I've written more about the Socrative app/website before, but have been tasked with presenting in a slim 25 minute window to our school staff, so I wanted to refine my experience to the elevator pitch.
I've been a huge fan of iOS/Android/web app Socrative to replace the clickers in my classroom since the first week I had iPads in my classroom (January 2011).
I've used it for exit tickets, bell-work, chapter reviews, guided practice during a lecture, reflection on learning, and even a semester final. My students have ALWAYS complained that if they made a mistake or wanted to skip around, there was no "go back" functionality within Socrative. As flashy and fun as the app is, I've always leaned heavier on Google Forms to give my students that flexibility.
I gave a presentation last week on replacing the Scantron with digital tools that give you richer, quicker feedback and allow you to assess more than multiple choice. I love Socrative as a tool to close what I called the "feedback gap," that time between when you give an assessment, grade it, and then pass it back. What I didn't know was that Socrative had a new version in beta that addressed the "go back" functionality that I mentioned above! You can access the beta version of Socrative 2.0 by both you and your students using beta.socrative.com
The U/I is fresh, but there's more here than that!
Rather than write anything more, I decided to run through Socrative 2.0 briefly and share some of the new teacher and student features.
This video screencasts:
Administering a saved quiz - choosing quiz, setting student paced
Student taking quiz, going back through work and editing responses (Socrative 1.0 did not allow editing or skipping around)
Student submitting response
Viewing specific student responses and results (Socrative 1.0 only showed a student's score)
Finishing the saved quiz and getting a report
Adding images and auto-grading short answer makes Socrative a powerful tool.
One of the previous shortcomings of Socrative was that any multimedia I wanted to use in assessing my students had to be via a worksheet, a different file, or on my SMARTboard. This visual disconnect resulted in errors for some students simply because the content was not adjacent to the question prompt. Even including basic equations in the prompt was awkward because I had to write exponents with carrots (^) and rational numbers or expressions with a forward slash (/). There's still no equation editor, but now that you can embed images, you can take a screenshot from your favorite equation editing platform and insert it with the prompt (embedded images is how most equations show up on the internet anyway, so don't bemoan the work-around).
My Algebra 2 students have a short assessment on exponential functions tomorrow, so this seemed like an excellent opportunity to run Socrative through the paces and embed some beautiful exponential functions from everyone's favorite web-based graphing calculator, Desmos.
Here's a screencast of my workflow this afternoon:
I'd REALLY like to be able to add images to my MC responses, also, but overall, I'm very excited about these additions to Socrative. I don't know how they keep it free and rival many paid services, but I'm thankful!
Anyone else hate scantrons? No, not the idea of multiple-choice assessments - those have their place. I just mean the actual slips of paper and machine. I don't know how I thought those got graded when I was in high school, but I certainly had no idea it was this.
And as a teacher I certainly never feel like this when I'm waiting in line for the ONE machine in the building.
So, I've stopped using scantrons. Two things have emerged as more useful than a scantron ever was because feedback is much more quickly available, and item analysis is automatically figured for me. On the iPads, I use an app called Socrative, which allows for MC and free-response items, and even allows for immediate feedback on MC items if I want. The other approach, which I think I like even better, is to create a blank Google Form with about 50 items and choices that just say "A, B, C, D."
Advantages with Socrative:
Exit slips are ready made
Interactive, animated buttons/screens make it "game-y"
Embedded images
Easy sharing/accessing of survey/assessment through the app interface
Real-time results graph
Advantages with the Google Form:
I can use the current district curriculum without digitizing everything
A method accessible to any computing scenario (lab, laptops cart, iPad cart, 1:1)
If my wireless cuts out kids can still work until it comes back on
Students can go back, skip, and work around as they please (Socrative makes the student work sequentially).
I grade those Google Form bubblesheets with an app script called Flubaroo. Here's a tutorial on using integrating Flubaroo with your current forms.
My students like using the Socrative app for more formative, informal assessments when it doesn't really matter if they tap the wrong square and are whisked to the next question, but I got a lot of positive feedback from the "bubblesheet" this August, too (They'd used both tools by then.)
Bottom line
Flubaroo scoring is fast, reliable, and easy (and not app or device dependent. Another thing I'm big on.) I had a couple of my classes' finals completely "graded" about 2 minutes after the final student was done last spring. Quick feedback is a high-yield strategy for developing goal-setters.
