Five Tech Tools for Formative Assessments

Formative assessments are important to drive instruction, but why not try paperless methods? Here are five tech tools that will do the job and more!

Only one device in the classroom?

Plickers is excellent for low-tech classrooms.  Students respond by holding up a downloadable QR code on white paper, which the teacher captures with a device.  It provides instant results that tell you who gets it and who doesn't.

 Wish you could link questions to CCSS?

 Socrative allows you to give quizzes to the whole class or to individual students.  Some features include taking the quiz in a Space Race game, real-time results, and linking questions to common core standards.

Want to give various types of questions?

Formative lets teachers create multiple choice, true/false, short answer, or show your work/drawing type questions, the last two being my favorites.  You get live views of student responses, results, and you can give feedback and grades.

Looking to give students an audience?

Recap allows students to create a video response to a teacher prompt using an iPad or computer.  Teachers can review them in the handy Recap dashboard and even shared.

  Hoping to increase student collaboration?

One way to use Padlet is to have students post their responses to a question on the Padlet board, like virtual sticky notes on a  bulletin board.  Then, students can collaborate and create their own boards as a summative assessment.