App Breakdown: Socrative

App Breakdown is a weekly blog post in which we take an in-depth look at one of our favorite apps for classroom use. This week we will be looking at Socrative, an assessment tool that gives teachers quick access to student feedback and data.

 

From Socrative.com

What it is:

Name: Socrative
Purpose: Assessment
Works With: All web-enabled computers, tablets and smartphones
Price: Free

This easy to use assessment tool bills itself as a “smart student response system that empowers teachers to engage their classrooms through a series of educational exercises and games via smartphones, laptops, and tablets.” The app allows you to create quick quizzes and assessments that students respond to on their own devices. You can pose a single question and have students respond right away in the app or create multi-question quizzes ahead of time.

Why we like it:

One of the great things about this app is that students don’t need to create a personal account to use it. All they need to log in is the “room number” that the teacher receives upon registering. This makes the initial set up of the app a lot easier. There’s no need to spend hours creating accounts and passwords for each student. The only set up required is to download the “student” version of the app on the devices of your choice and to set up a teacher account on your personal device.

The app can be accessed on a variety of devices and platforms. There are versions for both iOS and Android devices. Students can also access quizzes by going to m.socrative.com and teachers can login to their own accounts at t.socrative.com.

Socrative allows teachers to access data quickly and effectively. One-question quiz results are displayed right in the app and offer on the spot evaluation. For the pre-planned quizzes, the app will compile the information and email it in the form of an Excel spreadsheet or Google Doc. This puts assessment data in teachers’ hands as quickly as possible.

How you can use it:

Use quick quizzes to group students: You can give students a Take Five question, sort the data immediately and pull small groups as needed.

Create pre-tests before units: The Excel spreadsheet generated will help you to see exactly where your students are at the beginning of a unit, you can the use this information to track students’ progress and make adjustments.

Add another element to discussions: During class discussions you can quickly poll students using the true/false and multiple choice quick quizzes. The results can be displayed on a SMARTBoard or with an LCD projector so students can see where their classmates stand on certain issues.

Assess your teaching with an Exit Ticket: The app has a built-in Exit Ticket quiz, although you can easily go to “Manage Quizzes” and create your own. If you’re trying a new lesson for the first time, you can use the data generated by the quiz to evaluate its success and see any areas for improvement.

Things to keep in mind:

This app would work best in a classroom where students have 1:1 devices. You may be able to offer quizzes in small groups if you have a limited number of computers/laptops but quick polls and grouping can get more complicated when students are sharing devices.