Innovate formative assessment have the power to engage students, provide valuable feedback, and support the philosophies behind growth mindset. The integration of game-style approaches to formative assessment has rapidly increased with the availability of numerous online tools that can measure learning progress and provide teachers with valuable data. The following game-based tools are not just excellent options for formative assessment...they can be really fun.
Kahoot! With Kahoot! it only takes a few minutes to create a fun learning game that can be played in a classroom setting. Students can use any device (computer, Chromebook, iPad, iPhone, etc.) to participate in the game-style assessment and get instant feedback. You can also add videos, images, and diagrams. A classroom game of Kahoot will yield instant feedback for teacher and students, but be forewarned….it could get raucous!
Socrative Teachers can signup and use their free Socrative account to create instant questions, quizzes, games, and polls, or access a quiz created and shared by another teacher. Students login to the student version on any device, using a unique classroom code, and can play either in anonymous mode, or with a username that allows the teacher to collect instant assessment data. There are two versions of Socrative for mobile devices: a student app, and teacher app. Socrative apps are also available for Android devices.
Encourage class participation and get immediate feedback to a single question with a “poll” that you can create in advance or on the fly. Students can respond instantly from any device, including using a text code from their mobile phones. The free version allows for 25 responses, so will work in most classrooms, but you would need to upgrade to the paid version to extend that number, or to access reports and grading features. You can embed polls in PowerPoint presentations, and with the free Chrome extension, you can easily embed polls in Google Slides.
Quizalize is a newer student response system that looks a lot like Kahoot!, but with three main advantages: questions are shown on the student devices (rather than solely projected on a whiteboard from the teacher’s computer) so that students can progress at their own pace; the games can be played in “team” mode so that groups of students can compete against each other; and the quizzes can be played live or asynchronously, so teachers can assign them as homework. Another very cool feature is the integration with Google Classroom. Once teachers signup with their Google accounts, Quizalize can access class rosters so that teachers can assign a quiz to the entire class, and students can log into the player with their own accounts. The free version of Quizalize includes all the basic features needed to create and complete quizzes. Here’s a video that explains how to use Quizilize.
