Topic 4 Man digital tools for assessment and monitoring both in formative and summative formats
Through formative assessment, teachers check student understanding, get valuable data on student learning, and then use that data to modify instruction. When teachers know what students know (or don’t know), they can adjust to meet students right at their level. The best formative assessment tools also help students self-reflect and assess, figuring out where they are and where they need to go as learners. Browse the tools below to find one that meets your needs. There are formative assessment apps for everything from discussion to quizzing, polling, and student responses to interactive lessons and videos.
Using Padlet as a Formative Assessment Tool
Padlet (formerly known as Wallwisher) has been around for a while now. It acts as an online bulletin board where users place “digital sticky notes”. These digital stickies can contain text, web links, uploaded files, photos, and even video! They can be anonymous or students can be required to sign in. Padlet is very customizable and lets teachers/students collaborate in different ways.
3 Ways to use Padlet in the classroom
- Brainstorming on a topic, statement, project or idea
This lesson idea is probably the most popular among teachers. That’s why I’ve put it first on this list.
Give a statement students have to discuss or a project about which students have to brainstorm. Share the board and let students share their ideas and comments. This way, every student can see what the others think. You can discuss a few of the given answers with the whole class.
- Live question bank
Let your students ask questions during the lesson. It’s very handy when students don’t understand something or need a better explanation. Stop your lesson 10 minutes early and go over the questions.
This way students who are afraid to ask questions can still ask their questions anonymously. It gives a voice to every student in the room, even to the shy ones.
- Gather student work
Use Padlet to gather student work, all in one place. Don’t use it for ordinary homework, because all the other students can see what the others have done. Use it for articles and research on a topic.
Go to Padlet website and create one board and try to create one topic evaluation and paste link by using sharing options
Discuss topic with your colleagues in Padlet by inviting them
Quiz Retakes with Google Forms and Flubaroo
- Students can take the quiz at any time, at home or at school.
- I can add pictures to the quiz.
- Quiz questions can be displayed randomly, so even if two students are next two each other, they will be answering questions in a different order.
- Flubaroo is an “add-on” for Google Sheets. Not only can it automatically grade the quizzes for you, but you can set it up so students receive an email within a minute or so that tells them their grade, the questions they got right, and the questions they got wrong. You can also have the email tell students the correct answers for the ones they got wrong. I don’t use this feature though. Students can retake the online quiz as many times as necessary until they earn a score of 80% or higher.
Create one Google form quiz by following provided video
Create joint quiz with your colleagues in Google form by inviting them
Creating Tests and Quizzes in Schoology
- Educators use Schoology for many different purposes—engaging students in discussions, housing their instructional resources, etc. But one of the most powerful yet undervalued tools is Schoology’s quiz feature, especially as an “entry ticket” or a way to gauge student understanding before a lesson.
- You can create online Tests/Quizzes for students to take in Schoology. Currently, this feature supports the following question types:
- True/False
- Multiple Choice
- Ordering
- Short Answer/Essay
- Fill in the Blank
- Matching
- Each test/quiz appears in the Gradebook and is automatically graded unless there are subjective questions (e.g. short answer/essay questions). You can manually override these grades, add comments, and customize a wide variety of setting for each test/quiz
Create one quiz in Schoology by following provided video
Create joint quiz with your colleagues in Schoology by inviting them
Tuva Tools
The Tuva tools enable students to easily explore and manipulate data to create their own graphs and charts. They promote conceptual understanding of important mathematical and statistical concepts and ideas. Tuva tools allows you to import Google Classroom
- Represent data in various graphical displays (including dot plots, scatter plots, bar charts, histograms, and many more)
- Apply various mathematical and statistical concepts to understand different aspects of data
- Construct, analyze, and interpret graphical displays of data to identify linear and nonlinear relationships
- Create various graphical displays (maps, line charts) of large datasets to identify temporal and spatial relationships
Write down how you can use Tuva’s tools
Discuss with your colleagues how you can use Tuva’s tools
Comparation of most popular LMS – Moodle vs Canvas assessment modes
Moodle – When it comes to grading, both Moodle and Canvas have good grading tools. However, grading is much more refined and diverse in Moodle as compared to Canvas. Moodle supports more than 12 types of assessments. There are multiple grading alternatives available to grade different assessments in different ways in Moodle. Moodle’s Gradebook is simple to use where the grades get recorded automatically since all the assignments are integrated.
However, grading forum posts in Moodle can be harder as Moodle does not automatically provide a list of all posts for one student. For students who haven’t posted, you have to then go into the grade book and type in zeros for those students.
Pro Tip -: Grading in Moodle can take some time as every question of every student is required to be graded in a new tab. To speed up your grading and improve efficiency, you could use Edwiser RapidGrader to bring down the grading overload in Moodle.
Comparison of most popular LMS – Moodle vs Canvas assessment modes
Canvas – In Canvas, this process is much simpler. You can assign a forum as an assignment. While grading the forum posts, you get a list of students. On each student, you automatically get a list of all of their forum posts for that particular forum assignment. You can then easily post feedback and give a grade.
Canvas also has a gradebook to grade student assignments. The Grades can be imported or exported manually or automatically in a CSV file through SIS (Student Information System) integration. Canvas also offers Speedgrader for effective grading.
The Speedgrader app is available for iOS and Android users currently. This helps you to preview student submissions, provide feedback and annotate homework submissions in a single frame
The Mastery GradeBook is another feature that can help you to assess the Outcomes being used in Canvas courses and measure student learning for accreditation or standards-based grading.
You can use rubrics in both moodle and canvas, but after using the Canvas rubric, you still have to manually enter the grade for the assignment, while in Moodle the rubric score is the assignment score.
Ways of using Socrative tool as assessment
Socrative is a smart, student response system that empowers teachers to collect data from their students via smartphones, laptops, and tablets. Socrative is the most useful SMS app because students can use it on any platform with internet service, rather than phones with text messaging services.
- True or False Questions
- Multiple Choice Questions
- Short Response
- Visual Data (Bar graphs and visual short responses)
- Exit Ticket
- Pre-Assessment
- Post-Assessment
- Create Short Quizzes
- Upload Premade Quizzes
- Reflection
- Collect Background Knowledge
- Quick Check for Understanding
- Voting on best responses
Learning Path Builder in itslearning.com
A learning path is a sequence of steps that leads the student to the finish. That finish or goal would commonly be the understanding of a certain concept. For example, at the end of the path, the students will understand “differentiation in math” and there are several resources and activities/assessments in the steps leading to that goal.
It is also possible to use assessments (e.g. a test) to create different branches within the same path. This can for example be used:
As gatekeeper: don’t let students continue until they pass an assessment;
For remedial tracks: provide a student with additional resources if they don’t pass the test;
As exit ticket: students who pass the test jump immediately to the finish.
Kahoot! Assessment features
Kahoot! goes beyond being a fun motivation or reward for students – with it, you can power up content review and capture useful analytics for formative assessment.
- Review content
Engage students with content review in class and at home and identify topics that need reteaching.
- Test practice and prep
Many teachers share that using Kahoot! for test practice and prep helps their students achieve better scores.
- Reinforce challenging content
Identify knowledge gaps in your class and fine-tune instruction to reinforce these topics and help students master them.
- Power up independent study
Assign student-paced challenges that learners can complete to study and practice at home or in class.
- Insights-driven instruction
Capture valuable analytics from kahoot reports to assess learning outcomes and target your instruction.
If you want to learn more about differences between Moodle and Canvas read the following researches:
Discuss ways which LMS tool better works for your style of teaching ?
Mentimenter features of assessment
Mentimenter represents interactive presentations builder and Collect polls, data and opinions from participants using smart devices and Get insights on participants with trends and data export.
Lecture engagement self-assessment
- Evaluate the engagement by letting the audience reflect individually and then discuss the results in groups.
Formative assessment with open questions
- Let your students reflect on what they’ve learned and how they would use the knowledge in the future.
Answer garden tool benefits
AnswerGarden is an easy-to-use online feedback app that can be used to elicit brief answers from your respondents. It adopts a minimalist design that allows users to create, share, answer, and manage topic questions without signing up for accounts. Although a simple app, it has the potential to be used to accomplish a wide range of education tasks, such as brainstorming, polling, synchronous and asynchronous communication, and formative assessment. For example, a math teacher can post a warm up question to activate students’ prior knowledge, as shown in the picture on the right.
AnswerGarden can be used with devices with internet access. It offers no accommodation for people who are visually impaired.
Users do not need to sign up for an account in order to use AnswerGarden. In fact, there is no account available on the website. Therefore, concerns for the collection of personal information is minimum. AnswerGarden does reserve the right to ‘block access to any posts ( ‘spud out weeds ‘) if AnswerGarden determines that your garden (or plant) is inappropriate for any reason.’
DAKI techniques used in easyretro.io
Working in teams means that each individual will have their own ideas concerning the project at hand. The idea behind creating a team is to compile all of those ideas and get the very best out of them. However, conflicts do arise and the strength of the team is determined by how they overcome them.
Keeping a team on the same page requires communication. It means that the team has to govern itself and decide what’s good and what’s not. They are the ones who choose how they work and communication is the key to figuring that out. One of the best methods of doing so is DAKI retrospective.
Limnu tools that combines video conferencing and assessment methods
Limnu complements video conferencing for remote teams, the way a real whiteboard complements an office or meeting room. It is simple enough for anyone to pick up and use during a video meeting and supports brainstorming and discussion without breaking the flow of ideas. Limnu is fast enough to feel tactile, like you’re drawing on a real whiteboard, and fast enough to collaborate in real time while you’re chatting with your colleagues.
Digital formative assessment tools to improve motivation
- Truly Listening to Your Student. Listening is one of the hardest things to make time for in a busy class. With Synth, you can make reflections routine. Do regular formative assessment that you can listen to with the convenience of a podcast. Plus, you’ll be building student’s speaking skill.
- Audio Exit Tickets: Setup a Podcast for your whole class. Enter a question or prompt in a Synth based on that days lesson for students to respond to in threads. You can listen to those responses on your commute home or while you are making dinner to get the feedback you need for tomorrow’s lesson.
- Reflections: Metacognition is essential to learning. Giving students the chance to synthesize (synth-esize) their thinking after every activity helps cement it. Synth makes this more convenient than ever. Students can do it on the go instead of trapped in a cramped tent. Teachers and parents can listen during commutes and chores.
- Present Evidence of Thinking: Giving evidence of your thinking is as essential as getting the right answer. Have students use Synth to explain their work with links to external documents and other supporting materials to build this essential skill.
- Language Practice: Being able to hear proper demonstrations, repeat them and hearing yourself helps rapidly develop any new language skills. Teachers can model skills for students to playback repeatedly. Students can respond back in easy to listen to threads to demonstrate their mastery for teachers. Plus students can practice repeatedly on draft Synths in their library free from judgment till they get it right!
How to use this program:
You upload a picture and write a prompt to go along with that picture.
You send the link to the poll to whomever you would like to respond (like your class).
You open up the other link listed after you create an image to view the responses to your prompt as they are posted.
You can view a gallery of different prompts here (requires login: please let me know if you see anything inappropriate here).
I have plans to add a log in (so there is some level of security on what is posted), the ability to bookmark prompts, and the ability to clone a prompt (allowing you to reset the results for a new class).
What other features would you like to see? How could you imagine using this with your students?
Flubaroo (http://www.flubaroo.com/ ) is a great plug-in for Google Sheets that will help you quickly score student quizzes. Design a Google Form, share the link to the form with students, and have them answer the questions. When they are finished, go into your account and have Flubaroo grade students’ responses in less than a minute. Use the report feature to get all kinds of quick data about the students’ responses.
In the classroom, use this as a quick warm up and then break students up into stations with differentiated activities based on performance.
Zaption (http://zaption.com) allows you to take already-made videos, such as a YouTube clip, or your own videos, and publish interactive lessons and track student understanding.
Simply add questions to a video clip: multiple choice, check boxes, free response. You might even have kids draw a response. If you’re doing a whole-class lesson, you can use the Live mode so students can ask you questions while you are presenting. Want students to complete independently? No problem! Give students a link.
Use the reporting feature to analyze the data and find out where you are headed next in your lesson. (Please note that the free account gives you a limited number of reports.) You can also use Zaption’s database to find premade lessons.
Using Quizlet Live (http://quizlet.live), students practice teamwork and communication skills while you check their understanding of important academic vocabulary.
Simply create an account, search for a premade deck of vocabulary terms or create your own (a minimum of 12), and give students the link. The app will group them into teams once they have logged in. Press “go” and the teams will compete to show their understanding of new terms. Students must be careful, as one wrong move sends them back to the beginning.
Nearpod and Pear Deck
Nearpod (www.nearpod.com) and Pear Deck (www.peardeck.com) are similar tools that allow you to embed interactive formative assessment elements into a slide deck. Take an existing PowerPoint, Keynote, or Google Slide show and add upload it to the app. Give students the link—from your end, you can ensure that all students are on the same slide. In Pear Deck, you can even add a question on the fly. Question types range from drawing answers to multiple choice (the paid app gives you a few more choices).
Want to increase student involvement? Have them create the slideshow on a topic (a great review for final summative exams) and present to the class. You can use the data reports to track student mastery.
In PE, try uploading the steps to throwing a perfect curveball. As students watch each step, ask them to demonstrate the step, then use the questions you’ve created to get their thoughts about the technique and why it will improve their pitch.
Under this topic we reviewed some of the key tools in order to develop assessment and some of the key features in order to create more effective and stimulating assessment strategies in order to gather more data. Variety of tools shows more options in order to receive quality feedback which will guide further learning path.
Discuss ways what did you learn new and which new approach would you can implement ?
If you want to learn more about digital assessment tools proposed by practitioners please research following links
https://www.bookwidgets.com/blog/2017/08/30-creative-ways-to-use-padlet-for-teachers-and-students
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/04/three-good-ways-to-use-padlet-in-your.html#.VCcZkCtdXWo