Module 6- Exploring Two Platforms/Apps

The two digital platforms that I chose to do the case study on are IXL and Sora. Both are applications that my students use almost daily in my classroom. I have worked in two different districts and both of which used these platforms, so I have had the opportunity to explore both of these. The first part of the case study I am going to talk about is through the use of IXL. IXL is a learning platform that allows students to work on ELA and Math skills on their Chromebooks or Ipads. The students are able to have lessons assigned to them, they are able to choose their own lessons or skills to work on, and the teacher can create quizzes based on the skill or standard they are testing. The part that is appealing to educators is that if you have a student who is performing above or below grade level, you are able to assign skills based on where the student is at. Educators use this to fill in gaps or lessons that a student is in need of mastering or working on. Teachers can use this to see how many questions a student is getting right or wrong, track student data, track hours on IXL, print certificates for students who achieved a goal, and create Group Jams for students to play. As stated by Thompson, “Originally designed to support math education, IXL offers curriculum for grades K-12. Students practice mathematics on IXL, get immediate feedback, and never see the same question twice. IXL personalizes student learning with individualized guidance and real-time analytics. Each Georgia Standard of Excellence for mathematics is available in IXL, which reinforces lessons taught in class. Teachers can immediately discover which skills students are struggling with after accessing the analytics available in IXL” (2022).




Communication between students and teachers is minimal on this app, but it has just enough to where they can access what they need. Teachers receive immediate feedback as well as students for how they did on a question, lesson, skill, quiz, or Group Jam. Providing immediate feedback to the students allows them to see where they went wrong. Not only does IXL give this feedback, but they also provide a step by step process of how the problem should be solved. This can be more difficult when getting an ELA question incorrect versus a Math question. For example, not identifying the correct preposition in the sentence, doesn’t have a step by step process that you could see where you went wrong. Instead, it gives the correct answer, states that the answer you chose was the verb, and then gives another example and definition of the preposition. The tools and tasks that a teacher has is the student engagement piece. How can we make students engaged all while learning the skill or standard? The figure below shows different methods of how to teach mathematics to students. Although the younger grades may not be exposed to algebra, these strategies can be used for any age group. As Thompson stated, “As shown in Figure 3, the Student Growth Model consists of a graph with four quadrants and teachers’ bubbles on the graph indicate student growth and achievement (GaDOE). For example, a teacher’s bubble with 70% growth and 70% student achievement would be located in quadrant I, labeled Higher Achievement and Higher Growth (GaDOE). On the contrary, a bubble located in quadrant 3 has the label Lower Achievement and Lower Growth” (2022). The student growth and engagement went up 70% throughout the study. It was found that through students using the IXL platform, they had higher scores for the online lessons and quizzes than they did on paper lessons and quizzes.



The benefits for using IXL are endless. I would say I am biased towards it because this is something I use in my everyday life. One main reason I use it is to track data for individual students and during our intervention time. It gives skills and lessons that you can assign to a group of kids or even just one that is struggling with that standard. You can create and customize quizzes for the students to take at the end of the week to see if they are meeting their goal etc. I would say one drawback to IXL is when students are working on fractions or decimals. There are a lot of time questions that will be marked wrong because there is a space in between the numerator and denominator. This affects their quiz scores but as an educator, even with automatic grading we need to be looking at their answers anyways. IXL uses the students' school email that allows them to login with just their first initial and last name. IXL is ED 2-D compliant which means they have agreed with the district that they won’t sell any of the students information online. In order to use this app effectively I would highly recommend that educators play around on it and see all the different options that it has. There are so many different games, skills, lessons etc. that they can assign to help them.




The next application I am going to talk about is Sora, which is an online digital ebook library for kids. It allows students to have their own portable library from anywhere and anytime. Students can access this at school, home, during breaks, and even summer. There are a plethora of book series and genres to reach all kinds of readers. Fortunately, this app also reads the story to the students which can help even the lowest of readers. Teachers can use this as an extension activity to a series or topic they are reading about in school. For example, you can read about the Eastern Woodland Indians in social studies and then assign a book online for them to read when they finish the activity or test. There are so many times in which a teacher will just say “Okay, you’re done…. Hop onto Sora and read.” That's a huge NO! There is a time where you want students to ‘free read’ and then they can choose what they want. As Larson states, “ Because children expressed such interest in e-book reading, it is important that educators and researchers understand how to effectively integrate this technology into educational settings” (2012). There is a certain standard that educators have in which they set-up deliberate and meaningful extension activities.




Sora does not allow students, educators, or parents to communicate on this. It is simply an online library in which students can access hundreds and hundreds of books that their school library may not have. It also has the ability to read aloud to students which is a huge benefit in the lower grades or as an ESL teacher. Exposure to literature and words will help students identify and understand the words that are being read. When Sora is reading aloud to them, there is a highlighter that goes to each word as the author reads it. This helps with word recognition and letter sounds. It also takes the ‘stress’ out of reading for those who find it difficult. I was always a child who wanted to be read aloud to, but never wanted to read myself. Having access to this back then would’ve been wonderful. Sora helps to increase reading comprehension in students as well.




The users access this information through their district or county who purchased it. At Cato-Meridian Elementary, our Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES purchases it for the district so it can be found right on their ‘Classlink’ on their Chromebooks. The content that is on Sora ranges from a lot of different topics. The main appealing aspect as a teacher, is that it groups books (on the sidebar) based on their lexile level. This can help a student figure out if it is ‘too easy’ or ‘too hard’ of a read for them.

Some benefits of Sora are that anyone can have access to books. Even our illiterate students can still be exposed to books everyday. The other advantage is that students can have access to online books throughout the summer and breaks so students won’t have to worry about buying books or going to their public library. One disadvantage of Sora is that they don’t have some of the newer books or series available. This can come with any online platform for books. There are so many options of books in this day and age. Another notable disadvantage is that students cannot access the same book at the same time. Let’s say I wanted to read Hatchet to my class, but today I wanted them to read the first few pages of the chapter… not all my students would have access to it. The authors can put licensing on the amount of books ‘accessible’ to the students. As for privacy risks, I have not found any. Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES doesn’t make the students sign in with their emails at all. The students just click on the Cayuga-Onondaga BOCES link and it takes them right to it. This protects the students data. The platform is very user friendly, as there is no difference between the student and teacher login. The app will look the same on both ends. Students will need to know what kind of novel or genre they are looking for, as well as how to use the search bar at the top.




Although both of these platforms can conflict with educational goals, I don’t see this happening too often with these apps. Both use enrichment and remediation to help grade level, below grade level, or above grade level students. This provides many differentiation and accommodation opportunities for the teacher to give. Educational goals can stem and vary in many different ways, but one common goal is an increase in student achievement and engagement. Both of these platforms provide students an opportunity to do both of those.












Bibliography

Larson, L. C. (2012). It’s Time to Turn the Digital Page: Preservice Teachers Explore E-Book Reading. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(4), 280–290. https://doi.org/10.1002/JAAL.00141Thompson, L. B. (2022). A Phenomenological Qualitative Study on Successful Algebra Teachers’ Perceptions of theImplementation and Use of IXL - ProQuest. https://www.proquest.com/openview/b617910dbe25ba0e1c4bd48d5b0e6863/1?cbl=18750&diss=y&pq-origsite=gscholar