Socrative works to engage students by encouraging the use of texting, rather than discouraging it. It's also surprisingly easy (and free, which is a very good thing, in my opinion).
I went to the main page -- socrative.com -- and signed up my user name, password, and email contact. It then took me to the lecturer screen, where there are several options for question formatting and an automatically assigned room number. It also advised me to log in as a student on another device in order to test the program. Accessing m.socrative.com through my iPod Touch, I got a prompt to enter the room number provided by my teacher. So far, so good!
The student screen then told me to wait for a prompt from the teacher. On my teacher screen, I selected "True/False" which then prompted me to ask a question orally for students to answer on their devices. This screen also showed me a count of 0/1 -- the number of student responses out of the number of students signed into the room. When I selected "True" on the student screen, there was a brief lapse before the count switched to 1/1...and then a chart appeared showing that 100% of the respondents had selected "True."
There are many options for how to present questions, including pre-written questions and short-answer responses. Some of the formats allow students to vote on the responses once the initial questioning is done.
So far, I'm feeling positive about this, but I have some questions:
- I know this works on Smart phones, tablets, and similar devices...but I'm not sure how it would work with students seated at desktop computers. I think it should be the same, but would networking bollux the tracking?
- I need to make sure that students who do not have a compatible device are able to participate without feeling left out.
- This probably wouldn't be a good thing for actual graded work, as integrity could easily be compromised...but for informal review and other types of discussion prompts, it seems workable.
No comments:
Post a Comment