Jeanette Wardlow

Technology and Communication 692

Video Narrative and Reflection
I currently teach Algebra and Geometry at Baraboo High School in Baraboo, Wisconsin. I
am very lucky that the Baraboo School District has a ton of technology and an awesome
Technology Services Department. Baraboo High School has also gone 1:1 this year, meaning
every student has a Chromebook to use during school. This has opened up some amazing
opportunities for the classroom and allowed me to incorporate many new forms of technology
into my class.
I chose to complete this assignment with my Geometry classes for many reasons. Since
geometry is such a visual course, students sometimes struggle with understanding the concepts
on flat paper. I thought this would be a great opportunity to get the students working with and
manipulating the concepts that they were learning. I decided I would use Peardeck to deliver
notes this day in order to achieve what I wanted to do. One of the reasons I chose this program
because it has manipulatives built right into the notes. I was able to upload a photo of a line
segment and asked students to place a dot that was equidistant from both end points, but not on
the line. The students then dragged the points around and created a line: our perpendicular
bisector. I was also able to have students drag a dot to the inside of an angle, equidistant from the
sides of the angle and created our angle bisector. Students did an outstanding job with this and
really liked seeing how there were so many correct answers. It was great to use the drag the dot
feature since we were creating lines and the students know that lines contain infinite points.
Peardeck also allows me to insert questions into the slides. I always have a guided notes
sheet for students to fill out while they take notes and I would walk around checking their
answers and answering questions they may have. Using Peardeck allowed me to know more
accurately when students were done and if they had the answer correct or not. I was also able to

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Technology and Communication 692
turn a slide into a webpage. This allowed me to redirect students to a website without leaving
their current tab. This was remarkable because students can get distracted when asked to open a
new tab. I directed my students to two different types of sites. The first one was a Socrative quiz
that I used for the pre- and post-test. I was able to put the room name on the Smartboard so
students knew what they needed to enter in order to get to the quiz. I also had slides that directed
students to a site called Geogebra. I had set up and saved two different drawings, one for the
perpendicular bisector and one for the angle bisector. Students were able to move the points
around to see what was able to change and what stayed the same.
There were a few goals I had for this lesson. First, the students should leave the class
being able to complete work according to the standard: use and identify properties of
perpendicular bisectors and angle bisectors. The students always know what they are supposed to
be able to do when they leave each day. I make sure that this is posted on the whiteboard and is
also in the notes. I also had some goals for the lesson about the technology. I wanted to engage
my students in a new way and have them interact with the concepts. I have found that when I
keep doing the same exact thing every class, the students can get bored and start to lose focus. I
wanted to use Peardeck because it has students active in the lesson without totally changing the
format of the class. My hypothesis was that engaging my students with interactive slides for
notes would lead to the students improving their knowledge of perpendicular and angle bisectors.
I used a few instructional strategies in this lesson. First, I utilized formative assessments
in both the pre- and post-tests. I created a Socrative quiz to achieve this. I was able to find some
multiple-choice questions from the section I was teaching in our book. This allowed me to focus
on different aspects of the lesson as I went along. I also used investigation in this lesson. I had
students work on the Geogebra website to interact with the concepts. I also had them place dots

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Technology and Communication 692
on a picture to help develop the concepts. Once the dots were placed, I revealed their answers
and asked them what they noticed. The students developed the theorems on their own based on
their observations. I then used direct instruction to formalize the theorems and concepts. Another
strategy that I use frequently is wait time. I want to make sure that the students are processing the
information and also that they are thinking about what Im asking them. If I dont get answers
after a minute or so, I rephrase my question or point something out that is helpful. Sometimes, I
remind the students of concepts that we have learned previously that are relevant to our current
topic.
In order to truly test the effectiveness of the lesson, I used the same assessment for both
the pre- and post-test. I had students complete this on the website Socrative. This allowed me to
see their answers right away and I was able to tailor my lesson according to what students
already knew. I was also able to scramble the questions and the answers. This was great so I
didnt need to have students move away from each other. They could still sit in pairs without me
worrying about their answers being influenced by their neighbors answers. There was a small
problem in this plan when I had my students take the quiz for the second time. Some of the
students were directed to the end of the quiz that they had just finished. We quickly found that if
the students googled Socrative in a new tab, they were able to complete the quiz for a second
time. I asked the students to enter their name with a 2 after it so I knew that it was the second
time they had taken it.
This lesson was very successful in engaging my students. I still continued to walk around
as the students were working, which allowed me to see what they had completed on their notes.
While some students did still need prompts to fill in their notes, many were actively engaged and
had their sheets filled in. The students were very good about responding to the questions in the

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Technology and Communication 692
Peardeck as well. After I was done presenting the slides, I even got an email from Peardeck
saying that I had engaged 52 students a total of 369 times. This means that each of my students
was participating in the notes over 7 times each. Since I have 55 students in my class and
Peardeck reported only 52 students were actively engaged, there is still some room for
improvement.
The pre-test data was about as expected. The quiz had a total of 6 questions on it. There
were 4 students who got 0 questions correct, 6 students who got 1 question correct, 14 students
who got 2 questions correct, 14 students who got 3 questions correct, 11 students who got 4
questions correct, 3 students who got 5 questions correct, and 2 students who got all 6 questions
correct. The students had not learned anything about the concepts that I was teaching that day, so
I did not expect these scores to be particularly good. In fact, only 29% of students earned what I
would consider to be a passing score (4 or above).
The post-test data ended up being better. There were 0 students who got 0 questions
correct, 4 students who got 1 question correct, 6 students who got 2 questions correct, 14
students who got 3 questions correct, 12 students who got 4 questions correct, 10 students who
got 5 questions correct, and 7 students who got all 6 questions correct. This time, over 53% of
students earned what I would consider to be a passing score. Now, I usually expect closer to 75%
of my students to earn a passing score in order to say that the lesson went well, but I do not
usually assess the students within the same class period. I usually let my students work on
homework, get questions answered, and process the information over a night or two before I
assess their data. I believe that if I would have given them the post-test after going through
questions the following class period, their scores would be even better.

Jeanette Wardlow
Technology and Communication 692
Even with scores lower than what I would have liked, I did have 62% of my students
improve their scores and 16% stay the same (2 of those students scored a perfect score both
times). The students did show that they learned something during the lesson while also saying
that they need to continue to work on their skills. Other factors did contribute to the data as well.
I did have a typo in one of the questions. I wrote the correct answer choices on the board, but
some students may have not paid attention to the correction. There also was a question that was
based on two questions before it. Since I had the questions randomized, some students had to
answer this question before they had done the questions that built upon it. Those students had to
do a lot more work for the one question than students who had the built up questions before this
one. Finally, one of my classes was rushed for time at the end of the class since we had shortened
classes that day. If I look only at the two classes that had enough time to do the post-test, the
amount of students improving was 72%.
Overall, I thought that this lesson went very well. I think that students responded very
well to the Peardeck, some even commented that we should do this everyday. I really liked that I
was able to minimize distractions by imbedding websites in the slide deck. The students really
liked the break from the normal way we do notes. They also liked that they were able to take a
short break from the notes sheet by working with the material on their Chromebooks. Almost
every student was actively involved in the lesson and I had to redirect fewer students during this
lesson than I do on most lessons. I also had the majority of students improving their scores and
heard many comments that the students enjoyed this. I had also had a program called Go
Guardian running, which allows me to see what the students are browsing during class. I did not
have a single student working on something they were not supposed to be doing, which is a

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Technology and Communication 692
success in itself. I will implement more Peardeck lessons into my class to keep improve my
students skills.