Homework Help Presentation Chris Atkinson e-Learning Contact for Mathematics chris.atkinson@ottawacatholicschools.ca lgo10015.jpg Introduction

History of Homework Help Let me start by giving you a bit of background information about the Homework Help pilot (or test) project. The original pilot started in Hamilton in 2007-2008. In an effort to increase student achievement in mathematics, students from grades 7-9 were given special access to the ILC (Independent Learning Centre)’s “Ask-A-Teacher” website. The project was successful, so the Ministry of Education decided to expand the project to a larger scale for this school year. Expansion of Homework Help The expanded pilot now includes grade 10, so students in grades 7 through 10 are the focus of this year’s project. They are also offering the service to students from 15 English language School Boards across the province. We have been selected as one of those 15 Boards to participate. We’re currently working on getting all of our grade 7-10 students registered for the Homework Help website. The site, offered through the ILC, allows students the ability to access free online tutoring from a qualified Ontario Math Teacher, after school from 5:30 to 9:30pm, Sunday through Thursday evenings. Homework Help Web Site This is what the Homework Help website looks like when you first arrive. It is a familiar interface to students as it was designed to have a similar look to facebook. To register, you will need to select your own username and password. We recommend not using your first and last name as your username in order to remain anonymous on the web site. Once you are logged in, the only information that anyone can see is your username. That is how you are known on the site. In fact, the tutors also get to pick a username to go by. Theoretically, you could be getting tutoring from your own classroom teacher and they wouldn’t know it is you and you wouldn’t know it is them. It’s completely anonymous. You’ll notice that we are collecting email address, first and last name. This information is needed only in the case where you have forgotten your password. You will need to identify who you are with your first and last name and the ILC will be able to send you your password again via email. There are two types of users…Guests and Students. Guests are parents who wish to monitor what is happening in the chat rooms, teachers curious about the program, or anyone else who wishes to see the tutoring taking place. Guests are not able to ask questions or communicate within the site. They can only observe. Students will need a special Access Code to register. Only students in the 15 participating school boards are provided with that access code. Registering as a student allows you to ask questions of the tutors and receive the free tutoring in the evenings. Logging In This is what the web site looks like once you’re registered and logged in. You’ll notice that the banner graphic indicates that the Chat rooms are now closed. At 5:30pm, the banner will rotate and this graphic will appear saying “Tutor Chat Rooms Open” and allowing you to click the button that says “Ask a Question Now”. Picking a Chat Room The next page you will be brought to is this one. You will need to select your grade from the large numbers at the top. Selecting grade 7 for instance, you will get a list of the tutors available and their respective chat rooms. Notice that the tutors are using usernames to remain anonymous as well. You’ll see that Answerman is one of the tutors available. Answerman is online from 5:30-7:30, has 20 users in his room, and 11 questions waiting to be answered. You’ll also see that Pythagorus is online from 5:30-7:30, has 1 user in the room, and 1 question queued up to be answered. If you want a quick answer to your question, you would probably want to click “Go” to enter Pythagorus’ room. If you’re looking to just sit in and watch other people’s questions be answered, then you would likely click “Go” to enter Answerman’s room. Anatomy of a Chat Room When you enter a chat room, you will likely see another student working with the tutor. You’ll see a few key areas. First, there is a shared whiteboard where you can draw and the tutor can draw. There is also a text chat where you can type messages back and forth with the tutor. Finally, you will see a list of people in the room. There are four classes of people that could be present. M stands for Monitor. The Monitor’s role is to ensure that students are behaving themselves, and that Teachers are providing a consistent message in helping students with their questions, not just giving away answers. The Tutor is represented by a T. You will see a number of people with a Question Mark (?). These are students waiting in line for their question to be answered. The last group of people are slightly grey without the question mark. Those are parents who are sitting in to watch the tutoring taking place, or students who don’t have a specific question of their own to be answered. Students are able to log in and just watch other people’s questions being answered without having to ask their own question. When you are ready to answer your own question, you can click on the “Your Question” button. Asking a Question Once you click on the “Your Question” button, you will see this option pop up where you can input the question that you would like to work with the Tutor on understanding. When you click on Ok, your question is put in the queue and you will be in line for your question to be answered. Next Steps There are a number of features of the Homework Help website that are available whether the Tutor Chat Rooms are open or not. The Glossary is like a dictionary of all things math. If you are working on angles and don’t remember what obtuse is, then you can go to the glossary, look under o and find obtuse to see a description and sometimes an illustration of the term. There are Tutorials which have been created to teach small specific topics. They are mostly animated and very engaging. You have a Digital Locker with your account. When you ask a question of the tutor, your session is automatically recorded and at the end of the tutoring session, the recording is saved in your digital locker for later review. If you forget how to solve a problem, you can go back a month later and replay the tutoring session to help you remember. At the end of the evening, the monitor will go through and look for the highest quality tutoring sessions from the day. If there was a very good tutoring session, it will be taken out and put into a section called “Best Sessions” for everyone to review at any time. There are also “Listen and Learn” sessions. While somewhat lengthy, they are very educational. The presentation will now pause, allowing you a few minutes to explore some of the sections of the web site highlighted here. When you are ready to continue, simply press play. Things to Remember There are a few key messages that you should remember about the project. They are as follows: • Your teacher is still your best resource. Now that students can answer questions online anonymously, that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t ask questions in class of their own teacher. • The chat rooms are open from Sunday to Thursday evenings from 5:30 to 9:30pm • You can watch and learn without having to ask a question of your own. • After you have worked through a problem with the tutor, that session will be automatically recorded and stored in your virtual locker for later review. • The program is offered free to you and it is completely anonymous. Need to Know Here are a few points that parents may be particularly interested in. First, the ILC only hires Ontario Certified Math teachers teaching in our high schools and Intermediate schools. They aren’t hiring Coop students or University students to do the tutoring. This ensures that the tutoring is of the highest quality possible. The other important point to note is that there is no private messaging between students or between tutors and students. Everything that is typed or drawn in the chat room is visible to everyone in the room. That transparency provides for a safe learning environment. The OERB The Ontario Educational Resource Bank is a different web site offered through e-Learning Ontario. It is essentially a large database of learning objects that Students and Teachers have access to in our schools or at home. There are two main types of resources in the bank. The first is teacher contributed materials. If a teacher creates an activity for use with their class and they would like to share that resource, they can upload it to the OERB for others to use. The second type of content is Ministry Developed materials. For instance, almost every secondary course has been written for the online environment. Those courses have been broken down into their component parts, activities, units, quizes, etc., and put in the OERB for teachers and students to use. Students may wish to download a lesson that runs parallel to what they are doing in class just to get another perspective on that lesson. They may also wish to download the unit test to practice before their class evaluation for that same unit. Teachers and students can both access the answers to those test in the OERB which is helpful for students reviewing. The OERB covers Kindergarten to Grade 12 and has all subject areas, not just math. Logging in to the OERB The OERB requires a login and password that are available from your teacher. Searching the OERB can be done by keyword search, or by drilling down through grade and course, right down to the overall expectation that is being covered. Again, this resource is completely free to students and teachers. Questions? If you have any questions, please ask your math teacher or send me an email at Chris.Atkinson@ottawacatholicschools.ca Thank you for your time today.