The website Jon uses for audio feedback is Qwiqr
More videos from Jon Mumford
Video transcript
hey let’s dive in with tip number one what you got for us well being being a languages teacher um one thing that i thought was really worth sort of delving into was audio feedback so my first tip is to consider the use of audio feedback in lessons and maybe outside of the classroom as well and i don’t know about you but when i feed when i feed back to students normally it’s in a written form if it’s you know an extended piece of writing for example and the issue that i have with with feedback is that the students especially it’s a foreign language as well they will write maybe half a page maybe 50 words 100 words or whatever and then my feedback is probably twice that and i’m as i’m looking at i’m thinking this just doesn’t tally up at all that i’m writing double what they’re writing and the other other issue is that i don’t know whether they’re actually engaging with that feedback or not i don’t know whether they’re actually going home and reading it or they’re just looking at the mark and thinking okay i’ll just put that to one side now so that was a big issue with me uh with with feedback i know you’ve had you’ve had bill and william on the on the podcast as well haven’t you do talks extensively about you know the how much progress students can make given the quality feedback so i thought it was worth exploring audio feedback because i know that variable feedback based on eef research verbal feedback you know has been proven to have real impact but the issue that i’ve got with with audio feedback i remember those audio feedback stampers we used to have years ago the teacher would come around and go right i’ve spoken to that child stamp and nobody thought it was pointless absolutely pointless nobody knew what it was for well we knew what it’s for it’s for slt so we could see that we’ve actually done something and marked the book but there was no purpose behind and the students didn’t value it at all but with audio feedback recorded audio feedback as well then the students can listen to it a number of times they can engage with it and in my experience and i’ll explain to you that the sort of the guys that it takes in my lessons or outside the classroom as well in a second but in my experience the sheep once the students know that they’re going to get their own individualized audio feedback then they’re really keen to listen to it and they’re really keen to engage with it and that that’s something which i think never happens when does a child look forward to getting feedback they’d be very rarely they’re all acting upon that feedback and so the the website that i found and this was from years of looking for something similar uh it’s called quicker so it’s q-u-i-q-r with a qr in the in the title i think it’s pronounced quicker and i think it was devised by um there was a there’s a teacher from down south i think his name’s mark waller um and i’ve actually become i think i’ve become like his pr man or something because every every teacher i can speak to about it i will do because i love it so much um but essentially what it is is you get you get a series of qr codes printed off from his website um and you stick them onto a student’s work so a student will do an extended piece of writing for example in and i’ll just use a language as an example and once they’ve done that extended piece of writing you put this qr individual qr code in their books which you print off from the website and then just using your mobile phone you will just scan that code and using the code you just record your feedback so you might say for example i don’t know um she’s done really well uh with your response to this task uh however what you’ve not done is you’ve not um you’ve not used the past tense in this in this passage so what i suggest you do is maybe utilize the past tense and maybe try also try and extend your sentences as well and then what the student would do is they would take that home they would scan the same code and that audio feedback would just come up on a web page and they can listen to it they can pause it whenever they want to and they can act upon that feedback and the idea is that you know when you next take the students books in that you can see that they’ve acted upon the feedback that you’ve left so that that’s one one thing i’ve used it for another way i’ve used it is just just as a general pick me up for students because and especially since the pandemic as well you know when students are you know quite anxious that they’ve got very little self-confidence they’re worried about things and they don’t know how they’re doing and quite quite a lot of the time you haven’t got the time of you in the classroom to give them individual feedback to say you know what you’re doing really really well well done and you’ve acted upon some feedback they’ve given you previously or you’re getting involved a lot more than you maybe were and what you can also do is you can you can use a different qr code and just stick it what i do is i stick at the front of exercise books and i just it’s just a general comment about how they’re doing and i just say to them you know well done johnny you’re doing fantastically well you’ve um you’re getting a lot getting involved in lessons you’re putting your hand up a lot more than you once were um one thing you i would like to do if you can do is just focus on your written work and maybe just take a bit more care in your accuracy or some something along those lines and the beauty of that is that you can overwrite that audio so the student might act upon that on on that feedback that you’ve left them and you know they go home they start acting upon the feedback they start you’re behaving really well in class if that’s one of the the sort of bits of feedback you’ve given them and then you can overwrite and say well done you’ve done that now we can maybe look at doing this so it’s a continual cyclical process and it it’s something which the kids have responded so well too because the and it’s one of those things where i said before they look forward to getting that fee and it’s not to be given to them every single lesson that’s obviously not what it is it’s not something which you can just have as a every single feedback you give us audio feedback but what i would say is that when the students see that they’ve got a qr code in their book and they know having done it before that they’re going to get some audio feedback individualized feedback personal to them you name them you know you talk them through their piece of work they really value it and they really see that you’ve spent your own time and they appreciate the fact that you know that it’s all individual and bespoke to them so it’s something which i have you know has revolutionized how i’ve fed back in the classroom and just one last little thing i mentioned about it is that because i’m a languages teacher as well one massive issue that i’ve always had being languages teacher is that if for example you’re doing a spoken task in class the only feedback you could give them is that verbal feedback that disappears once you’ve once you’ve said it it’s out from the ethers and it’s gone it’s disappeared whereas with this audio feedback i’ve used it for mock speaking exams so so what i’ve done is i’ve recorded just like i would normally recorded the the actual speaking exam and then after the speaking exam’s been done i’ve recorded myself giving commentary over their audio so it’s like two audios going together and i’ve just paused at various points and said well the pronunciation of that word is actually this whereas in the past of if i’m giving feedback to a speaking test it will just be in written form and it was just impossible to give any indication of to the students how to improve their pronunciation in written form so i say it’s completely revolutionized and how i feed back to students and it’s just it’s something which the students look forward to they they love it and it’s something which they can you know they can revisit at all times and i said before it’s it’s something which is a contin cumulative process of building upon so once you’ve met a certain target you can you can set them as another target as well flipping over this this sounds brilliant right the questions are coming thick and fast so i’ll do a few quick fire ones are you here a rough proportion of your marking that you would say you give this feedback to versus written yeah it depends depends how much time i’ve got really because what i would say is that and if you go into this quicker website one of the one of the things that mark wallace says is that um i think it’s you speak seven times quicker than you write so the the you know the feedback that you give if it’s an audio feedback should take you less time i would say that at first it probably takes about the same time because obviously you’re trying to navigate around the the website and things like that but it does it does save time and especially because if you think about that say for example you take it taking a set of books and you i’m sure you’ll appreciate this as well that when students are making the same mistakes as a class the whole class of making mistakes massive frustration for me was when the next book made the same mistake well obviously i’ve done something wrong here in my lesson i’ve not explained it well enough or that there’s a misconception that they’ve they’ve got that that i’ve not picked up on in my lesson and you’re going through the same book and you think well i can’t continue marking the same error over and over again so what you can do with with the qr codes is record the same audio feedback and just give them the same sticker for each year so it does save a bit of time that way as well but in terms of how often i do it um i would say that they want to do more often is the general pick me up one of those at the front of the exercise books just to give them a bit of a bit of a confidence boost uh but i would say maybe every every four or five weeks just because that’s probably how often i take in their books to uh to mark and extend the piece of writing so i’ll probably say when they do an extended piece of writing i would try as best i can to give that bespoke feedback if i come that’s great mate um cost how much we talking for this i take it you’re on some kind of cut from this or something like that right you know what i said before i should be because i probably i’ve probably been marketing it a lot more than the the fairly invented it was um but i think the website’s free to go on as far as i know i think you can you can sign up for you know you know all those packages where you can have you know departmental one and all that sort of stuff but it’s it’s free as far as i know well i’ve used them it’s free um but you know you can do all those sorts of things with the app as well where you can you can send a link to um to a you know website or it could be even youtube or whatever or you can even just you can even leave written feedback on that on it as well which obviously defeats the whole idea but um lots of you can there’s lots you can do you can actually start up a dialogue with this student as well now i thought i didn’t remember years ago remember dialogic marking was like yeah and whenever ofsted came in it was oh well you’ve got it you’ve got to show that you’ve had a conversation and it has to be in green pen and you have to respond in red pep and it just became a monster in it was it was it became ridiculous yeah and totally unmanageable um but with with this i think what you can do you can you can start a dialogue but that dialogue can just be you and you ask them to do something then then responding and that’s the end of it whereas dialogic marketing was it just there was no end point to it wasn’t so um so it’s i said it’s something which i’ve i’ve found is has massively changed how i feedback it and i said before it’s not something which i do all the time and every four or five weeks i would say but the good thing is that because you’ve got a number of classes that you teach you know you’re doing it quite regularly so you you’re into the groove of doing it and you know how to do it and you become quicker at it and more efficient but i said before the students whenever they see in their exercise books they’ve got this qr code that they know is going to give them audio feedback they absolutely love it and what one other thing i would say is one just before you ask me another question is that one really fun little thing that i do with with the students is that because i said before you don’t know where the students engage with your feedback you never know when you write you know half a page of a4 on you know how they’ve done an assessment or whatever do we do we actually know how much they they read we don’t know do we we can never guess which students we think yet but with with this audio feedback what i always do is i would just leave a random word in there so like underpants or monkey or something and i’ll say from the next day what what was your random word they’re putting your audio feedback and if they can’t tell me then i’ll say well you need to go home and listen to your audio feedback because i’ve spent time doing that so you need to go home and listen to that absolutely just another way of making sure that engagement but i said before they seem to be very positive in their engagement with it they what they want to get that feedback which is something that i’ve never seen before that’s brilliant okay a couple more follow-up questions just yeah um that dialogue thing how does that work with the kids responding do they write or do the kids verbally respond as well how does that yeah just as well yeah so it’s all via the same qr code when they scan the qr code it keeps set up as a dialogue then they just basically click on a button and they record their feedback probably slag you off as a teacher saying how rubbish you are and and then if you want to you can continue and carry on that conversation that’s great and just before i forget to mention about those stamps i was all over that verbal human stuff i was running out of left right and center with that that was absolutely ideal and in terms of um i know it’s always an awkward question with technology this what about the kids who don’t have like the smartphones that can scan the qrs has that not been too much of an issue yeah to be honest it hasn’t been an issue but teaching them in the area that i do teaching or i did teaching um most students have got a better mobile phone than the teachers but nobody’s come to me and said it’s an issue um but you do need a camera to scan it that’s it’s one of those where you do need you do need the camera so whether it’s you know you do it you can what you can do you can do it in lessons clearly what i’ve done in the past is with that as i mentioned before with those um commentaries i’ve given on um on speaking tests what i’ve said to them is i’ve said right well in our next lesson i want you to bring your mobile phone in if you haven’t got a mobile phone we’ll use one of the school ipads and bring some earphones in and what you’ll do is you’ll listen to my my feedback and as you’re listening to my feedback i give them like a little action plan sheet of what they need to do to improve their audio uh to improve their speaking via the audio so you can see straight away that if you want someone to come in and say what you’re doing then you can say well actually they’re actually acting upon this feedback that i’ve given them um and then what would hopefully happen is that in the lead-up to their actual speaking exam if it was you know if that was the the sort of exam they were doing then they can go home and listen to the previous one that they’ve done and go well actually last time i made that mistake didn’t i so i’ll make sure that i don’t make that mistake again um but yeah so it’s i said something which i’ve loved using and because i quite like using technology as well something which i’ve found just really easy to use um and when i’ve been expanded to explain it and trying to market it like i said tea before in school other departments have found it really useful as well the master partner for example have used it extensively uh to give give good quality feedback as well that’s interesting did you know you weren’t off topic how mouths are using it are you because again it’s always the thing you always think is does this lend itself well to my shots i don’t to be honest they just said they’re doing it oh that was something gave me some kudos for five minutes just a couple of other quick questions mate on this one um slt are they are they happy with this in terms of kind of enough evidence because that’s awesome yeah isn’t it there’s a big thing for you we had um a mock deep dive um before christmas um and the head came around and he was looking at exercise books and i said before all the students had a qr code at the front of their exercise books and he was like what’s this to the students like what what does that mean and the students were able to say well over the course of a term or whatever we’ll get we’ll get various bits of audio feedback from our teacher um which you know tell us what how well we’re doing and what we need to do to improve and then he also i’m one of the students will probably also say well and that ties into the back of our exercise books here where we’ve got um these different age-related expectations as well so i know that i’m at this point so the kids know exactly what where they’re up to uh based on the you know the the updated feedback that you’re giving them each time with the uh through the audio and so they were really impressed with that and especially because the students were using and they knew what the what the purpose was behind it um but it’s that the individualized nature of it is the thing that the kids love the fact that they’re getting their what they say is it’s like having a teacher in the room that’s what you say when you go home it’s like having that support network at home that you have people i know that everyone would like to pause their teacher wouldn’t they but you’ve got the ability to pause and just rewind and a lot of students don’t you know when you’re going through it through explanations it’s too much for them isn’t it they you’ve lost them and they’re just not alone whereas especially for the weaker students if they can pause it and act upon that feedback um you know in their own in their own time in their own space at home as well whether you feel comfortable then it can only be a positive thing can’t it it’s lovely that and final way it’s not really a question just a point really when dylan was on the show one of his tips was to make feedback into detective work because he said what happens is as exactly you said at the start as teachers we put a load of time into this feedback we give it to the kids and they don’t engage with it or whatever so one of his his tips was to instead of saying okay you’ve got seven out of ten and these are the three questions you’ve got wrong say okay you’ve got three of these questions wrong but i’m not going to tell you which ones you’ve got and can you find them i imagine that’s the two tips could kind of fuse together quite nicely easily yeah that would work really well and if anything you could probably go a bit more descriptive you could be saying things like on line four you’ve made a slip somewhere can you find where it is but you’ve also made that slip a couple of other times see if you can find that yeah it’s really good that mate i like it you should definitely be honest you’re right there honestly you are right um but you could you know you could even get the students to record their own feedback on you to their own piece of work and assess their own piece of work or a session there’s that many things you can do with it i mean i’ve only touched the surface with it really in languages but i’m sure you as a math teacher you’d be able to think of a number of ways that you could use it in maths um but i said it’s something which i’ve i’ve thought was absolutely brilliant and as i said before any anyone i will who ask me about any ideas that i’ve got for for teaching this is always one of the first ones to give them because it’s something which has changed how i teach amazing