Dessert for your Class: Kahoot and Socrative

Formative assessments can actually be fun.  What??!!  I know that doesn't sound too crazy, but that's because some classes are just pure fun and the students elected to be there.  But what about the majority of the classes that the students don't have any say in and required by the state to be there, a.k.a.............the core curriculum.  How do you consistently connect to most if not all of your students in your class, multiple times during a class block or period?  Here are two companies, Mobitroll and MasteryConnect, that have it right.  They have created Kahoot & Socrative.  Together, they are a powerhouse and will cover most of the formative assessments that a teacher, YOU, can present in a lesson.  They are both like little tools that act as dessert for your brain.  So my goal here is just to give you an idea of the magic within these two tools and why you should be turning to them for formative assessing in the classroom.

In the beginning, there was the raising of hands.  Do you understand it?  Raise your hand if you do.  Then we moved on to thumbs, and cards, and colors, and shapes, and then we found out that the only reason that students would acknowledge that they understand something is that they didn't want to hear you repeat yourself and wanted class to be over so that they can get their work done.  They wanted to play with the material being presented to really see if they understand it.  It's not that they are totally disengaged with the material, they just became disengaged with you.  So, one major thing we need to make sure we do is give them a brain break from you and the absorption of new knowledge every 5-10 minutes to let them play with the material.  At the same time, we need to use their understanding on every one of these breaks to steer the ship of our lessons..............for the most part anyway.  

Each of these sites has their benefits and I believe you should eventually be using both.  I don't feel that either of these sites will work well if you are trying to use this as a way to flip your classroom.  These are more for the on-the-fly, in-class engagement..............and they rock!!

The greatest part about both Kahoot and Socrative is that students can use their own device or a computer that you have in the classroom.  

 If you've ever been to a bar / restaurant with those quiz games that flash up on a screen and they set a device down at your table, then this is what Kahoot is for your classroom.  You get points for answering correctly and the quicker you answer, the more points you have the chance of earning.  A leader board will be presented on screen as well.   Kahoot, is dedicated to the formative learning that you need to do some prep work for.  Not a lot, just some.  You need to know what questions you are going to want to assess in class.  Now, if you're anything like me, sometimes I have a hard time doing that because I let the class dictate what kind of questions I'm going to ask.  So I have to scaffold questions that help them build the understanding and terminology that I want to see.  Questions that I thought I could ask I couldn't because of the absence of some basic foundational knowledge.  However, you probably have some major concepts that you want to hit up on.  Kahoot works perfectly for that.  You simply post your pre-made question on the board, students log in on their whatever (devices),  and they answer the questions.
  

Very similar to the Promethean ActiVotes that we used a few years back.  

The only drawback to creating a quick engaging Kahoot that I can tell is that you will want to put up an image with your question to make it pop!!  I found myself quickly taking screenshots of SOL questions using the program SnapIt! on our school computers since it is typically a pain in the rump to try and write any mathematical notation in any program other than one dedicated to math.  Science and History teachers will probably find themselves doing the same.  At home, I've become a master at Shift-Command-4 for taking snapshots on the Mac.  But that's it, that would be my only argument and it carries weight to most every online program out there.  Kahoot has a timer embedded on each question that gives the students some sense of urgency.  It also provides instant feedback.  Answer the question and it pops up on the screen with anonymity.   Wrapping up the day, getting feedback throughout your lesson, or getting ready to give a quiz, test, or major unit review?  Kahoot is your jam to use.  It's seriously engaging, fun and so easy to use for both student and teacher.  It really will change very little that you do in class other than make it more engaging and give you instant feedback on where your lesson needs go.  Heck, play a couple out of the "share" community and see if it will fit in your class.

Socrative is the other beautifully designed formative tool for engagement and feedback.  I personally used this for a year, but would've mixed it up with some Kahoot as well.  Every time I asked the students to hook up to Socrative, they were engaged.  Some would get on their phones and some would jump on the computers.  Students who may not have had internet access and were to lazy to go to a computer, I paired up with a student and had them answer the questions together.  Basically, simple classroom management.  What makes this program powerful is that you can use it on the fly.  

If you are the type of teacher who works on the fly with your formative assessments, you will probably be leaning on Socrative.  

As with Kahoot, you can pre-populate questions and have a prepared, scaffolded questionnaires.  You can display your questions on the big promethean board or not.  

My most used and favorite feature was the "quick question".  It allowed you to ask something on the fly and students would use their device to answer.  No preparation needed.  A glorified raising of hands or cards if you will.  One added feature that raising hand would not allow for is that students are allowed to type/text their answers if you asking for something other than a true/false or multiple choice selection.  Obviously, this holds most/all students accountable for providing feedback.  As part of the Fundamental Five crew, this is actually one great way to have it implemented.  Small groups discuss and then type in their feedback.  From the teacher perspective, you simply assign the task using your phone, tablet, or computer and then receive the feedback once you close the question session.  There is also a cool game called "space race".  

This is a perfect game where students should be teamed up and have the collaborate to answer questions.  As they get them correct, their rocket ship moves across the screen.  They watch the other teams' progress as well which makes it a fun way to wrap up a day or a whole unit.  The final feature that I used all of the time was called "exit ticket".  Again, this has to be a prepared questionnaire, but it is a great way to have the students summarize what they have learned if you knew what you were going to ask them at the end of the day.  Otherwise, go ahead and have them answer another "Quick Question".  

At the end of the school day or at the end of the class, you can go back through the data of the exit tickets or quizzes that you assigned and get feedback or use as summative assessments.  Again, very easy to implement and very easy to build your pre-existing curriculum around.  Unlike Kahoot, Socrative provides students and teachers with a downloadable app.  However, it is in the projected works to provide a downloadable app for Kahoot users.

So, the question looms, what will you choose, if any.  They are both fun and engaging products that provide you with the feedback you are looking for.  You do need access to the internet to engage in using these products and may find that your success rate goes up with more and more high schoolers having data plans.  Middle schoolers are still all over the place with whether or not they even have a cell phone so you may want to lean towards a computer in the class or simply stick to the ActiVotes, ActivExpressions, or whatever it is that your program uses for interactive feedback.