Disclosure: MasteryConnect, Socrative’s new parent company, is an advertiser on Free Technology for Teachers. 

Last month Socrative was acquired by MasteryConnect. MasteryConnect’s CEO has already said that Socrative will continue to be offered as a free service to teachers. To that end, Socrative has released an updated user guide for teachers. The updated 33 page guide walks you through everything you need to know to start using Socrative 2.0 in your classroom.

Some of the highlights of the Socrative User Guide (link opens a PDF)  include using your Google Apps account to log-in, creating and managing quizzes, aligning quizzes to Common Core standards, and running whole-class and individual response reports.

Socrative is one of a handful of back-channel and informal assessment tools that I often share with teachers. You can find a comparison of those tools in this handy chart.

Applications for Education
One of my favorite ways to use Socrative is to host a team “space race.” A space race is a competitive format for quizzes. Space race can be played as a team or individual activity. Each correct answer moves a rocket ship across the screen. The first person or team to get their rocket across the screen wins. Your space race questions can be pulled from a quiz that you have stored in your Socrative account.

The most basic, yet powerful use of Socrative is found in the single response activities. These activities allow students to reply to your prompt or question without entering their names. In a single response activity you verbally pose a question or prompt to your students and they respond with a word, sentence, or multiple choice selection. The anonymous reply format is useful for surveying students when you’re asking them to submit responses to questions or prompts that they might be reluctant to share in an open format.