Perusall
- “Perusall began following a major four-year research project at Harvard University; we created the platform to serve students in our classes, and then in 2015 built the business to bring our research to students and instructors everywhere. Perusall is now a profitable business serving 2,000,000 students at 3,000 educational institutions in 90 countries. “
2. “Perusall is an e-reader platform that allows students and faculty to annotate the assigned readings and engage the reading material in a style akin to social media posting. Students can write full comments, “like” comments, use hashtags, link URLs to their comments and even use emoticons.”
3. Its purpose is to motivate students with a social learning experience to increase engagement, drive collaboration, and build community through course content, including books, articles, web pages, videos, podcasts, and images.
4. It pushes students to be taking ownership of their own learning as they are cultivating their own thoughts based on the source provided.
5. In my own experience, I have found Perusall to be a major source of my own learning.
6. Within my education classes, this technology has been very prevalent and aids in fostering conversation and thought provoking discussion with my peers and with my professors as well.
7. In my education classes this has been a really useful tool because teaching in all stages, but particularly in the early stages is about collaboration and having a space to share my ideas and ask questions.
8. My peers all have had different experiences in different classrooms from observation and student teaching. In Perusall, I am able to highlight the text or leave a comment to provide a connection that may align with an experience that I have had. This not only allows each of me to reflect on my own experiences but allows me to interact with and learn from the experiences of my peers.
9. I can ‘’like” the comment if it resonates with me, I can respond to it if I want to share a connection or proceeding thought, or even respond with a question if I want to know more and engage in a conversation, all via Perusall.
10. My own learning is greatly enabled by being able to interact with the ideas of my classmates. As someone who is organized and values being able to look back at my notes to make connections or to pinpoint a certain idea that is important, Perusall helps. When you use a hashtag in your comment, it saves the hashtag and keeps it on your sidebar. So, if I consistently used the hashtag-#teachertoolbox, which is one that myself and my peers consistently use, you are able to click on it on the sidebar. When you do this, you are able to see all of the comments that have been posted using that hashtag, the person who wrote them, as well as the article that it was posted in.
11. Many of my teachers that have used this technology because they too have seen the value in it, have had guidelines surrounding our usage of it that promote knowledge and student learning in a meaningful way. I am often tasked to have at least one comment per page. As I am reading through that page, I am reading to make my own connections but I am also finding that I am making connections or wanting to ask questions about the comments of my peers. It encourages meaningful dialogue and pushes my boundaries of knowledge while welcoming academic growth and knowledge to be tied with personal reflections.
12. Once a section of the text is commented on, it becomes highlighted. This helps me to see that one of my classmates found it important so I should take a look at what they had to say.
13. As a teacher, I can upload a reading to Perusall and plant comprehension questions into it. As a teacher, if I wanted to do reading groups, it is a good way to implement questions and ensure that students are on task and are paying attention to the reading at hand.
14. As a college student, Perusall has been an amazing tool and technology that has transformed my learning experience tremendously.
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