What are Boom Cards and Why Should I Care?
What are Boom Cards and Why Should I Care?
Are you a busy teacher trying to get the best outcomes for your students in these dizzying times? Perhaps a little overwhelmed by all the options available? Just when you thought you understood things like Google Classroom or Seesaw, BOOM! Along comes another player in the distance learning space – and actually called BOOM no less. Well fear not, I’m here to demystify this latest explosion onto the education landscape.
Ok, so I can hear you thinking it already. It’ll take me ages to wrap my brains around it all, won’t it? Absolutely not! It’s surprisingly simple to use and get going with. And best of all, you won’t even need to download any software. So, sit back, relax, take a deep breath, and let’s take a quick look at what it’s all about.
Technically, the platform itself is called Boom Learning. But what is it? Simply put, Boom Learning is a wholly online platform (a website) where your students can use digital task cards.
How does it work?
In the physical world, let’s imagine you have a series of worksheets or task cards that you want your students to complete. You print them out, hand them to your students, have them write their answers on the pieces of paper, and then you collect them and mark or grade them. With Boom Learning, you do pretty much the same thing but it’s all done via a website. Instead of printed task cards (physical sheets of paper), you have Decks. A Deck is a collection or group of specific task Cards, usually with one question per card.
Check at our Adverbs Boom Cards in this video:
A Boom deck typically covers a particular topic, such as numeracy, literacy, history, music, or whatever else you as the teacher want your students to learn. You can create a deck of Cards yourself or you can buy one from the Boom Learning store, and there are literally thousands to choose from. In fact, there’s an entire marketplace there with a plethora of options for you to choose from if you so desire. Boom Decks are very often sold on Teachers Pay Teachers, in addition, to directly through the Boom website.
You can find our Boom Cards on the Boom Learning site here – more are being added regularly.
You can find our Boom Cards in our Teachers Pay Teachers store here.
When you purchase a Deck via Boom, it’s added to your account instantly and you are ready to go. If you purchase it through Teachers Pay Teachers, there will be a link you need to click first, but otherwise, the process is identical.
How do I get started?
To get going with Boom, all you need is a FREE account on the Boom Learning website. Once that’s done, you can set up a Classroom, add Students to it and then assign Decks to the students. All of this takes literally seconds to complete. Here’s what you need to do:
- Visit https://wow.boomlearning.com and click on the ‘Teachers’ icon
- Click the ‘Create FREE trial’ link
- Choose a sign-up method (email, Facebook or Google)
- Provide your credentials
- Actually, that’s it. There’s no 5.
There is a great video here that takes you through the basics of setting up an account and getting started.
Why Boom?
So, what’s so marvellous about Boom? Lots!
- Boom Cards are interactive. Instead of a piece of text with perhaps a bit of graphics on a printed task card, a Boom Card has interactive elements the student can drag and click. If it’s a multiple-choice question, for example, the student just clicks or taps on the correct option to record their answer. Constructing a sentence? They might simply physically drag the words into the correct order with their finger. If an answer requires text to be entered, text entry fields can record those responses also.
- Best of all – the whole thing is self-checking. If the student gets the wrong answer, they get instant feedback and can just try again. No stress. No tears. Just fun.
- One of the most powerful features with the Boom learning platform is its reporting. At a glance, you can see which students have completed which tasks, how long they took, where they got the answers correct or incorrect, etc. You’ll be able to see instantly which students are struggling, making it so much easier for you to see where students need the most help.
Using Boom Cards with Google Classroom
Yes, that’s right. If you are using Google Classroom, Boom Cards work seamlessly. Check out this video with all the details!
Boom is a fantastic and welcome addition to the distance learning landscape. It really does take all the effort out of it and does all the heavy lifting for you. And best of all, there’s no software needed. Everything is done entirely through a browser interface. Students can complete their tasks on a computer, tablet or even a smartphone. They can proceed at their own pace, get instant feedback on their progress, use a keyboard, mouse, stylus, finger or whatever they are most comfortable with. But most of all, Boom makes learning fun. Can you really ask for any more than that?
Did you Say freebie?
Try a free set of our BOOM digital task cards today. We’ve put together a set of Parts of Speech digital task cards that you can access here.
Save with our Parts of Speech Boom Cards Bundle
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