7 things you should know about quizlet.

com

SCENARIO
Renee is a 23-year-old college graduate who just started her first teaching assignment in a high school English classroom. She is excited as the year begins, but quickly realizes that college did not prepare her for the real world of teaching. When Renees new principal handed her the daily schedule and new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) curriculum guide, she instantly felt overwhelmed. The new CCSS (the national college and career readiness education standards) requires intense vocabulary and technology integration into a rigorous curriculum. Renee knows that this new curriculum is going to cause her some timemanagement issues; hence, she resolves to combine some of the standards of the CCSS in order to save time. After talking with fellow teachers and classmates, Renee decides to complete vocabulary units using Quizlet.com. Before long, Renee has every unit uploaded to the website, all of her different class periods have their own group, and she has even started brainstorming ideas for collaborative research using the site. As the school year begins and Renee introduces students to Quizlet.com, she finds that students are truly engaged in the learning activity and have even begun healthy competitions for the highest scores.
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References

1 What is it?
Quizlet.com is a Web 2.0 educational website that helps people from all over the world in all age groups learn vocabulary and facts about a subject or even collaborate on research projects by creating associative sets. In its purest form, Quizlet.com is an online, interactive flashcard system that allows users to create word and definition flashcard sets then practice them by memorizing, playing games, or taking quizzes. Not limited to just vocabulary, users have created flashcard sets for remembering names of artworks, people, chemical symbols, and much more.

2 How does it work?

Because Quizlet.com is so user-friendly, students dont even need an account to study shared flashcard sets, or they can sign up using their Facebook account. Teachers will want to register for an account using their school email address to make it easier for students to find them. There are so many different flashcard sets available already that one only need to search for the content they wish to study and they can bring up hundreds of ready-made flashcard sets to quickly begin studying. For example, a student preparing for the ACT or SAT can search for and quickly find hundreds of flashcard sets of terms they need to know for the ACT or SAT. Users can also create their own flashcard sets and even add pictures by either uploading directly from MS Word, copy and pasting, or typing each word and using auto-define. To help memorize terms or to give visual representations of facts, users can also add pictures to each term. Even with a free account, teachers can add all of their classes to their account and then add flashcard sets to all classes at once or choose which flashcard sets they want for each class. After adding classes and flashcard sets to those classes, teachers only need to invite or add their students to the right class period.

Sutherland, A. (n.d.). Our mission. Retrieved from http://quizlet.com/mission Villamagna, D. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.commonsensemedia.org/mobile-appreviews/quizlet
Additional Resources Video tutorial available at: http://youtu.be/J_oyodcVf9g

3 Who's doing it?

While the site began when the 15-year-old founder, Andrew Sutherland, needed to learn his French vocabulary, it has now expanded globally, beyond the high school classroom. Pre-K children and parents use it to teach site words in conjunction with the read aloud function, new managers use it to learn the names of their colleagues, and English teachers use it for vocabulary practice.

7 things you should know about quizlet.com

July 2013

4 Why is it significant?
English teachers often struggle with vocabulary integration. Knowing how important vocabulary acquisition is vs. finding the time to fit it in to the weekly schedule is a common frustration. With Quizlet, teachers can easily input all of the vocabulary units and just give students a schedule of when to complete each unit. Students love using Quizlet because they are almost guaranteed an A on tests and quizzes when they use the site and because they get to play games and compete with their friends. Quizlet is not limited to just rote vocabulary memorization. As long as teachers have a creative mind, they can figure out multiple ways to use the site to their benefit. For example, in an effort to cover multiple standards of the CCSS, teachers can assign a group research project that has a verbal presentation component. Students in groups can gather all of their research into a Quizlet set as a graphic organizer. Group members can then divide the cards up and practice their verbal presentations with the cards. As long as the set creator allows for set discussion and for others to edit the set, then each group of students can add and discuss research to their organizing set, even when they arent in class together. (See Additional Resources for further information.)

According to CommonSenseMedia.org education reviewer, Dana Villamagna, parents should be aware that anyone can post and share sets of questionable quality and appropriateness (Villamagna). In order to combat inappropriate content, titles, and set descriptions, each public set has a Report a Problem link on every page with a drop-down menu of reasons, including explicit language and incorrect information.

6 Where is it going?
Currently, Quizlet.com is working on improving the free mobile application so learners can study anywhere . According to Quizlet.com, the free app is currently ranked #23 in the free educational app category (Quizlet.com/mission). They are asking Android users to sign up as beta testers in an effort to improve the apps functionality.

7What are the implications for English

teacher use.
Not just English teachers, but all teachers will find Quizlet.com can quickly and easily save them valuable time and resources. Instead of standing at the copy machine making endless copies of vocabulary and spelling lists, they only need to spend five minutes uploading terms and adding the set to their classes. Quizlet.com has caught on quickly and now even allows students to search for their school and teachers names to find, study, or create their own sets. Not only does Quizlet help students study when the teacher creates a set, but it also teaches valuable study skills. Students will see how quick and easy it is to study using Quizlet, which will transfer to other subject areas.

5 What are the downsides?

The biggest downside to Quizlet.com is that it does not allow students to test online and submit their scores to the teacher. One way around this is to use the quiz function and have students either take a picture of their score or do a screen shot and email their score to the teacher. Another issue with the quiz is that there isnt a way for teachers to create a test with the same number of terms and question types so all students are taking the same quiz. For example, if a teacher doesnt want to allow true or false type questions, students have to be told to uncheck that box when creating their quiz.

Tonya K. Schawuecker Purdue University EDCI-5640