Hyperdocs using Formative

Formative (which you may know it as goFormative) is a platform that allows you to create assignments, assessments, and homework for your students. It is easy to use and frees up your grading time with their automatic grading feature. Most importantly, and one of the reasons I love it, it allows you to see live responses and with just one click identify the areas of struggle or misconceptions for your students so you can quickly pull a small group or even address the whole class before they leave for the day.

10 Reasons Why Teachers Use Formative (Goformative.Com)

Their wide variety of embeddable items and question types, make it an easy fit for creating Hyperdocs. Let me show you what I mean by using my Forces Mastery Quest Hyperdoc



I start by creating a Google Docs clickable image (like the one you see above), making it embeddable in the same way as I explained in "Embedding a Google Drawing with Clickable Links". Remember that the beauty of doing it this way is that once generated, you can go ahead and change any and everything, modifying the background or adding more clickable items as you go along, even including some Easter eggs if you wish. All changes populate automatically to anywhere you embed the image to, including Formative.

Once I have my main image, and I obtain the embed code,  I add it to what I call a Mastery Quest Formative (MQF). This MQF also houses my summative assessment, which most often is automatically graded by Formative.
The instructions at the top let students know that in order to click on the image inside Formative they will need to right-click and open in a new tab or window.

I then create each of the Formatives that will house the documents, images and activities the students will need to interact and respond to. In this case:

Engage, which includes an embedded Flipgrid
Explore and Explain which houses embedded videos and readings, all with checks for understanding along the way
Apply, includes an embedded Phet simulator
Share, housing a gif image and a Padlet that allows students not only to respond but to vote on each other's responses.
I do not include a reflection piece since my students write reflective posts each week as a matter of course. However, the Extend portion is hidden away in one of the Easter eggs (the little blue bird you see on the top right), and I provide a hint to its existence at the end of the Share formative. There are two other Easter eggs that I embedded as quick surprises for the students.

As with many other Hyperdocs that you may have seen, it is the planning and finding the content that you want your students to see what will take up most of your time. If you have your links, adding them to your image and putting the Formative Hyperdoc together is rather quick.

You may be thinking of those things that do not have a readily accessible embed code, like Gizmos for example. There are several Embed Code Generators out there, which are super easy to use. That is what I used to generate the embed codes I used in this Cell Cycle Formative, which like the Hyperdocs we are talking about is a Formative composed of several Formatives.





Although not as easy as providing links and tasks on a Google doc or slides, the end product(s) is actually much easier to asses.

In traditional Hyperdocs, every student gets a copy and submits it in some way, but you still have to open up each individual student Hyperdoc to see what they are doing and provide feedback. On Formative, this time-consuming task is eliminated since you can see all students' work in the corresponding formative at once. Easy to see that most students are having trouble with question 2 (for example),  and address the problem immediately, or that everyone is on the right track, but that whole back table has not registered an answer on item 4, prompting a visit from you.You can even display the chart, hiding names of course, and discuss a particularly challenging question or task, switching to your own preview so that everyone sees exactly what you mean as you explain or discuss with the students.

For those of you that may have given Formative a try in the past and have some questions or are simply curious to learn more about it, there is a growing community of Formative educators that is ready to welcome you. Hope you can join.

Differentiating with Technology

Differentiation, one of those words that is easy to say, but hard to do. However, as Peter DeWitt reminds us in his blog post "Yes, Differentiation Is Hard. So, Let's Get It Right", watching students struggle because their needs are not being met, is for all of us harder than differentiating. So, if our ultimate goal is to provide quality education to all of our students, but there is only one of us and 150+ of them, each with individual needs, what do we need to add to our teaching arsenal to accomplish this herculean task?

I know that edTech is not the answer to everything, and as Carol Ann Tomlinson discusses in her book The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners, differentiation is achieved by designing instruction to address the learning and affective needs of all students.

What can, and should be differentiated?

Content - The material students are expected to master. Different students in your class will access different materials that are most appropriate for their readiness at the depth that is right for them. All are working towards mastery of the same standard.

Process - These are the learning activities that take place in your class and connect the content to the learner. Differentiating the process takes into account:

• Learning style differences.
• Multiple Intelligences.
• Multiple formats for students to access the material to be learned - Options are important!
• Understanding what is the learning that is taking place.
• The following image contains links to the different tools I use for differentiation.

Products - The evidence students produce to demonstrate mastery. 

• OPTIONS are key
• When students are making choices, give enough time to develop some background knowledge before the choice to allow students to make an informed decision.

Reflection - Tasks that encourage reflection and help increase rigor in the classroom:

• Ill-structured, ‘messy’ or real-life situations
• Asking the ‘right’ kinds of questions – there are no clear-cut answers
• Tasks that challenge learners to integrate new learning into previous learning
• Tasks that demand the ordering of thoughts
• Tasks that require evaluation

The following image contains the links to the tools I use for differentiation. Take a look and let me know what you think.