Purpose
“Teacher Group Maker” app helps a teacher to divide a class of students into small groups for cooperative work.
Key Features
- First, the teacher enters the class name and student names into the app.
- Then the teacher selects the size of the group. For example, 2 students in each group, or 3, 4, 5, etc.
- After that the “Teacher Group Maker” app will automatically create groups in a random order.
How It Works
After you launch the app, the first screen “Groups” will be opened.
On this tab you can create small groups of students for collaborate work during the lesson. It can be very useful for different forms of learning.
How to divide a class to Small Groups
To create groups, select class and the desired size of group.
The app creates groups automatically.
The groups will be created in random order.
How to add, edit, or delete Class
First, open the Classes tab.
Add New Class
To add a new class, click the “Add Class” button in the upper right corner of the screen. A new small screen will be opened. To add a name of the new class, type it in the text field. Then click the “Save” button. You will be returned to the previous screen and see the new class in the list of classes.
Edit Сlass
To edit, that is, change the name of an existing class, swipe your finger across the line with the class name on the Classes tab from left to right. Two options will appear: Edit and Delete. Select Edit. A separate small window, Edit class, with the name of the selected class will open. Change it to the required name and click the Save button.
Delete Class
To delete a class, swipe your finger across the line with the class name on the Classes tab from left to right. Two options will appear: Edit and Delete. Click Delete. The selected class will be deleted from list of classes.
How to add, edit, or delete records of Students
To add, edit or delete student records, click the line with the class name on the Classes tab.
A separate screen, Students, will be opened.
Add New Student
To add a new record of student, click the “Add Student” button in the upper right corner of the screen. A new small screen will be opened. To add a name of the new student, type it in the text field. Then click the “Save” button. You will be returned to the previous screen and see the new name of student in the list of students.
Edit Name of Student
To edit, that is, change the name of an existing student, swipe your finger across the line with the student name on the Students tab from left to right. Two options will appear: Edit and Delete. Select Edit. A separate small window, Edit student, with the name of the selected student will be open. Change it to the required name and click the Save button.
Delete record of Student
To delete a record of student, swipe your finger across the line with the student name on the Students tab from left to right. Two options will appear: Edit and Delete. Click Delete. The selected record will be deleted from list of students.
App Story
The idea for this app came from college English classes. Our teacher, Susan Hall, often divided us into subgroups for joint assignments. And she did this with the help of special sticks on which our names were written.
That’s when I thought, why not make a small application for a mobile phone, which would help the teacher to divide the class of students into subgroups.
As a person who already had teaching experience, I realized that it was a rather tedious task to come up with how to divide a class into small groups each time. Therefore, sometimes the composition of the groups was repeated, and some teachers created permanent groups. But as a student, it was always interesting for me to communicate with new classmates in order to gain experience in communication and language practice with different people. Therefore, in this application, groups are created randomly, i.e. each time the compositions of these groups change.
Almost every adult has mobile phones now and they are always with us. Therefore, you only need to pre-enter the names of the classes where the teacher works and the names of the students. And then it remains only to choose the class and size of the group, i.e. how many people will be in each group. These can be groups of 2 people, 3, 4, 5, etc.
The application will do the rest of the work itself and show on the screen the composition of the created groups. This will take only a few seconds and the teacher will not need to spend time thinking about how to divide the class into small groups.
In this way, “high technology” can be used in the daily work of a teacher at school, college, and university.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the English teachers at Mt Hood Community College (Gresham, Oregon) Amy Widger, Judit Szentirmay, Sharon Marks, JiGuang Li, Dr. Aylin Bunk, Thomas Fuller, Christopher Wrenn, and Grace Richardson for patiently listening to us and explaining this crazy English 🙂
Special thanks to Susan Kuhn, who never spared time to explain the incomprehensible and come up with new exercises for us.
A special and huge gratitude to Susan Hall, who so skillfully structured the lesson materials, that we felt the improvement of our skills literally every week. It was in these lessons that the idea was born to create this Teacher Group Maker application.
I also want to thank the teachers of computer subjects Julie Hutchin, Scott Plinski, Anna Johnson, Tobin Shields, Robin Born, Dr. Erika Feralova, and Amber King, who introduced us to the world of high technology.
Special and just huge thanks to Professor Dr. Wayne Machuca, thanks to whom I began to study the Swift programming language for developing mobile applications for the iPhone.
The huge energy and enthusiasm of Professor Dr. Wayne Machuca, in collaboration with colleagues, has allowed our Mt Hood Community College to offer students of computer specialties unique learning opportunities in area such as computer security, game development, mobile application development, web development, etc. This is a truly unique set of specialties where students can learn the basics of Swift, Python, Java Script, C#, etc.
This mobile application is dedicated to our teachers to make their work interesting, creative and high-tech!
Privacy Policy
Teacher Group Maker app does not collect or store any information about users.
Contact Us
mobile.369.app(at)gmail.com