WPP - PART A - Description of Need or Opportunity

I have been teaching for over 3 years and in those three years I have taught over 7 different subjects within the sciences. I have also taught in both the high school and middle school settings. In each of those classroom settings, there was an underlining struggle that arose in all of the classes. The struggle was my ability to get an really good understanding of the students comprehension (as a whole) on a certain topic before I moved on to the next topic. What I have found worked best for me was to ask lots of questions, often. With this strategy, I am asking a question to a specific student every 30 seconds, on average. Even with this strategy I am only able to ask one question to one student. To me, this is unacceptable to swallow, but I had to swallow because I had no other alternatives. I plan to address this issue by using a Student Response System in my classroom. This system will allow me to pose multiple questions to the students and get a response from the ENTIRE CLASS!!! The system that I will be using is on loan from a fellow teacher who wrote a grant in order to purchase the $1500 system. I feel this is the most cost effective technological alternative that addresses my issue. Other alternatives include a netbook/laptop for each student which would cost roughly $500-%1000 per student or having the students use a polling software like Polleverywhere.com. This software allows students to use their cell phones to text in answers. I have tried using this type of software and a few problems arise with it. One problem is that you are at the mercy of the internet connection and in my district the words "archaically slow" comes to mind. It actually inhibited progress. The other problems I ran into were that not every student has a cell phone nor do all students have unlimited texting options on their plans. I then had to find other options for those students.

My plan is to seamlessly integrate the Student Response System into my note-taking process so that periodically throughout the notes, I will pose questions to all students and receive instant feedback from all students that I will use to gage if I need to clarify anything or can move on. All students will participate by using the system. I hope to have the ability to use these for the remainder of the year and if all goes well, purchase some after writing a grant for next year.

I also plan to use the Student Response System as a way of monitoring progress within a unit. I would like to create pre and post tests that will be administered to the class so that each student (and myself) will be able to know what their level of knowledge comprehension is before and after a unit. I am hoping students will see an increase in comprehension throughout the unit of study and this will spark some internal motivation to do as well as they can.

The following are sites that I have found that will be great resources for me when preparing a lesson as well as during the integration process.

http://www4.uwm.edu/ltc/srs/faculty/best_practices.cfm - Provides best practices of SRS integration from University of Wisconsin.
http://people.uncw.edu/lowery/swssa%20ms.pdf - outlines the history and benefits to using SRS. Also gives uses, types, and alternatives to SYS.
http://exchange.smarttech.com/#tab=0 - A website that provides premade lessons and test question sets that I may access when designing my lessons. (I may not have to reinvent the wheel each time!)
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0508/0508114v1.pdf - This addresses the different types of questions
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/ClickersintheClassroomAnActive/157458 - This gives evidence that SRS work to increase test scores
http://www.turningtechnologies.com/media/files/100%20ttech%20ideas%20for%20SRS.pdf - 100 ideas for SRS.
http://www.suite101.com/content/10-personal-response-systems-teaching-strategies-a159078 - 10 best practice using a SRS.

I used Google search engine for my searches and had tremendous success. I Rarely use other search engines. My Searches included "student Response systems in the classroom", "How to integrate student response systems into the classroom", "Ideas for SRS in the classroom", "Tips for use of SRS", "student response systems tips and tricks", "Student Response System Ideas".

I also used google Scholar search engine and found that most if the literature was not useful simply because of the length of the articles. Some of my searches included "student response systems in classrooms", "student response systems in middle school classrooms"

My plan is to integrate the SRS into at least two lessons, and two pre/post tests during the length of my CEP 812 class. My plan after that class finishes is to continue to integrate my fellow teachers SRS into as many lessons as possible and make pre and post tests for each unit from here on out. I also plan to look into writing a grant for funds to purchase my own student response system.

The way I plan to assess whether my technology integration was successful is to look at my pre and post test scores. I have a few pre and post test scores from units without my integration from earlier in the year that I will use as a control to compare my scores after using the SRS to. Hopefully I see an increase in my scores.