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Many thanks to Kay for catching up with us this week!
How has Showbie changed how you teach your subject?
Within my subject we also use Showbie for some homework assessments for the Year 9’s. We’ve found that Showbie makes it easy to send out a variety of materials to the students which allows for a mixture of potential tasks. For example, at the end of one of our topics I sent them a link to a BBC Bitesize KS3 revision quiz along with a summary image. The students were then able to compete the quiz and send me back a screenshot of their score at the end, giving me an idea of their progress. This is just one example of how I have used Showbie this year!
Have you encountered any issues whilst using Showbie?
(TeacherTec - Saving your Word Documents as PDF’s also means that both you and your students can write on it using Showbie’s Pen tool. Further, to save yourself the step of sending the PDF to your iPad you can log into showbie.com on your PC and add your file to your class from there!).
Some of my Year 9 students initially found it tricky to write on documents neatly using the Pen tool, but I overcame this by projecting my iPad on the whiteboard via AirPlay and showing them how to enlarge a document by ‘Pinching to Zoom’ in on it - the same way you enlarge a picture. I also advised them to simply take the time to write neatly! Some of the students previously used a stylus but by showing them how to zoom in they can now get neat writing without needing one.
I’ve found that so far it’s been a bit more time consuming marking homework’s on Showbie than it would be via hard copies, but the advantage is that the students get immediate feedback on their work. My A-level students use this immediate feedback to re-attempt a question in their own time, so rather than me just giving them the right answer in class they can improve their attempt and easily resubmit it to me.
What advice would you give to somebody who was trying Showbie for the first time?
Here’s a handy tip on how to get started - Try making a document with a few simple questions that gives your students a gentle introduction to a topic which they can then complete in class and submit to you. This will give you a great introduction on how to quickly mark work and return it back to the students. This can all be done within Showbie without needing to use any other apps!
Kay Wightman