Socrative

Socrative is a fantastic online tool for educators. It allows teachers to create quizzes and test their students in a virtual classroom setting. There are different modes through which the quiz can be administered. Once the quiz is complete, results can be downloaded for the teacher to review. I made a quiz about the topic of fairy tales and had my family members take it. It was a great platform for viewing the answers as they were given. The immediate feedback in a chart form allowed me to quickly identify which questions were answered correctly by the most or least people. 

This is a great tool that I could use in my classroom. If I had a classroom in which students had laptops in class (as I know some schools do) I could use a Socrative class as a quick assessment of learning to determine what my students are collectively struggling with. Or, if laptops were not an option, I could schedule time in the computer lab and create a lesson for that day that centered around using this tool for student feedback on their learning progress. This tool helps to engage students, but without making shy ones feel intimidated or giving talkative ones the chance to dominate a discussion. Most students learn better when they are actively participating, and this is a great way to foster participation while getting immediate feedback on retention and understanding. 

The "Space Race" option adds an element of competition and could be a great way to make the quiz more interesting for the students. There is also a "quick question" option that allows for verbal quizzing. I can ask the question and then give the students either a multiple choice option, true or false, or short answer. The short answer option also allows me to do a student vote in which students may vote for the answer that they think is correct. Because of the varied approaches, Socrative can be used for any question/answer situation. Ideally, as an English teacher, I'd want to use this primarily to get students thinking about the material, discussing it, and disseminating it. 

Having discussed the benefits of using it, I should mention that there are some limitations as well. The test must be administered in a way that all students are accessing it at once in order to be effective. There are some ways around that if my school has limited technology resources. I could partner kids up, or have only a few take it at a time. Also, I have to be logged on at the same time that they are. Even if I do student-paced quizzes, I still have to start the activity and end it.

Overall, the benefits outweigh the limitations. It is a handy tool, and I especially enjoy the aesthetic of its design; I do believe that functionality is enhanced by visually pleasing graphics and layout, and the more pleasant the design, the more user-friendly it tends to be. I look forward to having the occasion to use this tool in my future classroom.