Focus Groups for Project Evaluation

I took this photo with an XO using the Record activity during class - students are getting ready to draft their feature articles.

Yesterday, the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University conducted focus groups with the students to learn about their experiences with the XOs over the February break. Many of the students dug right in and experimented with all of the activities. They used the Record activity, the Tam Tam music activities, and wrote parts of their Feature Articles for Literacy class. The most surprising thing was their collective interest in the Measure activity. The students liked watching the sound waves move. It made us realize that they are eager to learn how these other activities work!

The students were definitely eager to chat. All of them tried the chat activity, called their classmates, and tried to make it work. None of them could make it work because they live too far away from each other to be in range without the Internet. One student helped her mom crunch some numbers using the calculator activity.

I will try to post some of the data about what students did on their own once ILT tabulates everything.