White Board in the English Classroom--Peer Review

I met with one of the English teachers to work on ActivStudio today.

I learn a lot from the questions that teachers ask me. I don't always anticipate the questions, problems, or misconceptions that people have. But, I do know that a lot of them are shared.

She asked if, in order to project a Word document, she had to convert it to a flip chart file.

Again, I'm better at showing than telling. So, we turned on her projector, and I showed her how everything on the computer gets projected. That part she had already figured out, and so I realized that she wanted to know about writing on the Word document. So, like I did with the Calculus teacher, I showed her the options of using the Desktop Annotation tool, and the Word Marker tool. As I anticipated, the Marker tool met her needs better--she wanted to be able to project a student paper, and peer review it with the class while marking up suggestions and corrections. (I find it a little easier to work with Social Studies and English teachers on the White Boards because I can anticipate what they really want a little better than Science and Math.)

After that, she asked about scanning documents. This was not as easy a question to answer. She had practice PSSA essays that she wants to peer review. I think it's a great idea. However, they are in pencil. Only the freshman teachers have scanners, but we were able to use one of those. The pencil essays were very light, and took awhile to scan. We only had time to practice with one. Later, we projected the one scan on the board, and it was very hard to read from the back of the room.

The teacher is eager to use the whiteboard, because her students are eager, too. And, she doesn't like wasting paper. She really wants to do this peer review project on the board on Friday. Unfortunately, I won't even be around to help her scan, because I'll be at a training tomorrow. After some conversation, she decided to take some of the papers home and scan them there (I gave her some tricks for darkening the text), and if that doesn't work, she'll do printouts as a back up.

I hope that this activity works. Its encouraging to see teachers eager to use the technology, and success will only encourage them more.