One common issue raised with using Google Documents or Google Classrooms for remote or blended learning, is how to get students to engage with each other and share ideas. Google Classrooms is great for sharing files but doesn't allow students to work together in a truly collaborative way, share ideas or engage with the lesson materials. However by combining your Google account with your Verso account you can.
This example demonstrates how teachers can combine Verso with a collaborative Google Doc or Google Classrooms to allow a richer and more engaging Google experience. It shows how to link your Verso account to your Google account and then how to use Verso and Google together to allow students to respond to engage with each other's ideas and provide visibility of individual thinking to the teacher.
The Victorian Student Representative Council (VicSRC) and Verso Learning are proud to announce the launch of a free student check-in tool for teachers ready for Term 4 of 2020. The tool has been co-designed by VicSRC students across Victoria to give all students a greater voice by making it easier for teachers to check-in on student learning progress and understand student emotional wellbeing, either in class or whilst learning at home.
The check-in tool is free for individual teachers to use with their students and accessible from any mobile device or computer. From today it is available at https://checkin.versoapp.com. To reduce the workload for teachers the customisable tool has been aligned to over 5,000 Victorian F-10 curriculum questions covering most subject areas. In under 30 seconds teachers can send students a Verso check-in to gather feedback on their learning progress, where they need help, what they would like to do more of next lesson and how they are feeling about their learning. Teachers can access the feedback via a simple and colourful dashboard that enables them to quickly gauge individual students' learning and emotional needs and identify those who need extra support and attention.
CEO of Verso Learning Colin Wood said working with the Victorian Student Representative Council (VIC SRC) to co-design and build the Verso student check-in tool had been a fantastic experience and demonstrated the importance of listening and responding to student voice. “The students were so excited to see their ideas built into a check-in tool that is used by teachers around the world, and positively impact the wellbeing of students not just in Victoria but across the globe”. During the co-design process, students highlighted the difference between classes in which they were given opportunities to provide feedback and felt their ideas and opinions were listened to where they felt ‘motivated, inspired and engaged’. In classes where they were not they reported feeling “frustrated, bored and disheartened.” One feature specifically requested by students was a help button to confidentially ask for one-on-one support from their teacher if they feel they are not coping or need help. As one student commented “having an easy and private way to request help from a trusted teacher when you really need to is vital to feeling supported and listened to.”
VicSRC’s survey and report about remote and online learning showed that students wanted more regular check ins from teachers to support their wellbeing, and the opportunity to give regular feedback to teachers about their learning. In addition, students wanted a greater say in their learning journey and more opportunity to give input on the direction of future classes. These themes of supporting positive mental health and wellbeing at school and increasing student engagement also featured prominently at the 2020 VicSRC Congress.
VicSRC teamed up with Melbourne based Verso Learning to build a check-in tool to support teachers to regularly check-in with students either in class or when working remotely. Executive Officer of VicSRC Nina Laitala said “Working with Verso, VicSRC was able to design an innovative check-in solution that will reduce teacher workload, whilst helping support Victorian students emotional wellbeing, giving them greater voice over their education and help teachers better adapt lessons to the needs of the students.”
The general capabilities play a significant role in the Australian Curriculum in equipping our students with the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions essential to thrive in and outside of school, as successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.
To support this process, Verso check-in has been designed to support teachers in meeting the requirement that they teach, assess and provide opportunities for students to develop and apply these capabilities to the extent that they are incorporated within learning area content, where they can support deep thinking and learning.
Fig 1: Verso reflection prompts can be filtered to focus on year level, learning area and capability . Simply select your subject area and the year level of your students. Select the learning outcome and use our filters to select your desired prompt.
Reflection prompts are questions that require students to think critically about what or how they have learned. They are designed to support synthesis and analysis, the forging of connections between ideas, and the development of knowledge, skills, behaviours and key learning capabilities.
The key ideas for Critical and Creative Thinking are organised into four interrelated elements in the learning continuum:
Verso check-in supports teachers in developing each of the four elements through the provision of banks of more than 250 carefully designed reflection prompts that can be filtered for a variety of contexts and purposes, providing an appropriate lens for student to develop capability in critical and creative thinking as they learn to generate, organise and evaluate knowledge, clarify concepts and ideas, reflect on their journey as a learner and connect their learning to new and existing concepts.
Verso Check-In Inquiry prompts have been organised into 6 sub sets, aligned to each stage of the inquiry cycle Each set contains :
1.Activate. Sample prompts include:
2.Discover . Sample prompts include:
3.Analyse. Sample prompts include:
4.Organise. Sample prompts include:
5.Evaluate. Sample prompts include:
6.Implement. Sample prompts include:
“This element involves students creating ideas and actions, and considering and expanding on known actions and ideas” Australian Curriculum
Sample Prompts:
“This element involves students reflecting on, adjusting and explaining their thinking and identifying the thinking behind choices, strategies and actions taken” Australian Curriculum
Sample Prompts:
“This element involves students analysing, synthesising and evaluating the reasoning and procedures used to find solutions, evaluate and justify results or inform courses of action”. Australian Curriculum
Sample Prompts:
In order to meet the priorities of individual schools and develop the broader capabilities of students, Verso Check-in Prompts also allows teachers to generate prompts of their own or quickly and easily search for prompts under the following additional headings:
It is critical to the process of learning that students have the same understanding as the teacher in terms of what is going on in any lesson and what they should be learning as a result of doing. Without this critical insight, students become confined in a world of completion and compliance. It is important that the teacher articulates learning goals in language that is accessible to all students, and that they are referred to frequently, and used by students to monitor and advance their own learning.
The capacity of students to meaningfully reflect on their learning journey hinges on their connection with the learning goal. It is essential that we invest time in building connections with the how, what, why (verb, noun, context) of the lesson and develop a shared understanding of what students need to be able to do or share in order to demonstrate that they have been successful.
With this in mind, Verso uses data from over 4.3 million student responses to constantly inform the development of a supervised machine learning algorithm, designed to automatically code and display student reflection data in a way that helps teachers to instantly connect student feedback with their contextual expertise in order to meet the needs of individual students and gain insight into the precision and impact of their practice.
The following video explains the key elements that Verso’s algorithm looks for when coding student written responses, and shares how the real power of the teacher dashboard as a catalyst for change is only fully realized when it is viewed through the lens of each teacher’s context, experience and expertise.
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