this video is sponsored by whiteboard 5. does this sound familiar anyone want to share something
that you learn in class today asking students to voluntarily participate i've done it and
you've done it and if you're experiencing low participation in your classroom it's likely a
major reason why that's because asking students to participate voluntarily can really only lead
to one of two results either students choose not to participate or a small group of students will
choose to participate nearly every time all right that was a great lesson now who has any questions
who out there can use our vocabulary word in a sentence
even if every single student raised their hand you'd still only logistically be able to call
on a few students which might lead you to think that the rest of the class gets it
when in fact they don't to address this problem you might have tried a strategy like writing names
on popsicle sticks and pulling them out of a jar to mandate participation and the question goes to
edward but equity sticks still don't get to the underlying issue that we still haven't
provided students with the means to be able to all participate at once so what you really
need is a tool that enables mandatory participation and a tool that enables all
students to respond simultaneously long before they reached out to us about sponsoring one of
our videos i've argued that whiteboard phi is one of the most effective apps for getting 100
participation that's because whiteboard files built their app around one of the most effective
non-tech tools for getting students actively involved in class the mini whiteboard when
students have many whiteboards instead of asking for voluntary participation you can tell them this
all right everyone i want you to write down one thing you learned today on your mini whiteboard
and what whiteboard 5 has done is take this highly effective tool the mini whiteboard and given
it all the digital upgrades that make digital whiteboards inarguably superior to their physical
counterparts i'm going to pass it over to tom here for a quick explanation while a digital whiteboard
is not necessary every time you need a whiteboard there are some instances where it is a huge
upgrade from a physical whiteboard you can save digital whiteboards to view later you can invite
or share digital whiteboards with students you can zoom into a digital whiteboard to bring clarity to
something you can screen record your lesson over a digital whiteboard for an asynchronous lesson
and you never get marker ink on your fingers or your shirt i always got it on my shirt so digital
whiteboards have a clear advantage over physical ones but unlike other digital whiteboard programs
you might already be familiar with whiteboard 5 focuses more on optimizing the student
mini whiteboard experience as opposed to just focusing on the teacher whiteboard of course you
do still get a teacher whiteboard with whiteboard 5. what i mean is that most digital whiteboards
work primarily by allowing students to collaborate on a single board which is usually the teacher's
whiteboard and this works for quick collaboration but it isn't all that practical if you want
students to respond by writing a paragraph or completing a multi-step math problem the type
of work that really merits having their own workspace let me show you how whiteboard phi
is different so let's say for example that your ultimate goal is to have students fill in a venn
diagram using whiteboard phi you can first model on your teacher whiteboard how you would fill in
the graphic organizer with similarities and differences while projecting your screen for
the entire class to see with whiteboard phy you can choose to push your whiteboard out to every
student's individual board so they'll have a template to use as an example to work from
and then you can tell students to input their own ideas on the venn diagram using
their own mini whiteboard space now instead of a handful of students participating you'll almost
certainly only have a handful of students not participating if any also what i just showed you
is a totally free feature in whiteboard 5. i often hear a misconception out there that teaching with
technology means you suddenly stop doing all the things you would do in a traditional classroom
like having class discussions but that's just simply not the case even though students just
responded using a digital tool you can still follow up with them and call on students to have
a class discussion and when you do you'll likely get a lot more students to participate since they
already practice writing down a response on their own in whiteboard phy you can take an individual
student's response and add it back to the teacher whiteboard for the rest of the class to see
and you could use that as a strategy to facilitate a conversation with the rest of the class and that
is also a free feature now you might be thinking to yourself sounds great but i already have a 100
participation strategy perhaps you've already used the single most recommended instructional strategy
ever the instructional strategy that supposedly solves any problem the turn and talk turn and
talks are effective for mandating participation and they get all students participating so
what's the problem the main problem i found with turning talks is that it's just very
difficult to know exactly what students are talking about when they're turning and
talking all right go ahead and turn and tell your partner how would you solve the problem
i'm not saying you necessarily need to cut the turn and talk but what you can do is
add the digital mini whiteboard to the mix to add some rigor and accountability
all right i want everyone to turn and tell their partner how they would solve the problem and then
write down your answer on your mini whiteboard
and that's the second way that whiteboard 5 can transform your classroom by making
student thinking visible whiteboard phi helps make thinking visible because as students are
writing their answer you'll get a bird's-eye view of all their responses coming through in real time
and you can also even click on each board to get a much clearer sense of what students are actually
working on this is also a free feature in addition to augmenting partner work being able to see every
single student's individual workspace is also incredibly helpful for independent work during
independent work time rather than circulating around the room and stopping at desk to make
sure students understand or are doing what they're supposed to be doing you could use whiteboard 5 to
implement what's referred to as a flexible model of instruction so what you'd be doing
here is observing how students are progressing and then polling students who need additional support
or enrichment for example in whiteboard phi you could create an assignment where students identify
unknown words in a reading passage and then write a quick summary as students are working you could
click on each workspace to see how they're doing now you can do this with the free version but
with the paid upgrade in whiteboard phi you could also create this as an assignment that
students could access at any time this strategy of providing students with flexible support would
work particularly well if you had a co-teacher in your classroom with the mid-level paid version
of whiteboard phy you can add a co-teacher to your workspace which will give them full access
to collaborate on your teacher whiteboard as you can see here by the two different mouse cursors
and your co-teacher can also view all of your students whiteboards so they would be able to
jump in and support them as well and this would allow you to run your classroom where
you circulate among students while your co-teacher pulls individuals or vice versa or you could use
it as a way to strategically pull two groups at the same time so whiteboard file allows you to
design a classroom that mandates 100 participation gives every student the ability to participate and
allows you a bird's-eye vision of everything that students are doing because it helps make student
thinking visible and that leads me to the third way that whiteboard 5 can transform your classroom
because of the way most traditional classrooms are structured there's often little to no time to give
students feedback in class which means we're often left bringing work home to do in the evening or on
the weekends not only does that mean we're working extra outside of our work hours it also means that
students usually aren't getting feedback on their work for at least a week or sometimes even more if
you're like me and all the research shows that giving students feedback in the moment is one
of the most effective ways to accelerate student learning this is another category where whiteboard
5 really stands out in addition to giving you a bird's eye view of all your students work
whiteboard phy also allows you to give them quick feedback or more extensive feedback depending on
your needs it is important to note that this ability to give feedback to students is a paid
feature of whiteboard fi but it's also a really powerful one so you might want to consider making
an upgrade so say for example that students are working on something like labeling a world map in
addition to seeing students working in real time you could give them immediate feedback using one
of these quick prompts like a heart thumbs up or thumbs down and if you need to give students more
in-depth feedback you can also give them a written response for example you might tell a student that
they need to check their notes or you might even tell them that you'd like them to come to the
back table to get some additional support as soon as you give them that feedback they'll see your
comment pop up immediately on their screen another related very powerful feature in whiteboard phi
is the ability to not just give feedback but also jump directly into a student's workspace
it's almost like the ability to hop directly onto a student's computer
to help them out say for example that students were working on an order of operations problem
if you noticed the student making an error you could circle the step where the error was made
as a way to help them hone in and figure out their own mistake i also like just joining
student workspaces as a classroom management strategy the idea here is that as students
are working you would be circulating the room by jumping into each individual student's workspace
and i like to leave them a little comment or just let them know that i'm there and that can just
function as a way for students to understand that they're not just doing the work in isolation that
their teacher is actually checking the work out and it should help increase the overall quality
of work that students are doing in your class if you want to get more into the nuts and bolts of
how to use whiteboard phy then i'd recommend you check out that video right there and if you're
interested in a discount on the premium version of whiteboard 5 we have a code that you can find
in the video description and in the meantime i'll see you over there in that other video