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Naiku – The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

This is a special guest article from one of our Naiku Star teachers. Len Beard is mathematics teacher at Scott Highlands Middle School in Apple Valley, Minnesota.

NAIKU- The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

I’ve been ‘flipping’ my classroom for nearly a decade. I pre-test and post-test each chapter and use the pretests as a formative assessment to guide my instruction. The data tells me the strengths and weakness of each of my students. This allows me to give students more individual attention. To make this curriculum approach really effective students should be able to view content and take assessments on their own wireless devices, either in school or at home.

Len Beard’s Students Taking a Test on Naiku
In the past, gathering and sorting the data involved using a combination of spreadsheets and databases to compile and report the information – VERY time-consuming and difficult to teach to new teachers. Using the software that came with our curriculum to analyze our formative assessment results restricted us to a computer lab – an unacceptable option. We heard about Naiku from our district office and less than 2 weeks after contacting Naiku, we were siting with Corey Thompson, Naiku CEO, writing our own tests. Class lists and individual student information with user names and passwords had already been created for us. We have used Naiku ever since. Students really like being able to use their own devices to take math tests.

I was especially thankful that we could simply import the tests we had already written with the previous software. The Naiku platform is user-friendly for both students and teachers. Students get immediate feedback and the opportunity to analyze, reflect, and write about their mistakes. And, parents have complete access to their child’s tests — another wonderful feature. Teachers see class and individual results as soon as students complete the test. Results are reported by student, class, or standard. The collaborative design of Naiku allows us to share our assessments with other teachers in our school or district. The only thing better than the software is the support you get from the Naiku team. Naiku supplies the missing piece to make flipping a classroom really work for everyone.

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