techieMusings

As my flipped classroom has evolved, embedding quizzes into my video lessons has been a major component of how I run my class. Zaption was a game changer for me. It has been, hands down, my favorite edtech tool in the past year. Why? Zaption has allowed me to form deep, meaningful connections with my students. I am not trying to exaggerate; this is truly what I feel. Let me explain…

Zaption allowed me to get a sense of individual and class needs before students even walked into the classroom. Each evening, I would log into the Zaption analytics for the homework video I had assigned. Zaption was so simple and so clear, yet gave the perfect detail to target what I needed to zone in on. I never walked into the classroom without analyzing student responses. To me, reviewing these answers was an extremely important part of my class prep. It equipped me with such valuable information to make my time in the classroom most meaningful.

A truly standout feature of Zaption was the “responses” display and the ability to show/hide student names. At the beginning of each class, I would project these anonymous responses on the board:

As you can see from the snapshot above, the display included the “video content”, specifying the spot in the video where the question was asked (which really cued students’ memory back to the video), the choices, a chart or word cloud to get an overall sense of how the class responded, and individual answers. By starting class going over the video in this way, students were better able to connect the lesson of the day to the video homework. The questions I ask in the video are the basis for class discussion. Before I started using Zaption, some students struggled to make the connection between homework and classwork. Zaption broke down this disconnect. This was huge.

For more detail on exactly how I used Zaption’s analytics, here is a video where I walk through my process

On an individual level, I truly feel like Zaption helped me build trust and stronger relationships with my students. I made it a point to always include some open response questions in Zaption and then to *always* read each student’s response. In class, I would talk to individual students whose responses called for that – i.e.: if a student’s answer clearly indicated confusion, if a student asked a question within the response box unrelated to what I had asked (but something they needed me to talk to them about), or if a student left a witty response, I’d follow-up on that. Students *knew* that I was reading their responses. In evaluation forms, students would comment that I always took the time to thoroughly review all of their homework and, to them, that translated to how much I cared. In reflecting on my end of year student feedback forms, I remarked that the thing I was most proud of was how clear it was that students felt that I was fully invested in their learning and success.

And yes, I do care about my students *a lot*, and yes, I do spend a lot of time prepping for my teaching. But Zaption made me efficient and effective. Zaption allowed me to get to know my students in ways that I simply could not have without the technology. I haven’t seen another tool for embedded quizzing that hits it out of the park like Zaption.

So thank you to all the folks who worked on the Zaption team, for making me a better, more thoughtful teacher. You will be missed!