Teaching by Remote
by Jeffrey Stanley
“Do you have your projects?” the teacher asked her sixth graders as they trailed into her classroom carrying homemade posters of varying sizes. The assignment had been to get a chart or graph from the newspaper and redraw it by hand, enlarging it and writing a short paragraph describing its purpose. Mathematics teacher Fanny Sosenke likes this assignment. “I can see what they’re not getting even though it’s also for them a fun project.”
Although some things remain old-school in her class, like drawing graphs on poster board and shading them in with colored pencils and crayons, Fanny has been occasionally teaching her sixth grade class with remote controls this year. The remotes, of which the school owns 20 at this point, are an instant way for students to answer questions Fanny projects from her laptop onto the Smartboard at the front of the room. She and Lower School teacher Lesley Yeo, who trained Fanny in the remote technology, are the first teachers at BFS experimenting with this new technology.
“It’s perfect for them, it motivates them so much,” she said.
“You need something to write with, you need something to write on, and a calculator because you have to find the mean,” Fanny told the students as she distributed the remotes. “Okay, let’s see if it works,” she said, subtly acknowledging occasional technical glitches with the product.
The blue remotes are typical handheld models except that they have an LCD screen. When switched on they seek out the wireless signal generated by the accompanying software on Fanny’s computer. “Welcome to MS Math,” appears onscreen to confirm the connection.
The first question comes up on the Smartboard. The weekly salaries of six employees of a fast food restaurant are 140, 220, 90, 180, 140, 200. Find the mean and round the answer to the nearest dollar.
Students worked the problem at their desks the old-fashioned way, with much shouting and cajoling, part competitive and part eager to discuss possible ways to solve the problem. They entered their answers into the remote, the anonymous tally on the Smartboard immediately returning the number of responses received. When all students had answered, Fanny touched the board to move to the next problem.
They proceeded in a similar vein; find the mode, find the median, find the mean. Fanny, not one to stand idly by, worked each problem with them on her own calculator, sometimes sharing exactly how she’d gone about solving it herself, stopping short of giving the answer. “I just came up with a trick! I have the coolest trick for finding the median,” she eagerly told them. “This is a shortcut.” She worked the problem freehand on the Smartboard to illustrate her discovery.
At the end, students pressed Finish to learn privately their score, shown only on their own remote’s LED screen, while on the board the full results for each question are shown anonymously as a bar graph and pie chart. This was not only gratifying but immediately indicated where more class and study time needed to be spent.
“Range you’re good at, mode you’re good at. Mean is the one that most of us got wrong. We have to work on this before the next test,” Fanny told them.
The remotes, known in the marketplace as a Senteo interactive response system, are a product of Smart Technologies, makers of the Smartboards that have been installed in many BFS classrooms in recent years. The company also offers an online forum where teachers around the world share questions they’ve created and swap war stories. Fanny is a frequent visitor.
Overall, she said it now takes her about 45 minutes to create an in-class quiz. “It depends on how pretty I want to make it,” she confided. “What I love the most is the students get immediate feedback. I can also write on the board and work out the problems with them if they’re having trouble.”
A straw poll with her students returned overwhelmingly positive reviews.
“It’s better than taking notes.”
“It’s like a videogame.”
“It’s better than writing because your hand gets cramped.”
“It’s more fun.”
Although Fanny agrees with the students, she said the remotes aren’t without their minor drawbacks. “They’re not good for working out long, multi-step problems because students who are good but may be slower have a disadvantage over those who answer quickly,” she explained. Also, “Every now and then there’s a problem like with all technology. When that happens I have to change the lesson plan,” she said, referring to occasional software conflicts on her laptop.
After the remotes were put away and the Smartboard switched off, Fanny distributed a worksheet for students to complete before the end of class. The students moaned. “Now that I give you something boring you cannot do it because it’s not as fun,” Fanny quipped.
Some things never change. To counter that post-technology low she’s introduced lower tech forms of instant gratification. In this case, anyone who got a perfect score on the worksheet would get a Hershey’s kiss.
“I try to do a little of everything so they don’t get bored,” she said, “and so I don’t get bored.”