my classes continue to perform with increasingly minimal note-taking and homework.
Which homework hasn’t been assigned because of Anki? Remembering back to my high school English classes, the only homework I can remember doing was reading readings and writing essays. I can’t see how either could be displaced by Anki.
I’ve cut back on note-taking quite a bit thanks to Anki. They weren’t looking up those notes anyway. If they want them bad enough they can look them up on my web page or go straight to the Anki cards.
Anki hasn’t displaced much homework, though, as there wasn’t much left to displace. I don’t give it mostly because few of my students would do it; they are not strongly motivated by grades. This is especially true of reading homework; I gave up on that a year after I stopped teaching honors after getting about 10% compliance. Reading happens in class or not at all, and yes, it is a big challenge to squeeze this in and still do all of the other things we need to do. It’s important, though. For most of my students, the reading we do together is the only reading-at-length they do all year. They admit this readily—even proudly.
Essays are more mixed. We don’t do too many full ones, and the ones we do mostly get done in class. The “homework” is there just as safety valve for those who care enough to make their essay great.
I don’t give it mostly because few of my students would do it; they are not strongly motivated by grades.
Hm. I was about to suggest that the natural way to get daily Anki compliance is to have that be homework—it should be easy for students to send you some record / to find or build a webapp where you can see whether or not students are reviewing their cards.
(This runs into trouble with digital access; students may have a hard time getting on the Internet on Saturdays or Sundays. But for many schools this isn’t a problem.)
Monitoring features are definitely a part of the vision I’ll be laying out in the next post, but more as a way to make classroom time more productive than as a homework enforcement aid. To get them to use something on their own time I’m going to have to be more clever, and make them feel like it was their idea.
Which homework hasn’t been assigned because of Anki? Remembering back to my high school English classes, the only homework I can remember doing was reading readings and writing essays. I can’t see how either could be displaced by Anki.
I’ve cut back on note-taking quite a bit thanks to Anki. They weren’t looking up those notes anyway. If they want them bad enough they can look them up on my web page or go straight to the Anki cards.
Anki hasn’t displaced much homework, though, as there wasn’t much left to displace. I don’t give it mostly because few of my students would do it; they are not strongly motivated by grades. This is especially true of reading homework; I gave up on that a year after I stopped teaching honors after getting about 10% compliance. Reading happens in class or not at all, and yes, it is a big challenge to squeeze this in and still do all of the other things we need to do. It’s important, though. For most of my students, the reading we do together is the only reading-at-length they do all year. They admit this readily—even proudly.
Essays are more mixed. We don’t do too many full ones, and the ones we do mostly get done in class. The “homework” is there just as safety valve for those who care enough to make their essay great.
Hm. I was about to suggest that the natural way to get daily Anki compliance is to have that be homework—it should be easy for students to send you some record / to find or build a webapp where you can see whether or not students are reviewing their cards.
(This runs into trouble with digital access; students may have a hard time getting on the Internet on Saturdays or Sundays. But for many schools this isn’t a problem.)
Monitoring features are definitely a part of the vision I’ll be laying out in the next post, but more as a way to make classroom time more productive than as a homework enforcement aid. To get them to use something on their own time I’m going to have to be more clever, and make them feel like it was their idea.