Formative Assessment with Digital Tools

The goal of formative assessment is simple: find out what students know or can do during the course of learning. Digital tools provide a variety of ways to help make assessment better: faster, easier, more efficient, and even more personalized.

Here are a variety of tools submitted by Spartanburg 2 teachers to help you with assessment. Many of these tools function as both websites and iPad apps.

Digital Bubble Sheets

These tools take traditional bubble quiz and tests and make them more efficient.

BubbleSheet 

BubbleSheet is part of a larger assessment system called Mastery Connect. Though the paid service comes with a versatile set of assessment tools, the free account allows you to create quizzes up to 10 questions long that provide automatic scoring. You can set scoring tiers of Mastery, Near Mastery, and Remediation, with the scoring tier and the standard reported to the student at the end of the quiz. An app allows students to take the quiz online; however, score sheets can be printed and bubbled in traditionally and then scored by the MasteryScan app. You can even print and laminate bubble sheets to reuse with dry erase markers. 

ZipGrade

ZipGrade is a bubble sheet scanning app that allows you to quickly assess quizzes and tests up to 50 questions long. ($6.99 per year use.) You can import or create classes, grade assignments, and then import grades into PowerTeacher. 

Student Response Tools

These tools allow teachers to provide assessment in a variety of ways during mini-lessons or group instruction. Many of these tools would function well to take polls for classroom discussion.

Nearpod

Nearpod is unique in how it allows teachers to create presentations with embedded student response tools inside the presentation. The teacher/presenter has a great deal of flexibility in delivering information and involving students in the process, including open ended and drawing responses.
(Free accounts allow up to 20 MB presentations and 30 students per live session.)

Socrative

Socrative, also owned by Mastery Connect, is a very versatile and popular student response tool. It functions both in the browser and as an app and can function on just about any device. Socrative allows you to create quizzes ahead of time and then deliver them when needed. The teacher can deliver the questions item by item as a whole group or as a student-paced quiz. The teacher creates a room and then may use pre-created quizzes or assign a quick question on the fly. The teacher can show graphs of the class responses to address understandings. Throw in the ability to add pictures and open ended response questions, and you have a very powerful formative assessment tool.

Kahoot!

Kahoot makes quizzing a game by rewarding points to users based on correct answers and speed! Quizzes can be set up ahead of time very quickly. When ready, the teacher launches Kahoot in the browser, and students join a lobby. The teacher then takes the students through the questions, with scoring updates given after each question. Kahoot has very simple setup and lends itself well to quick, fun formative assessments. (Note that you'll want to go to getkahoot.com to create quizzes and to kahoot.it to take quizzes.)

Other suggested student response tools: 

Mentimeter: feature rich assessment and polling tool similar to Socrative. Very nice visual display of questions and responses.

Poll Everywhere: quick questioning, with up to 40 responses per poll with a free account.

Poll Daddy: quick basis polls and surveys for free.

Assessment Tools Inside Other Tools

Google Forms with Flubaroo

Google Forms is a user-friendly spreadsheet tool inside of Google Drive, the centerpiece of Google Apps for Education accounts. Google Forms itself provides a very dynamic question generation tool, including the ability to create multiple pages and send students to different pages depending on their responses. (To create a Google Form, go to your Drive, click the red button, and choose Google Forms.)

Flubaroo is an Add-On that can be installed on the Google Form spreadsheet. It allows automatic grading and emailing to participants. Flubaroo creates a summary page of student answers in points and percent and class averages. The teacher can then automatically create graphic reports of the students work. 

Edmodo

Edmodo is a light student management system designed primarily to organize classrooms and bridge communication. In addition to updating students and providing resources and assignments, teachers can create and deliver quizzes directly through Edmodo. The teacher can release the quiz results back to students once the quiz has been graded. If you already have an Edmodo account (free!), you can follow these instructions created by Frederick County Public Schools.

Blendspace

Many teachers enjoy Blendspace (formally, EdCanvas) for its ability to blend a variety of resources into one page that can be used for differentiation. Blendspace also allows teachers to create quizzes within the context of a learning path, allowing for students to work at their own pace and complete a formative assessment when they are ready. 

Other Formative Assessment Tools

White Board Apps: ShowMe, Educreations, and Explain Everything

These three white board apps all allow students to record their work on the screen with voice, allowing teachers to hear the students thought process as they complete assignments. These recordings can be shared individually or published to the web. In addition to use for formative assessment, the teacher might use some of the student videos as resources for other students.

ShowMe is probably the easiest to use of the three (and free!), while Explain Everything probably has the most features ($2.99), including direct export to YouTube, Drive and other services.

Padlet

Padlet (formally WallWisher) is like a wall of sticky notes where students can post ideas. Padlet walls are great for formative assessment of the class a whole to see what understandings they have. The notes are then viewable by the rest of the group and can be used for review.

Today's Meet and Google Moderator

Today's Meet is a backchannel discussion tool where anyone can post ideas or questions. With the right expectations and classroom management in place, Today's Meet could be used as open channel throughout the class period for students to ask questions or demonstrate understanding. The discussions can be exported and used later for teacher reference or posting to a class website for notes.

Google Moderator, though not as user friendly as Today's Meet, can also offer this type of backchannel discussion with the added ability to approve questions before the rest of the group sees them.

Many thanks to the Spartanburg 2 Pilot and Tech Lead Teachers for suggestions and information!

Customizing and Adding Interactivity to Videos with EdPuzzle

Educators can use videos for a wide variety of purposes:

• ​​Easy demonstrations of concepts
• Analysis of performances, ads, speeches, and other media
• Differentiated content for individualization
• Review of previously discussed ideas. 

These reasons, among many more, are why so many teachers are using videos more and more in the classroom. With so many resources on YouTube, Khan Academy, and other sites, video use is getting easier and easier. 

Sometimes snags arise as teachers try to use videos. They only want a few minutes of a much longer clip. They like the demonstration but think they might explain it better. They want to add some kind of assessment to the viewing but are unsure how to connect the assessment to the video. The video is blocked! 

EdPuzzle​ seeks to assist teachers with these issues, giving the teacher more control over use of videos with students. Below is a brief overview of EdPuzzle.

So, why create a video through EdPuzzle?

• ​For published videos, you can use just the parts you want to suit your teaching goals. You can also upload videos you created. You can add your own comments and audio to support the video, allowing you to clarify something in the original video or frontload an idea. 
• You can add assessments and open response questions at any point in the video, making the video watching more interactive and giving you real time feedback on how the students are doing.
• Your videos are hosted and assigned within your EdPuzzle account, meaning videos are all in one place and only accessible by people in your class. 
• Automated assessment allows you to quickly guage understanding, while also allowing you to individually assess open response questions. 
• All of this is free and simple to use. 

If you're considering a flipped or blended learning approach or perhaps you simply want to start adding more videos to your classroom, EdPuzzle might help  you make better use of these resources and enable video use, like YouTube, that was much more difficult otherwise. Be sure to watch the demonstration video on the EdPuzzle homepage​. And give it a try; it's free!

(Previously posted 2/7/14 in Spartanburg 2 Sharepoint. Moved and updated to Blogger)