
- time to finish class assignments, to explore programs, to work on items of their choosing
- the ability to share and communicate with their classmates
- the chance to access many of these tools from home

The same students were asked to state what they'd change about the structure and content of ICT, and recommend things that they would like to do and learn for ICT in term 2. Four common recommendations emerged:
- permission to listen to music on headphones while they work
- more time (double periods, periods twice in a 5 day schedule, time to work on things)
- computer issues (slow network, get a wireless hub, etc.)
- learn more or less (fewer or more programs, new or revisit programs)

I appreciate how the students took the survey seriously, and the teachers and I will meet (somehow, at some time in between report card writing and unit planning) to see how we can implement their suggestions. I have a feeling the headphones are going to get a lot more use in term 2!