Earlier today Kahoot announced that they now have 50 million users. That prompted one person to email me asking if there was something similar that she can use in her classroom that isn’t 1:1. My immediate reply was to try Kahoot’s team mode.
Kahoot’s team mode is designed to be used with students who are sharing computers, tablets, or phones. In team mode students arrange themselves in teams around a shared computer or tablet. When you start a Kahoot game you’ll now choose “team mode.” With team mode selected your students will be prompted to enter a team name and a list of the team members. After the teams have entered their names you will be ready to start the game. One of the nice features of team mode is that students have time to discuss their answer choices before they are allowed to submit a response. From there the game is played and scored as any other Kahoot game is played and scored.
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.
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.
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.
Disclosure: Quick Key is an advertiser on this blog and Plickers once sent me a free t-shirt and some cards.
