BACKGROUND

Cindy Carson, a third grade teacher at Doherty Elementary School in West Bloomfield, Michigan, has been teaching early elementary students for 10 years. Combining a master’s degree in teaching from Marygrove College in Detroit and a second master’s in educational technology from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan, Cindy has crafted a fresh approach to classroom teaching from two divergent disciplines—the art of education and the technology of teaching.

While earning her second master’s degree, Cindy gravitated toward the potential applications of technology in learning. She enjoyed the research and accessibility that the Internet brought to her profession, and wanted to see how technology could enhance learning in her classroom. During Cindy’s studies of assistive learning technology, she evaluated TurningPoint, interactive PowerPoint® software from Turning Technologies and liked the many capabilities it had to offer.

THE CHALLENGE

Technology has undoubtedly made the world a more exciting place. However for Cindy, it has also provided a challenge in the classroom. Surrounded by the interactive dazzle of technology in their daily lives, children are prone to be less engaged in a traditional one-to-many classroom format. Moving past the standard pedagogy she learned in school, Cindy came to understand that today’s students require a different teaching approach.

While attending the MACUL Conference last year, Cindy came across the Turning Technologies solution, and was lucky enough to win a complimentary student response system. With Turning Technologies’ generosity, Cindy has maximized her use of TurningPoint software and 32 ResponseCards®.

THE SOLUTION

TurningPoint has inspired Cindy. She frequently relies on her student response system. The solution not only provides a creative outlet for her teaching methodologies, but also offers her instant feedback on students understanding of presented concepts. Cindy’s ability to assess student learning and quickly compensate for any gaps on a daily basis is an enormous benefit of implementing a TurningPoint student response system . Cindy explained, “Analyzing each student’s data—whether a child is ‘getting it’—is truly eye opening.”

One of the innovative teaching techniques Cindy has incorporated into her classroom is bundling TurningPoint with United Streaming, a video streaming website. For example, she uses videos to introduce her students to the physics of sound ,and brakes each distinct concept into finite segments using interactive polling questions. To assess student learning of concepts such as vibration and frequency and vocabulary terms, Cindy developed 15 true/false and multiple choice slides. Student responses indicated to Cindy that her class was often confused with terminology, and she adjusted her teaching to best fit the specific needs of her students. TurningPoint also allowed her to isolate individual student comprehension and work with them on a one-on-one basis as needed.

CONCLUSION

An ever-inquisitive mind, Cindy has compared her class with two others that she teaches using traditional pencil and paper. Through her methodical and scientific approach, Cindy has proven that TurningPoint technology helps provide instant, reliable and valuable student feedback.

Turning Technologies’ student response system provides educators with a new and valuable dimension to learning assessment. By employing TurningPoint daily in a variety of uses, Cindy is pleased with the overall results and is currently working on extending her TurningPoint use to her math sections including addition, subtraction, and fractions. In her experience, one benefit stands out–the TurningPoint interactive polling enables Cindy to embrace her two passions simultaneously: education and technology.

For more information about renting a Turning Technologies’ audience response system for your school district, contact us at 866-746-3015.