Have you seen the video about Caine’s Arcade? It’s about a nine year old boy in Los Angeles who creates an arcade for customers at his father’s used auto parts store. The documentary is ten minutes long and talks about Caine’s creation and how he started the arcade as some of the games he’s developed. The story is engaging and interesting.

Two things stood out to me. Since this is a blog to promote technology in education, let me begin with that piece. The filmmaker, Nirvan Mullick is also Caine’s first customer. He is so inspired by Caine that he decides to make a short film about the arcade as a way to get the word out that it exists. What struck me was the way Mr. Mullick went about spreading the word, navigating social media to promote his idea. Watch the film to see what tools he uses and how effective they were.

The second thing that struck me was Caine’s resilience. Starting at 3:50 in the film, Caine’s father begins to talk about the clientele at the store. He shares that most of his sales come from online and very few people walk in the store, but Caine, despite getting no sales, prepares everyday for success. He sweeps the floors, organizes the prizes, dusts the games, promotes his business, and despite limited customers he continues to be upbeat and hopeful. At one point his father suggests that they could go home early since there seemed to be so few customers, but Caine simply refuses to leave early, he refuses to cut corners.

Some would call Caine’s attempt at making an arcade a failure, but he never stops preparing for success, which is a wonderful lesson that we could all use reminding. Caine is unwilling to accept failure, he doesn’t define success by the money he is making, but by the creation of the arcade and the solving of problems (see the part where he wants to buy a claw game to pick up prizes, but on his dad’s insistence he comes up with his own version of the game). The ingenuity and determination of Caine is inspirational and should be a lesson for all those who would give up on goals and dreams too soon, before it has the chance to grow. The lesson? Prepare for success, even when it’s off in the distance, because with perseverance, it’s coming.

One morning, Cynthia popped in my cubicle and said “Hey, look what I’ve found”. Since she had all her kids grown up, unlike me, with a 5-year-old-daughter sticking to me until bedtime, she had more time than me finding interesting gadgets in the Internet. With this in mind, I turned to my American colleague with envy, “What is it this time?”. That was the moment I met ShowMe.

That night, I did not sleep until I finished my first four videos. I was so excited that I could not go to bed before uploading the links to my course “web”site, which literally had webs all over. And after a couple of hours of sleep, I rushed to school and introduced ShowMe to my students. My course website came alive as I shot more videos and uploaded links, announcements and other materials. And in one-and-a-half month time, I had a total of 17 thousand hits for my 30+ videos.

This is not a success story, or I am not trying to show off, as I still could not be able to show a significant increase in the students’ marks. Yet, I think, this is not the only way I can tell the change in my students. Some of my students, who hadn’t scored more than 10% in the past exams, got significantly higher marks from the last exam. The level of noise in my classes dropped, and mostly replaced with the “academic noise”; my students started discussing the videos, or asking solutions to the problems, etc. Students were also able to adjust their pace in working on the course material, which they liked so far.

I certainly had problems and failures, too. Some of my students completed most of the videos, but they could not succeed in the last final. Some of them could not complete the core videos, hence they were not ready to take the final, and they failed. As a teacher of 93 students in 4 sections with 28-hours-a-week load, I could not be able to follow all my students’ progress promptly and take action accordingly.

But I accept this as a warm-up session. Now that I am familiar with ShowMe and I have explored the do’s and dont’s of ShowMe in the class, I am ready to use it more efficiently. Starting today, I will share my humble experience with you, and search for answers to questions that arise while using this awesome application. I hope I may initiate exchange of ideas, or even a brainstorming, which may improve us in our profession. It may be interesting for you to follow posts of a Turkish math teacher in Abu Dhabi, who tries to teach Algebra to the grand-grandsons of the inventors of Algebra. Or… er… maybe not. Anyway, I will post here for some time, thanks to Kika.

NEXT: How I use ShowMe in my teaching?

During my school’s adoption of a 1:1 iPad program this year, I have discovered several apps that have played significant roles in student learning and achievement. At the top of that list has been Socrative, a self proclaimed student/audience response system. It’s accessible through an app on the iPad as well as through the web. This tool allows you to create tests, quizzes, or polls for your students to respond to questions as a free response or multiple choice scenario. Once you’ve collected the information, you can email yourself a detailed report of the responses for each question by your students. I have used it to conduct tests and quizzes as well as to get feedback about classroom activies. The reports have allowed me to use exact student quotes as part of the grade reports and not just paraphrase their thoughts.

Socrative allows you to set the pace or let students work at their own pace, differentiating for ability and processing speeds. I have found that students like using the site, the interface is good and I found that students quickly adapt to the site. Socrative is a good way to get feedback that can be used to improve your teaching and help students become better learners. Play around with it and see what you think about it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.