Project Evaluation

I think the key item now for me is to actually try to implement this in a real-life classroom setting. For me, success is whether or not the teachers use it. I think the kids will. It's the teachers I'm worried about. And, because they already feel like the school switched platforms on them without input (IT, too for that matter!), I think it's a sensitive time to push anything else that is new, without their input. Nevertheless, now that MACs are here, they need to embrace it. So, I can come in with a possible solution like this.

If I could redo the project, I would get the founders of the Skritter involved from the upfront. I didn't realize until at least half way through the project that it's a band of 4 guys who went to college together and working out of a small office. Essentially this is a start-up company, one that could use some mass-acceptance like an actual trial run in a bilingual school such as mine. They are very responsive to feedback and keen to make this work for schools. So, if I were to implement this for real, I would ask for the following modifications to the program. I know it sounds like a lot, but I work with programmers all day long modifying the user experience of websites. I think this is very doable!

Top 3 suggestions for refinement of Skritter for classroom use:

- Enable group accounts: Re-program site so that 1 user can set up logins for a full class. This enables a teacher/tech resource to create 1 master view for the teacher to more efficiently manage custom vocabulary lists.

- Enable group evaluation. Create a view so that the teacher could have access to each students' evaluation metrics. Skritter already provides for each of her students, but letting a teacher see how all the students fair in comparison enables her/him to have better perspective on what is difficult for the entire class.

- Add in more explanations on the history of words and fun tips to help students remember characters. Including such tips in a multimedia format would be very ideal, since it may touch on additional learning styles.

Techquest Implementation Podcast

Here are a few screen shots of Skritter so you can have a visual of what I'm referring to in my podcast.