Conducting simple formative assessments is one way to measure what your students do or do not understand from the lessons that you have taught. There are many ways to conduct formative assessments. They can be in the form of fun games, in a video format, or in a quick quiz. The following tools all provide a means through which you can conduct formative assessments.
Google Forms
Almost as soon as my school went 1:1 with netbooks, I started using Google Forms to collect responses from students. The Form that I created and frequently re-used simply asked students to respond to “what did you learn today?” and “what questions do you have for next class?” Of course, today’s version of Google Forms will let you include pictures and videos in the formative assessments that you create for your students.
Padlet
I started using Padlet back when it was called WallWisher. Padlet enables me to have students not only share exit responses as text, but to also share exit responses as hyperlinks. For example, if my students have been working on research projects I will ask them to share a link to something they found that day along with an explanation of how it is relevant to their research.
Quick Key – For classrooms that aren’t 1:1
Quick Key is an excellent platform for creating and conducting formative assessments. It is a tool that works equally well in classrooms that are 1:1 and in classrooms that are not 1:1. This is possible because Quick Key allows you to create formative assessments that you can distribute electronically as well as on paper. If you use Quick Key to distribute your assessments electronically, Quick Key will score your students’ responses automatically. One of the latest features of Quick Key is an integration with Google Classroom. This integration lets you use your Google Classroom rosters to distribute and collect assessments. If you distribute your assessments on paper, you can use the Quick Key mobile app to quickly scan your students’ answer sheets and receive the scores.
If not every student in your classroom has a laptop or tablet to use, then you need to check out Plickers as a student response system. Plickers uses a teacher’s iPad or Android tablet in conjunction with a series of QR codes to create a student response system. Students are given a set of QR codes on large index cards. The codes are assigned to students. Each code card can be turned in four orientations. Each orientation provides a different answer. When the teacher is ready to collect data, he or she uses the Plickers mobile app to scan the cards to see a bar graph of responses. In your teacher account on Plickers you can view and save all of the data that you collected from scanning your students’ Plickers cards.
PingPong
PingPong provides you with a free and easy way to collect feedback from students in the forms of multiple choice, true/false, and short answer questions. PingPong also lets you collect sketches from students which is a great way to have students illustrate solutions to mathematics problems or to submit diagrams to answer a question. A video demonstration of PingPong is included in this post.
Formative
Formative provides you with a place to create online classrooms. Your students join your classroom by entering the assigned class code after registering on the Formative website. Once your classroom is established you can begin distributing assignments to students. Assignments can be as simple as one question exit tickets like “what did you learn today?” to complex quizzes that use a combination of multiple choice, short answer, and true/false questions. You can assign point values to questions or leave them as ungraded questions. The best feature of Formative is the option to create “show your work” questions. “Show your work” questions enables students to draw responses and or upload pictures as responses to your questions. When you use this question type students will see a blank canvas directly below the question. On that canvas they can draw and or type responses.
Video-based assessments:
Vizia is a free tool for creating video-based quizzes. It can be used to create a short activity designed to help you determine if your students understand a concept or concepts demonstrated in a video lesson.
EDPuzzle is a neat tool that allows you to add your voice and text questions to educational videos. On EDpuzzle you can search for educational videos and or upload your own videos to use as the basis of your lesson. EDpuzzle has an online classroom component that you can use to assign videos to students and track their progress through your video lessons. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to use the main features of EDPuzzle.
TodaysMeet:
TodaysMeet is a free backchannel tool that I’ve used for years. One of the ways that I’ve used it is to simply ask my students to respond to a couple of questions that I have posted in the backchannel. I’ll also use TodaysMeet rooms to have students ask me questions. You can embed TodaysMeet rooms into your blog or website. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how you can do that.
Tozzl is a chat platform that allows you to quickly create private, password-protected message boards as well as public boards. To get started visit Tozzl and select “create a new Tozzl.” Then you can name your message board and set a privacy password (optional). Tozzl assigns a new, unique URL to each message board. On your message board you can add sections for chat, file sharing, to-do lists, and YouTube videos. You can also import the feed of a Twitter hashtag into your Tozzl boards. A Tozzl demonstration video is available here.
AnswerGarden is a neat service that allows you to embed a open-ended feedback tool into your classroom blog or website. With an AnswerGarden embedded into your blog your students can simply type responses to your question and see their responses appear in a word cloud. Creating an AnswerGarden is a simple process that does not require you to create an account. To get started go to the AnswerGarden homepage and click “create AnswerGarden.” On the next screen you will enter a question or statement for your students to respond to. To share your AnswerGarden with students you can give them the link or embed the AnswerGarden into your blog as I have done below. Optionally, before sharing your AnswerGarden you can turn on moderation of responses and set an admin password.
Kahoot is a service for delivering online quizzes and surveys to your students. The premise of Kahoot is similar to that of Socrative and Infuse Learning. On Kahoot you create a quiz or survey that your students respond to through any device that has a web browser. Your Kahoot questions can include pictures and videos. As the teacher you can control the pace of the Kahoot quiz or survey by imposing a time limit for each question. As students answer questions they are awarded points for correct answers and the timeliness of their answers. A scoreboard is displayed on the teacher’s screen. Students do not need to have a Kahoot account in order to participate in your activities. To participate they simply have to visit Kahoot.it then enter the PIN code that you give to them to join the activity.
Triventy uses a concept that is similar to Kahoot. To play a Triventy quiz game the teacher projects the game questions at the front of the room and students answer the questions on their mobile devices or laptops. Points are awarded for answering correctly. Bonus points are awarded for answering quickly. Students join the quiz game by going to Triv.in and entering the game pin assigned to your game.
Socrative is the standard to which I compare all new student response systems. Socrative uses cell phones and or laptops (user’s choice) for gathering feedback from students. You can post as many questions as you like in a variety of formats. One of the more fun question formats is the “space race” format in which students can work individually or in teams to answer questions as quickly as possible.
Poll Everywhere is a service that allows you to collect responses from an audience via text messaging. The free plan for K-12 educators provides selection of features and quantity of responses that is adequate for almost any classroom. One of the neat ways to display feedback gathered through Poll Everywhere is in word clouds. The word cloud feature integrates with Wordle, Tagxedo, and Tagul.
Quizlet Live allows teachers to select a set of vocabulary words in Quizlet and that set as the basis of a review game that students play in teams. Much like Kahoot and other multiplayer review games controlled by teachers, in Quizlet Live students go to a dedicated webpage (Quizlet.live) then they have to enter a game pin. As soon as your students have entered the correct game pin they will be randomly assigned to teams (teachers can reshuffle teams). The game aspect is that students have to work in teams to sort vocabulary terms to their matching definitions (you can also create vocabulary sets that feature math problems or other questions). Teams earn points by making correct matches quickly, but their progress is reset to zero if they make a mistake so they need to focus on accuracy more than speed.