Equity Maps – Standard

I have never seen a tool like Equity Maps before. It allows teacher to collect critical data on all aspects of a verbal discussion. I recently took a course on how to improve class discussions and one key piece is to reflect on it after and Equity Maps helps you do that very well.

This app has been so useful in helping my students develop their skills and proficiency in Socratic Seminars. They find it highly motivational to see the connections as they're made and we’ve started using it in the goal setting and reflection phases as well. My principal came in when we were using it and was blown away by how we were using the data it provides. My students love to look at past feedback frames to see their growth over time. I highly recommend this app to anyone looking to delve deeper into Socratic Seminars and see great progress in the students’ ability to goal set and grow academically.

Equity Maps is my favorite app right now. It does everything I need to keep track of discussions and seminars. My students love to replay seminars and look at the various participation graphs. I love the fact that I can record the audio for our discussions for those times when I write report cards or need some reminders about specific students. A fantastic app that more teachers should use!

Equity Maps is an ideal tool for tracking and data collection for class discussions. For teachers who are looking for a way to assess and provide feedback to students during discussion, Equity Maps has a host of features to make this job much easier.

I'm looking forward to using this in the Harkness discussions in my English class this year, however, there are two features I would love to see developed in the future. First, the ability to produce a shareable report from the analytics to include with my students' rubrics so that they know what to work on would be really helpful. Second, I usually take notes on what each individual student contributes; it would be great it that were an option when clicking on the check notes for each participant. Otherwise, this app has some terrific features!

I have been looking for an app like this for many years! Equity Maps is an amazing app for mapping conversations and then tracking various points of data. It’s easy to set up and use, which I appreciate as a busy middle school teacher and seminar facilitator. After initially mapping the discussion, there are a number of excellent debriefing tools available. My students love watching a sped-up replay of the discussion! There are excellent pre-loaded templates for tracking different aspects of participation based on tuning protocols, Socratic seminars, Harkness-style discussions, and many more. By tracking important and relevant data, teachers can focus on specific skills, set clearer individual and group goals, and even write better report cards. Essentially, this is a perfect app for all class discussions! As a Socratic seminar expert myself, if I designed an app, it would basically be this one!

This is an extremely useful app for teachers. I used the beta version as well, and I am really impressed by the final version. It was clearly designed by a classroom teacher. My Grade 10 English students were surprised by the equity charts, and I noticed a big difference during the follow-up Socratic seminar. I was also impressed by how much this app helped me to grade classroom discussions. The new update is excellent—the ability to comment while recording means that I no longer need to keep written or typed notes. I am able to pay more attention to the class seminar.

I borrowed this app to use with my class - when I projected the stats w/n the feedback frames, the students were glued to the screen. "Koastas, look how much you spoke!" said one student; "I wanted to say more but didn't have a chance," said another. Will add Equity Maps to the other iPads in class and let the students chart their small breakout group discussions and I will be able to listen after. This will free them up to have their own space, but also allow me to see where they are at with their understanding of the text. Looking forward to seeing what you add next. Would be great to be able to share the report frames.

The new Checknotes function is a great addition for the school year. Tracking types of questions asked in class provides specific feedback to colleagues as we work to improve formative assessment practices. Excellent addition to my toolbox!

WIth so many educational apps out there trying to capture every piece of the app market by including social media functions that operate like shoddy Facebook or Instagram clones or focusing their products entirely on the teacher/parent relationship, it is so refreshing to see an app like Equity Maps. The beauty of Equity Maps is that it has a clear purpose, vision, and utility for classroom teachers. I actually went to the Phillips Exeter Humanities Institute this past summer, which is a week of professional development for humanities teachers at Phillips Exeter Academy focused entirely on learning how to apply the Harkness method (from the school that invented it!) to one’s curriculum, and several teachers had just recently discovered Equity Maps and were raving about it. After we tried it out for a few Harkness discussion sections, I was completely hooked and couldn’t wait to take it back to my school. This app makes all of those discussion mapping worksheets and the difficulty of then copying, distributing, and breaking down the information in said worksheets a thing of the past. The fact that the app also includes data points for looking at the distribution of participation between men and women is also incredibly helpful for aiding with those difficult conversations one should have with male students about not dominating the discussion in a room (even though society teaches to do it). Hopefully, Equity Maps plan to expand the gender choices to include trans and genderqueer students who my be uncomfortable with being labeled as either male or female (at this point, I just have a conversation with my classes about using this app with chosen pronouns in mind until that update comes around). My students LOVE seeing the replay of the discussion happen in real time and figuring out how many minutes they talked vs their peers. The ability to show the various checknotes (which are tags you can apply to certain students who make certain types of comments) is also incredibly helpful for making students aware of their trends and notifying the class of ways that the group as a whole could improve or focus next time. If you’re a teacher whose classes are largely discussion-based (I teach English and Creative Writing at the high school level, so it is a must!), this app will change your teaching experience and save you ridiculous amounts of time and energy. The kids think it’s cool too!