Using IXL to Drive Student Achievement

I  attended a webinar this morning given by Bobbi Bear of IXL.  After spending an hour with Bobbi, I felt inspired to share some of my biggest take-aways with those of you who are currently using this tool:

• Analytics is a new IXL feature.  It has several tabs that encourage the teacher to drive the instruction. The Skills tab allows you to see at a glance what question level your students are working on and what their current SmartScore is.  The Real Time Center tab makes it easy for the teacher to monitor on one screen what skills, questions, and time-on-task behaviors students are exhibiting.  The Trouble Spots and Question Log tabs give valuable insight about where students are struggling.  

• Instructors can now use a highlighting tool to visually mark a skill they want students to practice.

• SmartScore is just a measure of progress and should not be used in the grade book.

• Grade levels can be turned off to provide differentiated instruction.

• Audio can be turned on in the teacher settings for students in second grade and above. Pre-k through first grades have audio by default.

AND MY FAVORITE TAKEAWAY...

• The new Social Studies and Science component of IXL features comprehension tasks perfect for the ELA classroom (i.e. inferencing, drawing conclusions)

How do you use IXL in your classroom?  What features are especially helpful to you?  Please share in the comments section below.

Integrating Technology and Study Skills

image via Pixabay

In her recent blog post, Christina Karmecy, our elementary guidance counselor writes about Sean Covey's habit of synergy and the importance of staff collaboration in the school environment.  See Christina's post here.  Christina and I recently worked together to teach study skills to some of our upper elementary students.  This was a great opportunity for me.  Christina is extremely organized and has some inspiring, well-researched ideas.

Christina prepared a lesson to allow students to analyze the learning style or styles that would complement them personally.  Together with the students, we discussed each of these styles and some important study tips that would work for each one.  Throughout this discussion, I was able to suggest some technology tools that could be integrated for each style.  Here were a few of my suggestions:

Visual Learners-these learners learn best by seeing:

• Use applications such as Notability or Skitch to highlight or annotate your notes and photos.
• Create your own flashcards using Quizlet.
• Flowcharts or diagrams can be created using Google Drawings, Lucidchart and Popplet. 
• Pic Collage is a great tool to build visual timelines.  There are many great web applications as well.  
• Loupe Collage or the Word Clouds app will allow learners to turn words into a picture.  Matt Bergman of the Learn, Lead, Grow blog shares some inspiration here.

Auditory Learners-learn best by hearing:

• Use the voice to text feature available in many ios apps and now available in Google Docs as well.  Dragon Dictation is another useful tool for this.
• QuickVoice Recorder is a great tool for recording your reading or thoughts.
• Sweet Midi Player will allow the learner to put notes to music.  Here are some ideas for incorporating the Garage Band tool.

Kinesthetic Learners-learn best by moving and doing:

• Use Quizlet to build your own flashcards
• Many technology tools encourage creation.  Create your own study guide or tutorials using Educreations, Pic Collage, Popplet, Book Creator, Explain Everything or iMovie.
• Applications such as Fluidity, Kids Doodle, Writing Wizard, Doodle Buddy and  My Blackboard give learners various tactile experiences.
• Use built in smartphone timers to build in study breaks.

Our students use and learn via technology everyday. We need to meet them where they live.  Let's encourage them to try some of these technology integrated tips to study our classroom content. If you have additional suggestions, please add them using the comments section below so that we might all benefit. Please contact me if I can help you implement a tool or strategy.  Thank you for reading!