Google forms - flubaroo
I'm really excited about these formative assessments! Last year I wanted to add more formative assessments, weekly homework quizzes to tell if the students mastered the material and to give a way for the students to judge how they were doing. Unfortunately, I didn't follow through with my goal - mostly because of time. Even short quizzes, seemed to take 20 minutes or so and then add the discussion afterwards and half a class period was easily gone. I love the idea of quick short quizzes students can take online and I also love all the tools for gathering the data. The only drawback I see with these quizzes is that it is too easy for students to look up the answers and not do the work unaided. I think I will just stresss academic honesty, not count them for points and just use for gathering information. The google forms with the flubaroo grading application was easy to use to gather information. I made a quiz for significant figures, a topic that feedback would really benefit students.Socrative
I also was really liked socrative, especially for the live quiz, exit strategy options. We have clickers in our department but you have to check them out. I find anything that is not in my room is used less often. Before I had the projector in the room, I rarely checked one out. Once it was mounted in the room, I found myself using it all the time. I will have to see how many of my students have smart phones. If enough of them can access the internet, I would like to try the live quizzes and exit slips. If not, then socrative is also just another online, take later, quiz option like google forms, gnowledge and quizstar (all programs I have looked at and there are many more). I plan on using some online quiz form next year on a regular basis. I will not have time (except my own!) as an excuse anymore.Padlet
Padlet was not a quiz program. It was like a live bulletin board, where many people could simultaneously post comments or videos or pictures. I tried one with a colleague (Jaime). We first just talked back and forth and tried it as a straight feed or a random wall. Then we thought our students could use it to brainstorm a question. We imagined what they might said and I captured our wall below.
It occurred to me while reading this post that you successfully enable your students to be their own judges of how they are doing in your class. That is very empowering; I hope to use Flubaroo as a tool for empowerment within my classroom!
ReplyDeleteI loved teaching sig figs to my science students. Not sure 8th graders needed to fully understand it, but it was always fun.
ReplyDeleteI think you have the right idea, stress academic honesty. If you are using flubaroo for formative assessments, if they cheat there, they are only cheating themselves of the corrective feedback they would be getting from you. On the other hand, if they are googling answers, aren't they finding resources and learning something, too?