A Teacher's Dream Come True: Quick Key

100+ tests to grade in a matter of minutes?  This sounds like every teacher's dream!

Creator Walter O. Duncan is a real life teacher who saw the need (grading papers takes A LOT of time) and came up with a solution fit for the 21st Century: QuickKey.

Check out their presentation on this site: http://www.power2teach.com/

QuickKey is a smartphone app that makes grading papers a breeze.  You can correct your students' papers using these 2 very important tools: a smartphone and a Quick Ticket, bubble sheets specifically for the app that you can download from their website.

 Directions of how to use:

1.  Download the app into your phone.
2.  Sign up for an account at http://www.quickkeyapp.com/ with your email address and password on your computer.
3.  Set up your student information and classes.  (This is easier to do with your pc, but possible with your phone.)
4.  Add a quiz.
5.  Add a class to the quiz.
6.  Begin scanning.

If you have more questions, check out their tutorial that you can only access when you are signed in to your account.  From personal experience, trying to figure all this out was a bit difficult because their sites did not make these information quickly accessible.  So, I've done half of the work for y'all :)

PROS:

• After you've done the initial set-up, grading papers does become a breeze- you can check papers as quickly as you can turn the pages of your students' work.
• Great for formative assessments.
• Helps you to quickly see and evaluate which questions your students did not do very well on.

CONS:

• The app cannot scan papers with too much erasure, which makes grading take even longer because then you'd have to manually input your students' answers.  
• Does not count extra credit points or short-answer questions.
• As far as I know, it does not yet export grades into my grade book; I'd have to manually input those also.  But please, correct me if I'm wrong :)

So far, my biggest problem with the program is inputting grades when the Quick Ticket has too much erasure.  My students do not perfectly answer their questions and make a thousand of mistakes and erase, erase, erase the other bubbles.  Then the Quick Key scanner wouldn't be able to read the Ticket anymore.  Also, if the scanner reads the Quick Ticket incorrectly, it takes a while to go back and correct the grading mistake.  After several of those times, it seriously becomes a headache.  

BUT!

It's a new technology that will continue to make improvements and it's great to give it a chance because it is promising.  So, while it's still free of charge, why not take advantage of it and download it into your smartphone?  Ain't no harm in trying it out!  :) 

Images

Papers

Quick Key

Wanna Blog? Options Right Here

Are you interested in giving your crazy ideas, cool finds, and awesome photos a home in the ridiculously infinite World Wide Web?

I have a few blog sites that may be of interest.  I have tested them; let me just say that all offer so many themes that it's almost impossible to choose.  Even the free ones are so beautiful that it almost seems senseless to purchase the paid themes.  Aside from the themes, each one has its own function and appeal.

I have not yet explored these blog sites to their fullest potentials but if you're interested in any of them, that can be your time to enjoy exploring. :)

1.tumblr- very popular for its micro-blogging.  So if you have some snippets, memes, and inspirational photos to share, this may be the place for you.  Just a warning though: reblogging is such a common practice here that the originators of the ideas get lost in the over-share.  

2. WordPress- similar to Google's Blogger in many ways.  I really like the classy and professional looks of WordPress themes, better than Blogger's!  However, the customization options seem to be very limited, unless you're willing to pay up $$$.  But if you're only interested in putting up some texts and photos, Word Press is really not a bad choice.  I, on the other hand, adore personalizing my blogs and would much rather have all those extra options.

3. Weebly- the imagination seems to be the limit when it comes to customization with Weebly.  It is a free site for websites and blogs.  The new interface may seem quite intimidating at first because of the number of buttons to navigate around but if you are hyper-creative, you may enjoy the options that you have in front of you.  You can completely personalize your page to your taste and add motions, tabs, and pages.  It's up to you.

4. Blogger- the most comfortable site for me.  Google has now made it possible to integrate your Blogger blog with their Google+ features.  This is supposed to expand your exposure on the web and increase your audience if you will blog for pay through ads.  I personally haven't really kept my blogs up-to-date with that.  Anyway, I think Blogger is very easy to use and to personalize, although its interface is quite slow and editing is glitchy.   

There are so many free blog sites out there still waiting to be explored!  But if you simply want to get started or to commit and grow old with your blog, these are some of your good options. :)

Images:

tumblr

WordPress

Weebly

Blogger

This is Where I'm at...

Today is a great day to celebrate!

Where?

@ UOG's SOE!