Amplify Lessons and Personalized Learning

As a county improvement initiative, most middle schoolers in Guilford County have been issued Asus Android Tablets for use in school work.  Students get to use the tablets in school as well as have them at home for extra practice and homework.  This initiative is meant to personalize learning for all students to ensure that they are individually improving and growing as students.  The amplified software is installed to create virtual classrooms.

Within these classrooms, students have folders for each class they take.  The teacher can send out website and video links, files, documents, and assignments.  The student checks into class in order to see what the class feed says.  Other cool features of Amplify folders are the ability of the teacher to see what apps the students are on, to send out formative assessment check such as spot checks and short answers and have student lead conversations and discussions.
In my classroom, I am using the tablets as formative assessment tools.  I sent out a google drive form to the students and allowed them to take the survey about ratios.  The questions had the students writing ratios, simplifying ratios, explaining the different types of ratios, and creating word problems having to do with ratios.  Once they took the survey, the results were sent start to my account for assessing.
Another way I am using the tablets in my classroom is to have math fact practice.  Within the first few weeks of teaching, I realized that my students are getting and understanding the concepts that I am teaching them.  Yet, they are getting most of the questions incorrect.  This is because they have not mastered math facts like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division or they make careless errors.  In order to fix this problem, I set them all up on xtramath.org.  This website is a quick and easy way for teachers to monitor and have students practice math computations.  Every morning, as the students walk in, they take out their tablets and sign on to a session of xtramath.
For more information, click on this link to go to the Guilford County Schools newsbreak to view a video (with me in it) explaining how personalize learning will be used in the classroom.