Five Resources for Immediate Student Feedback
Education Development Institute is a branch of Qatar Foundation. EDI organizes a conference giving educators a chance to share best practices. This year’s Sharing Teachers’ Effective Practices (STEP) took place at Qatar Academy Al Wakra and I presented a presentation on “What Does Your Student Really Know?”
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
Students learn at different speeds and when an educator teaches a class you need to know what they really know or don’t know. If the student gets it, let’s move on, but if they don’t understand your material, it’s time to reteach from a different direction. Because of human nature, people really don’t want to show their peers they don’t get it. We humans cleverly hide the fact that we don’t understand something. Yet as a teacher, we have to gain a true sense of what students understand. Thus, my presentation introduced educators to five online resources that allow students to provide immediate feedback. As a teacher, you learn immediately what students do or do not know without their peers truly knowing. Immediate, real-time feedback can in turn help inform and direct teaching and ultimately improve student learning.
When I present, I try to present resources that are practical and immediately useful to educators. My challenge is to use at least one resource during the academic year because of their accessibility and implementation. It doesn’t have to be all five, because not everyone would be pertinent to each individual teacher or fit their teaching style.
#1 Plickers
Plickers
My friend Dhara introduced this tool to me years ago. With Plickers, each student receives an individualized QRish code. Each card is unique so no two students have the same pattern. Written discreetly on each card are the letters A, B, C, and D. You project a question on your Smartboard and give students a chance to reflect on the question. Then they hold the card where the letter of their choice faces the ceiling. Now the teacher with a smartphone or tablet magically scans the room. Your device immediately reads student’s answers and indicates if it is correct or incorrect. You the teacher promptly know which students get it. Plickers allows you to show a bar graph with the percentage of answers and even show the correct answer while not revealing student’s names. This also informs students what their classmates think the answers are. This is a great formative assessment tool where student don’t need a device. You can also create student ownership by delegating various responsibilities. My students have always loved scanning the cards. Plickers provides free and paid options.
#2 Playposit
Playposit
Short, authentic videos in the target language engage students and Pocoyo happens to be one of my favorites for the World Language classroom. Playposit allows teachers to create questions and insert them into a video. There is a variety of questions a teacher can ask like multiple choice, check all that apply, reflective response, and fill in the blank. Students can answer these questions as a group or individually on their device. Because Playposit videos can be assigned, it is a great platform for a flipped classroom and it plays friendly with Blackboard, Edmodo, PowerSchool. The videos are primarily authored by teachers, but there is an option for students to create their own videos. Student progress can easily be monitored online. Edpuzzle is a similar option, but Playposit is still my preferred platform.
#3 Socrative
Socrative
Socrative is another platform that provides teachers immediate feedback on student understanding. Like Playposit, students need a device to participate. You simply provide your class a classroom name to enter. The teacher has the option to publish an exit ticket, a space race game, or a quiz that can include true/false, multiple choice and short answer questions. You can easily integrate Socrative into your lesson for a quick check for understanding. All of the questions for Socrative are produced by you. There is also the Pro version that unlocks even more accessories.
#4 Kahoot
Kahoot
One of the most popular educational tools is Kahoot. This is a competitive learning resource. A question will appear across the top of your Smartboard warning your students they have ten seconds to figure out the answer, but once that time is up, four brightly colored boxes appear with four different answers. On their device, students select the correct answer. Points are allocated according to the speed of their answer to the multiple choice questions. This rewards those that most accurately and rapidly recall the answer. Kahoot can host as many students that have the individualized code. The Kahoot challenges can be assigned for homework to be completed at home. If you don’t feel like completing your own, you can search through the library of Kahoots created by other teachers. Kahoot provides report options too if you want global date of how your students are performing. Kahoot is a free site, but there are quite economical upgrade options with Pro and Premium. Great resource to gamify your class.
#5 Quizlet
Quizlet
Quizlet is the final resource that provides real-time information. This is the modern rendition of flashcards that includes gamified, competitive learning options. You can create your own questions related to your unit or find sets that have already been created by other teachers and students. Like Kahoot, Quizlet can host a multitude of participants. Each set is divided into five activities for study and three games. These range from digital flashcards to a self test option. The highlight of Quizlet is Quizlet Live. Quizlet Live randomly puts teams into groups of three, four, or five students. Once the game starts, each student is provided several answers on their device, but their answers are different from their teammates. This requires students to talk through their answers and agree upon the correct answer. With each correct answer, their designated team animal (i.e. kangaroo) moves across the Smartboard one space. Team ultimately try to get their animal across the screen before the other teams.
