Johnny Carrera, a veteran in the classroom of 20+ years and now one of TestOut's Instructional Designers, discusses his experience with helping students use and learn from the TestOut fact sheets.
Getting Students To Read The Fact Sheets
TestOut Statistics: Average time students spend on different activity types
- Videos: 5 to 8 minutes
- Labs: 5 minutes
- Fact Sheets: 2 to 3 minutes
The problem
- Students will not read the fact sheets.
- The fact sheets are as important as watching the videos.
Things I've tried
- Assigned fact sheets for students to read in class and expected them to do it.
- Assigned the fact sheets as homework and expected them to do it.
- Projected the fact sheets on a screen and picked different students to read portions of them.
- Projected the fact sheets on a screen and I read them.
What seemed to work with in class delivery:
- I would print out what I felt were the most important fact sheets and made binders to give to students. They could write more notes on the printed fact sheets.
- I would make power point slides from the fact sheet material and use them for my lectures. I would add my one pictures or information.
- The students could use the printed fact sheets to follow the lecture.
- During test prep students could use the printed fact sheets for review.
What seemed to work during online and hybrid settings:
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For online delivery and a hybrid of in classroom and online, I would do the same thing as if in class.
Tips
- Duplicate TestOut labs in the classroom (if you have time):
- Old computers to tear apart.
- Routers and Switches to program. Ask your district for old out of service stuff like networking gear and servers.
- I’m just going to say it, Packet Tracer to duplicate labs.
- Find old working PC’s or laptops and dual boot them with Linux (Lubuntu, Ubuntu, Centos) and Windows.
- Free Windows resources:
- Create a closed network in your class.