Monday, April 17, 2017

Tech Tuesday: Socrative

Socrative is an oldie, but goodie.  It allows for students to QUICKLY be interactive with your lessons.  There is no sign up for them, not account name to remember, no password.  All they need is your room code.

So what can you do?  Once you sign up for an account, you will see your dashboard, which will look something like this:

I like the quick question option.  Usually I'll click True/False.  This will bring you to a two answer question.  Let's say we are reading 1984 (good choice, by the way), and you want to see who they think is trustworthy.  I'll tell the class to go to and use the room code lordalford,  It takes no time for the students to log on since they do not need accounts.  

So then I'll ask them something like, "Can Winston trust O'Brien?"  Click True if he should and False if he shouldn't.  The SmartBoard (or whatever you are projecting on) screen will look like this:

Immediately, as students click True or False, you see the results.  There is a meter bar that pops up for all of them and you can see how many have answered.  Once I am satisfied, I can use this as a springboard for why the students feel that way or just hit the TF again and ask about another character.

The Multiple Choice option is similar, but instead of T and F, they get A, B, C, D, and E.  I'll put on the board which means which.  The short answer option allows them to type in a response ("What is your guess that will happen when Winston approaches the girl?") which will start displaying on the board immediately.

It also has the Space Race quiz option, which is fun for review and provides something different than Kahoot, but for me money, it is hard to beat the simplicity of using to engage the students in a classroom discussion.  This works for all students, but especially well with students who are reluctant to speak up in class.  It also encourages kids to be risky and not take the answer they think everyone else is.

I've never used the Exit Ticket feature.  I would like to hear from someone who has.

The downside is that you cannot get names from the responses, but that downside is so minor for what I use this for in class.

Anybody have something else about Socrative I should have mentioned?  Do you have a favorite tech site I should look at for a future review?