Tech Tuesday: Piazza

So as promised, it's time for the Firstish Tech Tuesday post! I'm so excited to be sharing my growing knowledge with anyone out there in blog world! 

While taking a course this summer from William and Mary I got the opportunity to work with a class using a platform called Piazza. Piazza is an awesome platform for teachers and students to be able to collaborate. To start using Piazza, you would go to the website and sign up for an account. Once you sign up and add a class, click on the"Manage Class" button on the top Navigation Bar. Once you are there, you will see the sign up link that you can give your students and the access code. Write these on the board the first day of class and you can walk students through the sign up process. 

Once students go to the sign up link, they will see a page like this where they will need to enter in their access code. 

Once they enter in their access code (found on the teacher page that you got the link from) and click "Join Classes" they will then come to the following screen in which they need to enter in their email address. Many of my students don't have email addresses and even if they do I want to be able to monitor their email use at school. If you don't already know about the wonders of Gmail, jump on over to this post!

They will then click "Submit Email" and will be prompted with a page to enter in the conformation code from the email. Then you are all set!

Piazza can serve as a classroom webpage where you can post general resources and link, homework assignments,  or homework help.  Just click on "Course Page" on the top navigation bar and then "Resources" on the grey navigation bar on that page. From there you can add to each section. 

Piazza also serves as an excellent platform for class discussions. Don't worry, I still think pencil and paper is very important! But why not mix it up every once in a while? From the "Q & A" tab at the top navigation bar, you will get to the main screen. Once there, click on the blue "New Post" button on the left side bar. While there you can choose the post type, who sees it, what folders to include it in, and can put in your post. I want to start of the year with a post from my students about what they consider their "math life" to be. 

Once you have finished, you will go ahead and click the orange " Post" button at the bottom of the screen and then you will see this:

This is the same screen that students will see, except there will not be a place for "the instructor's answer". Students will be able to see the questions in the side bar and will be able to click and answer. Students would click in the followup discussion box and type their answer to your question (or another student's question). 

When they go to post, they will have the option to post anonymously or with their name and also to the entire group or just to the instructor. After they have clicked the post button they will see a red box pop up on the post. It will have an option for if the post is resolved or unresolved. 

They will leave it unresolved if it is a question that needs to be answered. They will mark it as resolved if it is anything else. 

Another great function of Piazza is that you can also use it to work with smaller groups within your class! Just click on the "Manage Class" button on the navigation bar and then click on the "Create Groups" button immediately below it. This will enable you to create groups that can have discussions without the whole class seeing it. 

This would be a great function for reading groups or group projects!

The possibilities are endless with Piazza! I haven't used it with an actual class yet, but my graduate class used it and loved it. I promise to update in the Fall with how it is working for us so far! Hope you all are having a good week! I'm getting so excited for my birthday shenanigans this weekend!