Livescribe Smartpen: Applications in Education

And yet another great idea shared by a principal from Arizona who shares how her school is using the Livescribe Pulse smartpen.

Sharing student reading at parent-teacher conferences

Using a Livescribe Pulse Smartpen and Livescribe notebook the teacher writes a student’s name and records the student reading a grade-level passage.  And then, at the next parent-teacher conference the teacher plays the reading so that the parents get a very clear view of their child’s reading skills.

The same format has been used for numerous assessments and antidotal [anecdotal?] recordings to share with the parents. After the teacher conferences with parents, the teacher can upload the information* so that the parents have a record of it for themselves.

Additional notes by Tim Fahlberg:
*Teachers can upload and share recordings in several ways:

1. As a pencast that’s shared privately.  Sharing privately allows teachers to send invitation to parents to view/listen to their child’s reading aloud and makes it so that only parents can listen to their child reading aloud on the internet.
2. Advanced method:  Teachers can use the Livescribe Desktop software to export audio to 2 formats (mp3 and iTunes mp4 formats) and share these privately on the internet or perhaps put them on parents USB memory drives that they bring to parent-teacher conferences.