The Easiest Technology for Doing the Hard Work

By Sandra Simpson, Gonzaga University School of Law

As an absolute technological dinosaur and in an effort to avoid technology, I usually use low-tech “clickers” in the classroom, which are nothing more than two pieces of colored paper. That avoidance has started to change as I see others using cool and really easy technology in the classroom. In fact, to help others like me, the ILTL summer conference for 2018 will be centered on technology in the classroom. Technology can and should be used to engage students and forward the classroom and teaching goals, not just for the sake of using technology. My excuse for why I typically do not use technology is that my teaching and learning goals are reached without it. But where they? Are students as engaged as they could be? These questions have led me on a quest to adopt some new, easy technology aimed at engaging students while still forwarding my classroom teaching and learning goals.

This past summer, I attended ILTL’s annual summer conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, and learned about some simple technology. During one of the presentations, I was introduced to Mentimeter. I have no connection to this company, and I am sure there are other apps that work just as easily, but this is the one I used. At www.menti.com, you can create an account and then create questions to ask the students. The students log in and watch the results on the screen as they vote.

Thinking the use of it was so engaging and fun, I decided to use it in my LRW classes to introduce Blooms Taxonomy of Learning while introducing the important parts of the syllabus. After explaining Blooms Taxonomy, I had the students log into www.menti.com and enter an access code. I then asked a series of questions based on the syllabus. The first question was purely a recall question; the second question was an application question; the third question was an evaluation question; and the last question was a creation question. Between each question, we revisited Bloom’s Taxonomy and discussed learning and assessment of the same.

The energy and engagement in the room was beyond what I expected, as was the opportunity for learning. Students loved watching the results come in. Students were also ready to discuss why they voted one way or another. Further, the evaluation question asked the students to come up with one word which described the syllabus. I used the “word-cloud” function to show the results. Some of the words were positive; some of the words described levels of anxiety; some of the words were negative. This allowed us to talk about positive and negative feedback and the value of both. As to the last issue, had I asked the students verbally to share their opinions about my syllabus and the class requirements, I am willing to bet no one would have said the negative things. Yet, it is very important to me that my students can express positive and negative opinions and feelings. I hope this exercise opens that door.