Promising Practices

RIFLI now has an account with Quia! This was the tool used for the end of session student evaluations. In addition to creating surveys, you can easily create vocabulary activities such as concentration, word searches, and matching games as well as quizzes and Web pages. There are also ready-made activities available. Sherry Fiaux, lead teacher at several sites and Ellamae Gurney, computer teacher at Knight Memorial, have already had success creating activities using Quia. We all share one account. Go to www.quia.com and then click on the Instructor Zone. The username is RIFLI and password is RIFLI. 

Technology Tip

Instead of printing out student writing and using a pen or pencil to edit, try using the comment feature in Microsoft Word. Word will display your comment in a balloon in the margin of the document.  As the author reviews the comments, they can easily decide to accept them, reject them or respond to them thus putting the decision making power (learning!) in the hands of your students.  To try this feature, click in a document where you would like to make a comment. Go to INSERT on the task bar and choose COMMENT. A bubble will appear in the margin. A comment toolbar will also appear. Type your comment in the bubble and continue adding comments throughout the document. Save and send the same document back to your students or colleagues where they will have the opportunity to read and accept or reject the change. Multiple people can review one document – different color bubbles will appear for each reviewer. This would be a great exercise for students to review each other’s work as well as for reviewing your colleague’s reports.