Classkick: “learning skyrockets with instant student feedback”

Yeah feedback! Classkick looks great.

I especially like the feature where students can help each other. There is a degradation of quality: kids provide answers instead of hints, and they also provide wrong answers, but hey, life is like that and we prolly get more energy overall from such an environment and energy is good.

Agreed, not sure how much use it will get. I have a so-called “Study Group” feature and I have the same hopes for that but I also wonder if it will catch on. My one fun thought is that it would give those of us nerds who aced Algebra a chance to be a hero to other kids for once by answering Qs. We will see. I suspect it will turn out like Stack Exchange where I never ask a question because someone else has already asked it and the answer they got was the answer I needed.

Concerns: So is Miss Kay staying by her keyboard all night while the kids do their homework? Will she be chained to her desk while kids are working in class instead of mingling with the kids?

Will they raise their hands if they make a careless mistake? Why? They do not know they made it.

If they think they know what they are doing but in fact do not, why will they raise their hands?

Text is a tricky way to communicate. Simple emails arranging lunch can get confused. “Watch your arithmetic.” may not always suffice. What if there is a subtlety Miss Kay wants to highlight? What if she wants to offer a series of leading Socratic hints so the student can truly learn from the exchange? That could take a few

Math is algorithmically tractable, why not automate it? Because software sometimes has bugs? If three million students are using maths software, how long do you think it will be before the bugs are ironed out? Do you only use software that has no bugs? if so, you do not use computers.

And how fast will the feedback be if three kids raise their hands at once? What if she has taken a small group aside to introduce a new topic, or lead a hands-on activity that makes math relevant?When will she be back to the raised hands?

For higher order activities where feedback is not needed step by step, Classkick looks great. For 25 kids doing multi-step math problems I would rather have an automaton checking things (whether kids raise their hands or not) and the teacher strolling about to talk face to face with kids. Hey, now I am the humanist.

The overarching problem here is that the teacher in this model still keeps an iron grip on the reins. Students will get feedback when the teacher has the time. They will not get feedback unless they know they need feedback. the teacher will decide that after looking at their work.

Far preferable (and even less embarrassing than raising hands even privately) is a (debugged) automatic system that actually and reliably provides instant feedback, at least for things like multi-step math problems.

Now kids can own their own learning, wrestling with mathematics leveraging other learning aids provided by the software, then as a last resort calling on the teacher’s scarce time.

One thing *everybody* forgets is that we are now talking about individualized instruction, and that places huge demands on the teacher. This is the cost of not allowing the teacher to stand on the stage delivering instruction en masse. If you have never implemented individualized instruction you may not understand the problem.

I/I is another huge win, but to make it work we cannot let it be a black hole for teacher time and energy. For Algebra at least, Classkick does not seem like it avoids that trap.

Final point: last I heard the tragic case ended up with two good outcomes: the student is now getting along fine with the software and, second, both student and parent now know that software is not perfect. They also know the publisher cares and is interested in bug reports. Not really seeing a problem here.

Classkick looks like a cool platform that adds the “connectedness” that often doesn’t exist in digital classrooms. At first glance, it reminds me a bit of Nearpod where you can have students send you their solutions.

The more I work with teachers learning how to integrate technology in their classrooms, the more I realize that what works for some may not necessarily work for others. I can see this product being really awesome for some teachers, but I don’t see it in my own classroom. Since all content is delivered by myself/my students on an iPad wirelessly via Apple TV, I am constantly circulating the room and have a good understanding of where students are at. It should also be noted that we are often solving tasks in a group (either full / small group) during class, so sitting down to watch my iPad screen isn’t something I’m dying to do. Is it possible for a teacher to come back to the student work or is it all “live?”

Either way, definitely an innovative tool that is worth a look for teachers who feel like they aren’t able to get around the room during class time.

Thanks for the share and insight.

Hi Dan,

I follow your blog with interest and think you raise issues about teaching that get too little attention elsewhere. I appreciate the time and effort you put into this.

About the app, everything you’ve listed that you feel is good about it is what you can get from any decent, modern learning management system (LMS), plus a whole host of other features. Web browser and JavaScript support for math (LaTeX & MathML) is better than it’s ever been so you’re not limited to more basic math either.

With online platforms, it’s also possible to delegate giving feedback to others, although teachers should always keep an eye on what’s happening so that they can adjust subsequent classes to address specific issues (AKA just in time teaching JITT). One possibility is to delegate feedback to older and/or more capable learners: research shows that peer-teaching is of substantial benefit to the learners doing the teaching. The technique has been in use on and off since the French revolution in the Ecoles Mutuelles, the Lancasterian system, and the Madras system, and is seeing a surge in popularity in some more progressive education systems.

I guess the difficulty is to convince the school/college to invest the time, effort, resources, training, and support to get an LMS up and running. There are some excellent free and open source LMS’ around, most notably Moodle and Instructure Canvas. Both support LaTeX. Canvas: http://guides.instructure.com/m/4152/l/40320-how-do-i-use-the-math-editor and Moodle: https://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Using_TeX_Notation

Free and open source means that anyone with the know-how can set up the LMS and offer it as a service to teachers, schools, etc. or if the school has good IT support, they can set it up themselves easily and cheaply and with no licensing fees.

I hope this helps! :)

Hi,

What I understand from Mo’s comment is that automated, non-human feedback systems for math are at the level they are for writing with word processors (spell-checking and basic but unreliable grammar-checking). Would you say that characterises it accurately?

Much of these conversations also follow the assumption that the only feedback learners get is from their teacher. In some (more progressive) classrooms and some online environments, learners work with each other and help to mediate their own and each others’ learning. Just the act of explaining why you think the answer is so to a classmate has a substantial effect. Common teacher practices and classroom atmospheres tend to discourage such interaction even without answers in the back of the book and automated feedback systems. We should be cautious about not inhibiting discussions of concepts between peers and I think there is a danger of over-reliance, on the part of learners, on automated feedback systems.

For a full and detailed description and thorough discussion on peer-mediated learning, see Lauren Resnick et al’s guide to Accountable Talk: http://2012-leadership-forum.iste.wikispaces.net/file/view/AT-Sourcebook.pdf

@Kenneth, re: “well, it might be a way for the students themselves to learn how best to help others.” — My point is that automated feedback and easy answers inhibit responsible learning.

“Anything that a child can do and should do for themselves, and that we do for them, takes away an opportunity to learn responsibly.” — Gene Bedely.

Accountable Talk is more common in the liberal arts (at all ages) and a well-worn path. It’s simply a case of getting more teachers in the natural sciences, ICT, and maths to “liberalise” their classrooms. It pays dividends from the start and encourages a more open and relaxed learning atmosphere; great for reducing teachers’ stress levels.

The five course meal… fork or spoon?
I think we get trapped by some false dichotomies in our discussion of math ed. There are multiple strands of mind activity involved in solving mathematically rich problems, and it seems different parts of the brain that address each one, not to mention the part that switches between them all. Students need the open attitude they practice in a 3Act, and the persistence they get from a growth mindset (Dweck/Boaler). They need to recognize the concepts in the context … I read in Moonwalking with Einstein that grandmaster chess players, when introduced to a game position 25 moves in, access their memory much more than they access the analytical part of their brains (cortex?). They don’t think about the position as much as they recognize it. Students need fluency in a variety of math tools — arithmetic skills, algebra, visual models like bars or arrays… here they also are better off when they can “recognize” fraction multiplication in the middle of a larger problem, not have that become the problem. They need to be able to problem solve, have an optimistic attitude, be expecting and willing to analyze, be resourceful, be able to use problem solving skills like collecting data and looking for patterns, drawings, working backwards… These are all separate strands in math education that I suspect need to be addressed in different ways. How often have you spent a good three days on the area of triangles with manipulatives and drawings on grids, only to have half the class forget the formula a week later? Analysis, memory… two different things, two different places in the brain. Once they have some solid thinking experience with triangles, I am going give them sprints to practice that formula, to talk directly to the memory. Think about how you learn stuff. Play piano? If you really understand music theory, can you get away without practicing scales… a lot? We need to think about what are the best methods and tools for working in each realm… I suspect that we will find that sometimes we are debating which is better, a fork or a spoon. Depends on what course you are on.

In college, the equation editor built into Word was pretty intuitive. The one thing that was a smidge tricky was doing square roots with (x)^0.5 and keeping all the brackets straight. So a quadratic equation would be x=(-b+(b^2-4ac)^0.5)/2a and it’d come out looking like the version in a textbook. And changing up the equation was pretty easy too.

I wonder if there’s a way to make an app that lets you insert an equation into any text field on a tablet. Then the equations could be typed in quickly and the handwriting could be saved for diagrams and such.

Also, I’m sure they know about it, but just in case I’ve passed this on to two of the professors in curriculum that do a lot of work with getting future teachers to assess whether a given app actually has benefit. Sent them a link to your review here.

Even if classkick doesn’t work out, just thinking about the benefit of it’s functionality will hopefully encourage more social learning.

Hello!

I am going to give this a try tomorrow with students. I have already have lots of those self correct quizzes and do think its great for kids to get instant feedback–but not worth the incorrectly given negative feedback.

Anyway, does classkick allow a teacher to easily save a students work?

Thanks,

-Josh