This week in ECMP355, our class was able to explore different assessing tools that will be extremely helpful for a teacher, especially so that the class continues to be interesting for the students! I remember being in classrooms where it was very black and white, where the teacher would talk and the students wrote notes. This makes the students bored which results in them not paying attention, which is defeating the purpose of you being a teacher. So keeping a class interesting, allows students to always be interesting… keeping them on their toes wondering which activity will be next!
We explored 7 different assessing tools; socrative, poll everywhere, kahoot, plickers, pear deck, fresh grade, and seesaw. Each tool was amazing in their own way, it’s amazing to see how many different assessing tools there actually is! Before Ecmp355, the only tool I ever used in school was kahoot! But let’s start from the beginning…
Socrative can be accessed on computers or it’s also an app which allows more people to use is – teachers don’t need to depend on all of their students to have a computer to be able to use this. Some features are:
- you can vote on specific topics
- teachers can get feedback
- teachers can receive reports in a doc of how everyone did
- it’s not a race/competition for the students
The only downside is that you can only have 50 people per room, so this wouldn’t really work for university professors… but there are so many different tools just like this!
Poll everywhere can be used from a computer, tablet, or even phone! Even though some teachers may not like this because the students would probably choose to use their phones… I believe it is actually a great tool considering that now day, students ALWAYS have their phones with them!!
Kahoot is probably the most common assessment tool that teachers use, especially in high school! This tool is just like Socrative but WAY more of a competition… which I personally don’t like. Even if lots of people get the right answer, it’s ultimately based on how fast you answer the correct question. So for me, I usually have to read a question at least twice… which means I never make it to the “top 5” list. It can be very discouraging for students. However, it is designed so that students HAVE to look up fro their phones. The question is at the front of the class on the board but you have to answer on your phone. That way teachers can assure that they aren’t just texting the whole time. AND if you exit the test to do anything else, you get kicked out of the game and have to re-sign it which is easy for the teacher to notice.
Plickers is such a cool assessing tool which allow students to stay anonymous to each other, but the teacher knows who answered what. How?? Well, each student is associated with a shape (barcode type thing) and the teacher scans the codes with a phone to see what the students answer. The students keep their codes throughout the whole year, allows the teacher to keep track of their learning process.
Pear deck is easily one of my favourite assessing tools! Teachers are able to make a presentation but during the presentation, students are able to answer questions or comment. The teacher also has control whether the students answer are shown to the rest of the class or if the teacher is the only one that can see them.
This assessment tool is an awesome way to make secure digital portfolios for your students! Teachers have control over all of their students portfolios, but it’s a nice way to introduce them to blogging and allow their parents to see what they’re learning in the classroom!
Seesaw is my favorite digital portfolio tool. With this tool, students are actually allowed to upload what they’re learning themselves – allowing students to show EXACTLY what they’re learning by adding pictures, videos, or even drawings. This tool is super easy which allows younger elementary students to be able to use this. Seesaw also makes it easy for teachers by allowing them to look at their feed (everyone’s posts) or they can easily look at individual students work – makes it easy to see what one student has been doing! Teachers also have to approve items, which is great so nothing inappropriate gets posted.
I couldn’t just pick one to talk about, there are so many awesome tools! Which are your favorites? 🙂