First round of testing this week with my two sections of U100 students, and there were definitely things that went well, and some that didn't go as well as I had planned. Although, the students overall seemed to enjoy the process and appreciated me attempting to use new technologies in (or outside as it may be) the classroom, which is always a good thing!
What went well: The students were able to check in to locations easy enough through Facebook, so I am unsure if there is a need to use some other form of social media. I may just keep things with Facebook for now. Although I did just get an update e-mail from Pinterest that you can now "pin" locations, so I may have to look into this more! Most all groups found every location and took the pictures as I directed and got them to me easily enough through Snapchat. Most groups were also able to locate their peer mentor and find my office easy enough.
What didn't go so well: I hadn't anticipated them all having full backpacks for their before and after classes. Since they finished in my office and not the classroom, they had nowhere to store their bags. As such, for next semester, I may hold class in the afternoon/evening when everyone is free and do this activity then or I may just have everyone start/finish in my office. Also, not everyone in class had signed up for the Facebook group so that presented a small challenge for a couple of the groups. I need to make sure everyone signs up for the group at the beginning of the semester so I don't run into this issue again. Snapchat worked fine, most of my students had it already on their phones, but I had two small issues with this: 1) You can't "save" the picture for future use (after 3-10 seconds), 2) I had some reservations about giving students my Snapchat ID because it's not as widely used as Facebook and such. I probably would just use e-mail or maybe Instagram in the future with this one. Perhaps there is something to this Pinterest thing I mentioned earlier, too.
Overall it's been a good experience thus far, and I can't wait to tweak it and try it again. There is always room for improvement, right?
How great! We always forget about those odd things...for me it was the need to be both computer and phone accessible - why I think students would view by phone? I am glad to hear how well it went. Did the students tell others about it?
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like it is going well. Is this something that you think students could do just during class time, or have them do as an outside activity? I have also found from my experience with this assignment that maybe not all students will want to download the app or have a smartphone.
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