As a paperless teacher, one of the things I look forward to is eliminating the need for those annoying attendance sheets. I can't tell you how many times I've misplaced one or two of them, or found one lying at the bottom of my car floor with a muddy footprints all over the front. One of my major hangups with traditional attendance taking is that there is no transparency between teacher and student; it's almost like the attendance is hidden from the students after the role is called. I believe if students (some, not all) are given the option to actually see their attendance as often as they like, as well as have the option to check in themselves by not having to scream 'here' or 'present', than their attendance will increase by at least 20%. So earlier this year, I set out to find the perfect attendance app for my smart phone and my students. The Google Play Store has a large amount of these particular apps available, and I've only just started to test them; but so far, my first three have helped me to determine exactly what I want in the perfect attendance app!
Foursquare was very exciting to use. I really liked the social aspect of it. My students and I even enjoyed the badges for rewards, but it ended up being more a social app because students started checking in and having conversations EVERYWHERE they went. Not only that, but I soon found that students were checking themselves in class even when they weren't there. Just like FB, you don't have to physically be in a location to check in and that was definitely a deal breaker for me. Attendance Tracker by PETERMAN was my second attempt at finding the perfect attendance taking app. What I really liked about this particular app was that it easily imported students from my contacts/Google contacts list -making it super easy to set up. Other than that, I felt like I was just calling out the role and the students weren't actively involved in their attendance taking. There was no way for students to check themselves in and take ownership of their attendance. And this was another deal breaker for me.
Recently, I have been using Safety Attendance by FORSAFETYSOLUTIONS from Google Play Store. It was easy to integrate my contacts from my phone or Google and the app also lets me email the students their attendance. What caught my eye about this app was the option to take attendance via QR Codes. I had to figure out on my own that I had to personally create a QR Code for my students and email it to them via QR Droid; this is something that I felt the creator failed to inform app users about and should definitely integrate into the app or at least provide a tutorial for app users to understand how to set up QR Codes for this specific app. I can say, however, that my students LOVE the scan in option because they get to use their phones to scan in with me and many of them have no idea what a QR Code is or how they work. I also like the seating chart options and the customization options. So far, this app is my favorite among the three I have tried. Unfortunately, the free version of this app only allows you one class of up to 15 students. Though I have only been using it for a couple of weeks, I really think this app is a great way to help convert those teachers who are against using smart phones in the classroom by introducing them to the simplest functions that smart phones offer in education. Feel free to down load and try these apps for yourself.#mr.ford#techsavvyteacher
No comments:
Post a Comment