Saturday, April 19, 2014

Thing 4: Online Quizzes & Student Response Systems

Kahoot! is a simple, intuitive program, most of the time.  The process of making a quiz is not demanding, nor is it complicated.  However, I think that the developers need to expand the abilities of the program and focus on what it is trying to do/be at its core.   You can't create a variety of question types, but you can add video for some odd reason.  If you create a question and then make a second one, the program forces you to delete or enter in information for Q2 before you can go back to the first one (which I needed to do in order to adjust something).  It is a minor quibble, but it is part of a larger usability and interface problem.  I think there might be too much flash and not enough substance here.  As it stands right now, Kahoot! is almost too basic for me to use, but I could see my students using it to work together on review or other activities.  My quiz can be found here.

Socrative is a great program, however it has its own set of frustrations.  Currently, they have two versions of the program/site running: the "classic" one and a beta.  If you create a profile and quiz within the beta version, no one can open the quiz unless they too navigate to the beta website.  The beta site can be accessed by going to b.socrative.com and not socrative.com.  I spent quite a while trying to figure out this odd issue.  

Having said that, the beta version is great.  They have added another feature (true/false questions), and the design is beautiful.  The site is intuitive, clean, and does exactly what I want.  I love the idea of using it as a review tool or a brain break activity.  The exit ticket idea is nice, but not as necessary for Grade 6 students (some of whom don't have phones).  I really like creating tasks in in Socrative, and I plan on using it more frequently in my teaching.

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3 comments:

  1. Alicia DuellApril 20, 2014 at 7:30 PM

    Jeff, thanks for the post and for your comments-- they were really helpful to me, since I haven't used these tools before. I'm going to amend my original post to hopefully make the instructions more accurate. Thanks also for your thoughts on the benefits/drawbacks of each. I know that Socrative has been around for a while and that a lot of people really like it (I always hear about it at conferences, etc.) but hadn't used it yet myself. Great post!

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  2. AnonymousApril 20, 2014 at 11:18 PM

    I, too, felt Kahoot was too simple in it's use and not flexible enough to use it for my purposes. I really liked Socrates and will use it in the future with students - especially for kids in LS to do review of vocabulary or reading comprehension reviews to support core class content. Hopefully next year when grades 7 and 8 are byod and there are more laptops for students in grades 5 and 6 to access it will be easier and convenient to use. Thanks, Jeff for your insight!

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  3. Paulo VillavicencioApril 23, 2014 at 5:36 PM

    I had the same flexibility issue with Kahoot, too (although it's fun because of the music background). I thought that it is only applicable for the kids in the ES or MS. On the other hand, Socrative gives us THE flexibility in testing that, I believe, is applicable in HS because early this year, I have started giving quizzes to ESL students online. I also had the same problem in using the beta though. By the way, it is nice that you have compared Kahoot and Socrative in a profound way, Jeff! Good job!

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