Blog Challenge: Day #3

What is a website that you cannot live without?  Tell about your favorite features and how you use it in your teaching and learning.

One website that I really like and use fairly often is www.socrative.com.  Socrative allows you, the teacher, to create tests, quizzes, exit slips, etc.  If you create a quiz, for example, Socrative lets you include questions/answer choices such as Multiple Choice, True/False, and Short Answer.  It also allows you to include an image with your question if you choose to do so.

Socrative is great because it works with a number of different devices. For example, I have the app loaded on my iPhone and iPad.  Last year, I had a class set of Galaxy Android tablets, and the students accessed it through the app on the tablets.  It can also be accessed through the website, and my students this year have used their Chromebooks to get to the website.  In order for students to answer the questions to your quiz, students simply need to access the app or website and enter in the room number that you give to them.  You can choose to do Teacher Paced or Student Paced quizzes (each can have its perks, depending on what you are using it for).  Students are also shown if they got the question right or wrong as they go through the quiz.  At the end of the quiz, when you end the activity, you can choose to download the results or email them to yourself.  

I use Socrative a lot for pretests.  It works perfectly because all students are involved (even my students who are typically very quiet).  It also allows me to see where my students are struggling, need extra help, or really grasp a concept, etc.  I have used it often for final tests, and the plus there is that you (and students) get immediate feedback on how well students performed.

Although it’s not a website exactly, I have also been creating quizzes through Google Forms.  I set up the form by including a first and last name question, an email question, and then any other questions that I wish to ask my students.  Before giving my students the quiz/form, I go through and take the quiz.  In place of first and last name, I put “Answer Key.”  After that, go back into my form responses spreadsheet, and I insert a script called Flubaroo into my form responses spreadsheet.  When all of my students are done taking the quiz, I run the script, choose my form, “Answer Key,” as the answer key, and the script will grade all of my students’ responses off of my quiz.  Flubaroo then allows you to email grades back to your students (this is why you want to include email address as one of your questions).  It is pretty awesome for quick grading and quick feedback to students!  It works a lot like Socrative, so I thought I would also include this in my post.