Confer is a pricey app. However, at the start of this school year I decided that my goal was to make conferences a more consistent part of my students' classroom experiences. I've tried various electronic and paper methods, but nothing really worked. However, a colleague mentioned Confer for iPad, and I thought I would give it a try. The demo is not great, but it did give a window into the functionality of the program. I decided to bite the $25.00 bullet (steep for an app), and I haven't looked back. It is an excellent tool for monitoring student progress. Now, I often have my iPad with me so I can jot down any notes I think of. My conferences with students have become more directed and specific, and I have been able to understand the clusters of needs in my classroom in more depth. I already have further ideas for how I will use it next year. It is a great tool.
How to use Confer:
- open up the app
- click on the + sign to create a new classroom
- once a name is chosen, you can add your students. I put in both first and last names. You can later organize students by either and more.
- Once your class has been created, click on it to see your list of students. From here, you can select an individual student or a group. You can also organize the list in a variety of ways.
- If you view an individual student, you will initially see only a comment box with a flag to the left and a pencil to the right. The pencil lets you change their name, the flag "flags" them for your attention.
- above the pencil is a plus sign. Click it and you will be able to create a conferencing note for that student. It is automatically dated. Here you can:
-Take/include a photo
-leave a comment
-create a tag (I use this to mark what task they are on - ex. Novel Study)
-highlight their current Strengths, Teaching Points, and Next Steps. These titles can all be customized to suit your own terminology, or you can delete them and create new ones. These are essentially tags for specific things the student can do well or is working to do well (Strength - Capitalization).
- You can print/email all notes, which is great when you want to attach a note to student work.
- That's pretty much it. It is a very easy to use program.
Hi Jeff,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. I had never heard of Confer before now, but I am intrigued-- I would love to see how it works in person sometime. It's cool that you've explored it further and are using functionalities like tagging, and highlighting strengths/teaching points/next steps. Thanks for writing!