Have to give credit to Mr Grieve who told me about an app that I might like to use in class.
The app in question was Gojimo.
This is a really good free app to engage students in revision activities in the classroom (and indeed outside of the classroom).
Put simply this is an app that poses multiple choice quiz questions to students, which doesn't sound too impressive. However the app organises questions into sub-sections that reflect units, and furthermore elements of units, for the course they are studying. The app also provides students with content when they have answered the question, either reaffirming what they got right, or explaining why they got the answer wrong.
I have used the app with YR11-YR13 students, with possibly the most pleasing response from YR11.
As students entered the room they were faced with the following questions:
The answers were yes and they were good at explaining how this would help them to be successful in the summer.
I then connected an iPad to the projector and showed them the app and how to use it.
The rest of the lesson was very simple. Students had the rest of the time, about 50 minutes, to attempt as many quizzes as possible in groups of 3. They had to do the quizzes in a 10 question format (you can alter how many questions there are on each quiz) and they could pick whether to do random tests or specific topics. As an added incentive any group who got 100% on a quiz was awarded a green card (one group earned 3 green cards in the lesson).
Firstly I was impressed by how engaged the entire group was for the 50 minutes, not once did I catch a student on anything but Gojimo and secondly it was really good to hear the students talking about what topics they were feeling more confident about and which topics had now been highlighted as areas to re-visit.
Several of the group returned the following lesson to inform me of how they had been using Gojimo over the weekend for business and their other subjects, which is testament to how good the app is.
With my stronger YR12 and YR13 students (who were also engaged by the app) I added in an extra challenge, which was to get them to set a time limit of 10 seconds per question to force them to think quickly, again this time limit can be done in the app.
Next steps:
I hope to share this app with colleagues at the upcoming learning group, to see if it is as good for their subjects as it appears to be for Business.
Would
you like 1,021 quiz questions that test your understanding of topics across
both units?
How
would this benefit you?
The answers were yes and they were good at explaining how this would help them to be successful in the summer.
I then connected an iPad to the projector and showed them the app and how to use it.
The rest of the lesson was very simple. Students had the rest of the time, about 50 minutes, to attempt as many quizzes as possible in groups of 3. They had to do the quizzes in a 10 question format (you can alter how many questions there are on each quiz) and they could pick whether to do random tests or specific topics. As an added incentive any group who got 100% on a quiz was awarded a green card (one group earned 3 green cards in the lesson).
Firstly I was impressed by how engaged the entire group was for the 50 minutes, not once did I catch a student on anything but Gojimo and secondly it was really good to hear the students talking about what topics they were feeling more confident about and which topics had now been highlighted as areas to re-visit.
Several of the group returned the following lesson to inform me of how they had been using Gojimo over the weekend for business and their other subjects, which is testament to how good the app is.
With my stronger YR12 and YR13 students (who were also engaged by the app) I added in an extra challenge, which was to get them to set a time limit of 10 seconds per question to force them to think quickly, again this time limit can be done in the app.
Next steps:
I hope to share this app with colleagues at the upcoming learning group, to see if it is as good for their subjects as it appears to be for Business.
