Qwizdom Blog

Qwizdom Inc Appoints New COO and Restructures Sales Operations

Lisa — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:23:17 +0000

Press Release. 20th April 2012

Qwizdom Inc, provider of learning technology solutions to over 10,000 schools has recently appointed a new Chief Operating Officer, Tom Houston, to oversee the company’s global expansion.

As part of an overall restructuring, Qwizdom is expanding its head office in Washington State and moving some of its sales and operational functions from Ohio.

Qwizdom is in the process of appointing a USA Sales Director to their Washington head office and is expanding operations in California and New York in order to launch new products into the education and corporate training markets.

2012 and 2013 will see the rollout of new products from Qwizdom including an online learning platform, Qtopia complete with curriculum content standardized for the USA Common Core. Qwizdom has also begun to move into the corporate market with their Learner Response System and associated software and has large contracts with organizations such as Jaguar Landrover.

Qwizdom at BETT 2012

Lisa — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:01:56 +0000

January was a busy month with BETT being the prominent focus. As ever, the show was exciting, busy, exhausting (but worth it.)

We had a sneak preview of our new virtual remotes (QVR) and a very sneak preview of the new Q6 Instructor remote due for release later in the year.

It was great to see some old friends and meet a lot of new international visitors.

For the current BETT Qwizdom offer please contact info@qwizdom.co.uk

Qwizdom End of Year Reflection

Lisa — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:37:33 +0000

2011 has been an interesting year for Qwizdom and education technology as a whole. We have seen the very successful launch of our Q6 Student remote which allows for text based and mixed expression responses. So far we have schools, colleges and businesses alike getting great feedback using the advanced options available with the Q6.

We have also been honoured with a number of education technology awards for our new software products WizTeach (www.wizteach.com) and Qtopia (www.qtopia.com) from leading edtech magazine ‘Tech&Learning.’

Perhaps one of our most interesting news stories of 2011 came later in the year with the launch of Qwizdom QVR. This is a web-based virtual remote which allows participants to log into a Qwizdom session from any web enabled device. This means participants can give their feedback from a remote location; a vital development I am sure you will agree. The virtual remotes work alongside other Qwizdom remotes (e.g. Q2, Q6).

All in all, a very interesting year. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our customers, blog followers, Twitter and Facebook followers and general Qwizdom associates a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2012.

Technology at your fingertips at Knockloughrim Primary School

Lisa — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 10:22:41 +0000

Great to see one of our local Northern Ireland customers in the news. Their Headteacher Mr Wysner is certainly a great champion of education technology and it is good to see the pupils are seeing the benefits of his investments. To read the full article click here

Staff Surveys: Honest Feedback with Qwizdom

Lisa — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:46:50 +0000

I recently facilitated an event for a large Food Service company who required a fast way of getting feedback for their annual staff survey. Staff and student surveys are notoriously hard to get high response rates, especially if they are email or paper based surveys. For this particular survey I ran 12 sessions back to back. All staff were invited along at a particular time and were asked to take just 10 minutes out of their day. A PowerPoint presentation was used which asked them questions regarding communication in the workplace, their management and working conditions. They answered using their Qwizdom handsets.

The result? Over 70% of staff attended with almost 100% feedback and some great, honest data! The staff were very impressed with the handsets and it added an element of fun to what can often be a boring task.

Using Qwizdom for Grammar and Language Assessment

Lisa — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 10:35:08 +0000

Recently we have been training schools on how to use AnswerKey. These sessions have proved extremely popular with languages teachers in secondary schools and for english lessons in primary schools. For example, if you are having a common phrase or english spelling test simply set up a number of text response questions in AnswerKey, hand out your Q6 remotes and let students work through the test at their own speed. You may have a paper based or text book test that you want them to work through so they can work though this alone rather than answering as part of a PowerPoint session.

The great thing is that the software will do all the marking for you so you will not have to take it home that night. You will be able to see instantly the levels of understanding. Advanced options allow you be a little lenient and allow for slight spelling mistakes or ignore punctuation (if you are feeling generous!)

For a presentation on creating an AnswerKey session click here

Tech&Learning Award for Qwizdom’s WizTeach

Lisa — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:15:30 +0000

We are very honoured to have received a Tech & Learning Award of Excellence for our WizTeach Teaching software. WizTeach was honoured with being one of the year’s best education products, an amazing accolade. For more information click here or visit the WizTeach site for a free trial of the software and see what all the fuss is about.

If you are a Qwisdom user, Wizteach will fully integrate with your remotes.

Regular Rating Questions = Better Lessons

Ed Morgan — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:31:40 +0000

In conversation with a lecturer this week, he informed me that at the end of each lecture he poses the same rating scale questions to his students, asking how they rated the material, delivery and content of his lecture.

The thinking behind the regular feedback (as opposed to the standard end of semester course evaluation) is that it lets him monitor trends and track performance of lecture topics and methodologies, showing him what students responded to, what didn’t work etc

A Good Recall Question

Ed Morgan — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:26:23 +0000

A simple but really good question to ask at the start of a class or lecture:

Yes or No? I have read the assigned material.

Using Qwizdom to Motivate

Ed Morgan — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 14:21:40 +0000

A lecturer in the US recently described to me one of the ways she uses Qwizdom in the classroom. She sets a piece of work, normally a writing exercise and asks students to ‘buzz in’ when they have finished. The result is that once the first few answers start coming in, the rest of the group are motivated to finish as quickly as they can, really so that they don’t look bad in front of their peers.