GoFormative PD (Supplemental Activity)
- Devin Heller
- May 3, 2019
- 4 min read
Summary
My first professional development session was different than I expected, but different in a good way. Currently, our district is 1:1 with tech devices from grades 6-12. But, we only have one technology integrator. Teachers in our district have had access to these devices for four years now and are becoming very skilled at incorporating technology effectively in their classrooms. Because of this, our administration (and technology director) congratulated us. They offered the staff the opportunity to showcase technology tools during an after school professional development session. Currently, I use a web-based application called GoFormative. This all-in-on tool is something I utilize on a weekly basis. I find it to be a very powerful tool that other teachers could definitely benefit from. Happily, I was the first teacher to volunteer to present a PD session for our middle school. I volunteered because I know how useful of a tool GoFormative is and how, when used effectively, it can increase engagement. It also provides more opportunities for useful student feedback in the classroom. Surprisingly, while the teachers have gotten better at incorporating technology in the classroom to enhance learning, as a staff we still struggled to find other volunteers to present their skills and tech tools. Why...why this lack of participation? Most likely because it was optional with no incentive for volunteering for your time after school. Sadly, I noticed a similar occurrence in the attendance and participation of teachers at my GoFormative session.
The Formative included a variety of the formative questions types and features including re-sequence, short answer, multiple selection, multiple choice, audio response, categorize, true and false, and even show your work. That's quite a variety. The teachers had a lot of fun exploring and imagining the possibilities of how to utilize this tool. You can check out my formative below. From attending numerous PD sessions in the past presented with the "sit-and-get" fashion, I knew I wanted to make my presentation hands-on. Right away, I decided that I was going to show them what GoFormative could offer. I designed a "Getting to Know GoFormative" Formative for the teachers in attendance. They went through this Formative as if they were students (I later found out they offer pre-made formatives for PD on the resource section of their website). As the teachers worked through the sample Formative, I walked around to answer any questions and noticed they were all enjoying themselves.
After the 15 minutes of "playtime" answering fun questions while exploring the variety of question types GoFormative offers, the audience was hooked. Next, I showed them a few more features, such as how you to tag questions by standard and how to track student data (which also can be grouped by standard). They really liked how the majority of the question types had an auto-grade feature that allows you to assign point values to each problem and also give partial credit when applicable. Math teachers at our high school love GoFormative especially for its show your work feature. This unique feature presents a great online learning platform for math. To close the session, I gave teachers QR codes of sample formatives from each content area that they could review as examples. Some of these formatives were made by me, some by other teachers in my school, and some were pulled from the Formative Library
Reflection
My first experience presenting a professional development session went better than expected. I'll admit, one thing that made me feel more comfortable was that only five teacher showed up, even though that is somewhat disheartening. An important takeaway for me from this experience is to not schedule a PD the Monday immediately following the Super Bowl. Additionally, I would incentivize teachers to come. Although I don't love to use the "carrot-and-stick" method, getting approval from the principal to auction off an early out chip (something that gets a teacher out of school 40 minutes early), or a gift card, etc. to those who attend, might give those who are considering coming the motivation they need to show up . Although I had a small group, I was prepared for a much bigger crowd... as a result, I left with way more of my QR-code handouts than expected. Overall, I believe the teachers that attended the session really enjoyed it and they have utilized GoFormative numerous times since then. Additionally, I did appreciate that two of the teachers who could not attend my Post-Super Bowl Monday GoFormative session, scheduled a time to meet with me during PLC in the weeks that followed. I would gladly do another PD session for my colleagues on other technology tools I use (Nearpod, Desmos, HP Reveal, Goosechase, etc...).
*Note: Because I use Formative for my class warm-ups, I introduced Hp Reveal by incorporating tags in my warm-ups the week before my action research unit.
Artifact
Image GoFormative Logo
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