Sunday, October 16, 2016

Assess & Engage: Tools to Liven Up The Classroom

Since last year I have been interested in using online tools to conduct formative and summative assessments in the classroom. I also want to use more tools that promote collaborative learning without necessarily becoming a multiple day group project assignment. While Google Drive offers excellent platforms for collaboration, I was more interested in using something that was quick. In the past few months I have been using two tools I highly recommend to teachers as they can be adapted with any content.

The first tool I started using was a paid component of the traditional flashcards game Quizlet. Quizlet is a online learning platform that uses descriptions and meanings to create several activities that allow students to memorize content. The new added component, Quizlet Live, is a paid feature that allows students to learn while working together as a team to score the correct answer. Quizlet Live uses any flashcard learning game from the Quizlet platform and creates random or customized teams and forces students to rotate in different teams to score points for the games. The platform randomly assigns different answers to a question and only one of the members of the group has the correct answer. Students are forced to interact and talk to their classmates to get the correct answer. If the answer is incorrect, the whole point value of points resets to zero and the team has to start all over again.

The second platform that I am using often for assessment is Quizziz.  Quzziz is a multiple choice question creator. Quizziz has the option to use questions from other public quizzes and recycle your own questions. It takes just minutes to create a desired quiz by putting together existing questions. Users also contribute to the open access question bank by creating new material. Images can be added to the questions to make it more visually appealing and meaningful for each content area. This platform can be used as assessment or checking for understanding for material that needs to be memorized in order to execute higher thinking application tasks in a subject area. The most valuable aspect of the Quizziz platform is the reports section. In the reports section the teacher can analyze problems regarding the content that students are having a very difficult time learning to allow for a reteach. It also provides a detailed report of each students' score.

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