(1888PressRelease)
January 19, 2008 - With 31 years of teaching behind him, six of which he has spent at Barming, John believes that through healthy classroom competition, in the form of quizzes, teachers are able to identify and monitor their pupils’ patterns of ability regularly. He feels that this ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ style voting system, adds value to the efforts of the teacher, helping to make challenging subjects like maths more interesting for children; motivating them all regardless of their ability or learning style. He explains how it can be used as a teaching tool across National Curriculum subjects and to discuss wider issues surrounding school life, so responding to the Pupil Voice.
Set up by the National Society in 1854, one of Barming Primary School’s current aims is to create an environment in which learning is natural and enjoyable, enabling pupils to realise their full potential in academic and social development. When Qwizdom’s Q5 RF* remote handset was installed into two Year 5 classes at the school in March, it brought a range of benefits to the pupils. It was bought through the Borough’s consortium, a Cluster of 22 schools, which received Government funding for the handsets through the ‘Hands on Support’ initiative. John’s enthusiasm for the technology has led him to train others. It is being used with interactive whiteboards at the school although it has been designed to operate on single PCs or laptops as well.
Schools minister Jim Knight recently announced that all 11-year-olds must leave primary school with a higher level of reading, writing and maths skills that they need in order to properly benefit from the broader, richer secondary curriculum that is being introduced next year. He emphasised that in order to achieve this, teaching needs to be relevant and engaging. John feels that Qwizdom offers an ideal way of reaching this goal. He comments: “With an average of 28 pupils in each class there is a great need for whole-class participation. Qwizdom provides a really entertaining way to encourage this and is making a huge difference to children’s motivation to learn. They can vote anonymously and answers are evaluated as a class so even shy pupils can join in!” There are two Leading ICT teachers in the Cluster who are developing their own expertise so that they can then support the other schools and the Cluster has a further four sets of Qwizdom handsets available for all schools to use. This allows schools to find out how useful the Qwizdom handsets are for assessment tasks before committing funds to purchase them.
“Science revision will never be dull again with Qwizdom”, John continues. He has used the voting system to assess pupils’ knowledge at the beginning of a science unit and then again at the end of the unit to see what improvement the pupils have made. He adds: “The instant marking feature of the handset has made a big difference – it affects how you teach because you receive test results so quickly. This has great potential for SATs revision.” The same goes for maths homework. John gives his pupils weekly maths homework in the form of a 15-question worksheet and they look forward to coming to in to mark their answers. John comments: “It is useful to see each child’s answers and spot their strengths and weaknesses.” The system’s flexibility allows teachers to pose a range of question types that require the pupils to think for themselves and input their answer, rather than simply choose an existing multiple choice answer. John comments: “By asking different types of questions, pupils are constantly kept on their toes and challenged to come up with a range of responses.”
Among other activities, the school has used this engaging tool for a history visit to Dover Castle. The pupils were tested on their knowledge of the castle before the trip and then again after the trip. John comments: “Qwizdom was great for including everybody on this trip. I think it is suitable for all ages and it is certainly ideal for Year 5s because they love the handsets; they’ve really taken to them as though they were playstations!” John also uses Qwizdom for conducting spelling tests across the ability range and has seen evidence of pupils achieving better results when using the technology. He adds: “It’s the excitement of using a voting system to answer the spelling tests that encourages everybody to have a go.” The Q5 RF handset allows pupils to enter text or short-word answers so it can be used for spelling or grammar tests. With every child’s answer being recorded on the Excel marksheet, it is possible to identify if the same spelling error has been made by a significant group or just one or two individuals, so achieving a gap analysis for each and every test. This allows the teacher to plan more effectively for future lessons.
Qwizdom can also be used to explore wider issues outside of the curriculum. At a recent children’s conference involving all the Cluster schools, questions were created to find out whether children are happy at school and their attitudes to school and learning. John comments: “These sorts of sensitive questions require a high degree of confidentiality because some children do not want to put their hands up and speak in front of their peers. With Qwizdom, these answers are recorded anonymously and we can get far more inclusion of all the children in a class.”
In addition to advocating Qwizdom within Barming Primary School, John has gone one step further by delivering presentations to Special Needs Specialists from other schools in the Cluster. He has been discussing the benefits of Qwizdom for gathering information from children about a wide range of attitudes to learning and other aspects of life at school.
The school is in discussion about using Qwizdom on parents’ evenings to gather parents’ responses to various aspects of their child’s learning and their opinions on the school. John comments: “Using the Qwizdom software means that transferring survey responses to a spreadsheet where the results can be used for analysis takes seconds and saves hours spent inputting data responses from a paper-based survey.”
John concludes: “It has been an amazing experience to see how the children have welcomed Qwizdom in the classroom and how intuitively they work with it. They just get on with it and are confident with all of its functions, which in turn boosts their motivation to learn. One thing I will emphasise is the importance of providing appropriate training for teachers so that they can make the most out of it in their class. I would advise other schools to try a range of handsets and see which one works best for them. The Qwizdom website has video tutorials and provides excellent support to ensure that teachers can make good use of the devices and so we can focus on assessing what the children are learning.”
For more information on Qwizdom, please visit the web site at www.qwizdom.co.uk, tel: 02890 485 075 or send an e-mail to gary.morrison ( @ ) qwizdom dot co.uk.
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