Having spent a year in my current role as Hybrid Coach, I have found that I favor the following four formative assessment tools.
Kahoot
From the Kahoot website:
Create a fun learning game in minutes (we call these ‘kahoots’), made from a series of multiple choice questions. Add videos, images and diagrams to your questions to amplify engagement! Kahoots are best played in a group setting, like a classroom. Players answer on their own devices, while games are displayed on a shared screen to unite the lesson – creating a ‘campfire moment’ – encouraging players to look up. Social learning promotes discussion and pedagogical impact… whether players are in the same room or on the other side of the globe! After a game, encourage players to create and share their own kahoots to deepen understanding, mastery and purpose.
Our students love this site. It is easy to use and the feedback/date is great. The only issues are you have to have a main screen to display your questions. Teachers use it for formative assessments and pre/post tests on units.
Quizziz
From the Quizziz website:
Find amazing quizzes made by other teachers, or create your own quizzes and share them with the world! Start a “Live” game in class, or assign Quizizz as a fun “Homework” task. You control the competition by toggling the leaderboard, timer and other settings. Students play together, but each at their own pace. Gamfication elements like avatars, leaderboard and funny memes add to the fun! Review your work in the end. Use our detailed class and student-level reports to understand where your students need help.
Similar to Kahoot, Quizziz is game based. The main difference is students can view the questions on their own devices, so a projector is not needed. Add in a fun meme feature and you get another great tool.
Socrative
From the Socrative website:
Socrative empowers you to engage and assess your students as learning happens. Through the use of real-time questioning, result aggregation, and visualization, you have instant insight into levels of understanding so you can use class time to better collaborate and grow as a community of learners.
One of the products I have used the longest, Socrative lets you get instant feedback from your students. There are quizzes you can give to the students that you can create from an Excel spreadsheet. Any quiz you create can be turned into a Space Race- a competitive game you can play together.
Triventy
From the Triventy Website:
Write your own questions, or customize any game from our extensive library. You’ll be able to mark your game as a collaborative game and invite students to add questions to it. At the lesson, present your game on a large screen – just like running a presentation.
Your students will use a short link (triv.in) to join the game from their laptops, tablets or smartphones – no need to install any App! That’s it! Once the students are in, start running the game.
The game syncs across the main screen and the students devices, so that everybody enjoys a real time fun experience, while viewing the game results in real time over the large screen.
This is a newcomer to the formative game scene. Their addition of a collaborative component is a wonderful addition to the toolbox. I have a few teachers in my school using this one and we look forward to where it will go in the future.
So you have seen my four favorites, what is one of yours?
