GoSoapbox is a Web 2.0 tool that would drastically change the level of interaction in the classroom. If you struggle from middle school" participation barriers", such as 'smart kid cliques' or simply shy kids, Soapbox offers students a tool to engage in asking, reviewing, and voting for the most interesting and engaging question. Also, it offered a status update that qualifies a student as 'comprehending' or 'confused'; all while remaining anonymous.
Key features:
- Creates a meaningful back channel
- Students may ask questions
- Discuss topics
- Indicate confusion
- Four core features
- Socially ranked Q & A
- Students may submit, vote, and reply to questions
- Students vote for questions to be discussed
- The question with the most votes rises to the top of the teachers screen
- Discussion
- Teacher moderated student responses to questions
- Confusion Barometer (anonymous)
- Status: I'm getting it or I'm confused
- Number of confused students communicated to teacher
- Polling
- Teacher may poll students with small question to get a consensus of the class
I look forward to researching this program and getting closer to an understanding of the integration of this software.
Click here to check out the website yourself!
See you around the web,
Tech Teacher
I'm really intrigued by this program. Soooo many awesome features!!! The wonderful thing about Web 2.0 is that it opens up many channels of communication and allows students, especially the quiet ones, to have a voice (and be heard). My question is exactly how anonymous is soapbox? I do believe this program could be used with the right audience…. However, if I was still teaching in the school where I student taught (HUGE behavior issues), I would definitely be worried about students abusing the system.
ReplyDeleteI hope I answered your question in the next post, but to save you the 'clickage', GoSoapBox is intra-student anonymous.
ReplyDeleteMeaning the students may not see who is posting the responses or voting, but the teacher can. The piggy back feature is the polls and options for teacher-created questions which are graded, quantified, and, of course easy-to-use as well!