13/1/2009

Ref: QD075

In June 2008, the Government listed 638 schools that were failing to reach the minimum target of 30% of students achieving five GCSEs at A*-C including maths and English. Everest Community College in Hampshire was on the list. Eager to meet the target by 2011, it was transformed with new buildings, teachers, equipment and Head teacher. A year on, it has almost reached the target. Chris Daish, ICT Architecture Director, and Oliver May, science teacher, discuss how investing in Qwizdom, an interactive learner response system, has infused good behaviour and enthusiasm into the classroom, which they believe are major contributing factors.

According to a recent report from the National Audit Office, only three per cent of students who do not reach Level 4 in maths and English by the end of primary school achieve five GCSEs at A*-C including these subjects. In 2008-2011, over £600 million of funding for technology will be available to schools, with a high percentage of this distributed by Local Authorities. So how can schools and Local Authorities use technology to help engage students?

Everest Community College, a secondary school with 535 students and increasing up to 750 within the next few years, has introduced Qwizdom into a range of year groups across the curriculum to add an element of enjoyment and interactivity. Chris explains: “Schools must make complex subjects such as maths and science more fun so students want to learn them. As soon as they learn a little, it becomes infectious and they want to learn more. Qwizdom is a tool we use to help make ‘difficult’ subjects more exciting.”

Get students enthused about dry topics
Oliver uses the learner response system to run warm-up quizzes at the beginning of science lessons, establishing what students have understood from previous lessons. He comments: “It’s a particularly useful teaching aid for topics such as ‘the rock cycle’ or ‘the brain’ which have limited scope for experiments - a quiz usually works better than note-taking or text-books to get the class going.”

Oliver poses multiple choice questions such as: ‘What is the function of the medulla?’ Students can press their keypad to vote for one of the following: A - control of breathing, heart and blood activity, B – speech, C-auditory, D-visual association. Oliver comments: “If we can get students to enjoy their studies then they are more likely to achieve higher grades, and, more importantly, understand each topic more thoroughly.” One of his Year 11 students achieved very low grades when he first joined the college in Year 8. In Year 10 he averaged Ds and Es for the core subjects of maths, science and English. Now, armed with confidence, he is aiming for ‘A’ grades for his GCSEs.

Create an interactive classroom
After students have voted with their keypads, Qwizdom’s Actionpoint software, which plugs in to Microsoft PowerPoint, produces a graph of results. These results can then be displayed to the class on an interactive whiteboard or viewed privately on a laptop. The graph shows how many answered correctly or incorrectly, allowing the teacher to revisit topics that require more attention.

The results typically provoke discussion, encouraging the class to interact with each other. Oliver asks students to elaborate on each correct answer and explain why it is so, which pushes able students to develop deeper knowledge and understanding of topics and aim for higher grades. He adds: “If only a handful of students answer a question incorrectly then that indicates to me, without the rest of the class knowing, that those individuals need one-to-one support around a particular topic. If most of them answer incorrectly on a particular topic then I know I need to spend more time on it with the whole class.”

Make assessment easy
Oliver finds that using Qwizdom helps him to assess students more easily: “Being able to assess learning progress very quickly and then change the lesson mid-way as and when required is very important in helping to achieve ‘assessment for learning’ whereby students are assessed on what they actually understand.” The instant feedback that the software provides is fundamental to helping teachers tailor lessons around the quiz results and also to pinpoint areas for improvement for students. The login procedure the college has implemented ensures each child’s admission number is tagged to their responses, making it easier for teachers to monitor each child’s progress.

Students and teachers love it
Students at Everest Community College look forward to using Qwizdom, always asking ‘when will we be using it again?’ So what attracts them to it? “Students of all ages from Year 7 to 11 take to the learner response system very naturally as it’s so simple to use”, says Chris. “The answers are kept anonymous so their classmates do not know who answered which question correctly or incorrectly.” For clever but shy students this means they can participate in class activities without others knowing they answered every question correctly. Similarly, those worried about answering incorrectly can also participate confidently. Chris says that the system is “well designed and comparable to a handheld game system or mobile phone.” Students are familiar and confident with the login process so it doesn’t take long to get the class started. It is not only the youngsters who respond well to it. Teachers also find it helps them to structure their classes to deliver a more interactive experience for the children.

Improve behaviour
“It improves students’ behaviour too!” says Oliver. “As with any IT resource, students love using it and they are less disruptive because they have to focus on the quiz. They certainly prefer it to exercise books as it doesn’t feel like such hard work to them!” Qwizdom is positioned in the college as a privilege, not a right. Misbehave and the handsets are taken away from them. “Students appreciate the investment we have put into it and the effort it takes for teachers to arrange it for them so they tend to show respect and co-operation.”

Qwizdom is viral
The college has to consider teachers’ varying levels of ability; some are IT savvy whereas others are not. To overcome, they offered a top down approach to training. When the system was first introduced, Qwizdom trained a group of teachers from different departments who then trained their team to use the learner response system for relevant subjects. “It’s viral”, says Chris, “you only need to see one teacher using Qwizdom effectively and you get others feeling inspired about the possibilities it can bring to the interactive classroom.”

Advice to other schools on efficient use of time and funds
Chris advises other schools using Qwizdom to ensure that every student has their own login as this not only speeds up the quiz but also provides opportunities to monitor trends through the assessment results. By ensuring that good IT support is in place and students’ names are connected to the login IDs, teachers can instantly see their answers and track progress within each session and over a number of sessions. “An extra 10-15 minutes invested during the set-up process can save a lot of time and hassle in the long-run,” explains Chris.

Chris concludes: “We’ve got to recommend Qwizdom to other schools as it engages students more than any other tool does. It gives instant feedback, promotes assessment for learning and gets students tuned in. What’s more it is a cost-effective cross-curricular resource if you spread the cost over 12 departments as we have done.”

Oliver plans to start using Qwizdom for end of unit assessments and hopes to see more students’ grades improve along with their genuine understanding and enjoyment of topics.

For more information on Qwizdom, please visit Stand H40 at BETT 2009, web site: www.qwizdom.co.uk, tel: +44 (0) 2890 485 015 or e-mail: gary.morrison@qwizdom.co.uk.

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