Exit Tickets with Socrative - Updated

Socrative is a great tool to use for classroom quizzes and for getting feedback from students. Socrative has recently updated the exit ticket on the site. 

After you log in, click the "exit ticket" link

You will get a screen that looks like this:

Have your students log in to Socrative, give them the room number, and have them complete the questions.

The exit ticket asks four questions:

• Name of Student
• How well did you understand the material? (multiple choice)
• What did you learn today? (open response)
• Solve the problem on the board (open response)

After the class is finished the teacher can click "End Activity" and download a report in Excel format. The report can also be e-mailed to the teacher.

Here is an example of an exit ticket report:

If you want to make up your own questions for an exit ticket, do it as a quiz and then run that instead of the default exit ticket.

Create classroom or competition polls with Mentimeter

The dream of most technology savvy teacher have a dream that some day they can use those awesome and easy to use "Clickers" in their classrooms.  I am jealous of anybody who has them and want to congratulate them.  However, there are other alternatives to having clickers to get instant feedback from your students.  One of them that my good friend Matt Runyon has been blogging about is Socrative, which I am a huge fan of and hope that company succeeds, because it saves a bunch of hardware costs.

While not as advanced and with as many options as Socrative and "Clickers" there is yet another awesome instant response system available for free call "Mentimeter."

What can you do with Mentimeter?

• You can easily create polls and surveys that visibly show the results to your classroom.
• You can create multiple choice questions with many choices.
• Questions can be answered with any mobile device if it has internet capabilities.
• No registration is required.

What are some disadvantages of Mentimeter?

• So far it only allows for multiple choice, but that really is OK because the site is set up as a polling site.
• Some sites, for money allow you to just text the answer.  This site doesn't, but then those other sites charge money and Mentimeter does not.

Here is an example of what the public would see as voting occurred.  Why don't you give it a test try by typing in the address at the bottom of the page and see the results add up.  You can also get there quicker at this moment by clicking the link to my poll.  http://vot.rs/11540 .  It doesn't matter what you answer, just have fun watching the poll.

Tutorial

1.  Go to www.mentimeter.com

2.  Right away you get to type in your question.

3.  Type in your different choices and answers.

4.  Choose how you want your graph to visually look to your audience.

5.  Off to your right hand side you will see a "To presentation" button.  Click it.  

6.  Give your audience/students the address at the bottom of your graph.

7.  Off to the right hand side you will see four faded icons.  "Edit" allows you to edit your poll.  The "Fullscreen" icon will display to your audience just the graph and make it look a little less than a website and more like a presentation.

8.  The "Share" button will will give you an link to your poll and presentation.  You can also get your embed code so that you can embed your results inside of your blog or website like I did at the top.

9.  The "Settings" button will allow you to "reset" your poll.  This is nice for those planning on using it in class as you can reset the results for each class period of the day.  You can also use the "Close Poll" option to finish the poll.

10.  When your audience/students go to the link that you provided them they will chose an answer and then click the "Submit" answer button.

11.  I tested the ability to take the quiz again and you can see that it wouldn't let me do so.

12.  Here is what the presentation view would look like.  The nice thing is that you don't have to refresh your screen to see the results.  They are live and in real time.  It is awesome.  Good luck and have fun using Mentimeter.

Using Socrative to help students practice writing.

The Common CORE of academic standards is coming down the pike. Students need to practice their writing skills in all classes in order to meet these new literacy standards. One way to do this is by using Socrative. A teacher can put one short answer question in a quiz and have students take the quiz. The question needs to be one that takes at least a couple of sentences to answer. 

We are trying something in our science department. A couple of times a week we'll ask the students a question that takes some writing skill to answer. The question can have something to do with what we have studied that day or it may have something to do with an article or a textbook passage the students may have read. We'll have the students answer the question in Socrative. After the students finish, it is easy to get the results from Socrative and have an electronic record (or print record) of what the students have done.

Here is how it can be done:

1. Log in to Socrative with your e-mail address and password

2. You will need to scroll down and click "Manage Quizzes"

3. I have a quiz already entered ("Bike Pressure Quiz").

4. If you click "Edit Quiz" you can change, add, or delete questions.

6. After saving the quiz, you would click "Start Quiz"

7. Choose the quiz you want the students to take.

8.  Click the "Student Paced Quiz" option and make sure the students enter the correct room number (mine is 8371)

9. Your screen will look like this while the students are taking the quiz. There isn't a real need to click the "Live Results" tab since the students are taking a short answer quiz and not a multiple choice.

10. When the students are finished (or when time is up), click "End Activity"

11. You will be given options for your report. If you want to give the students more time, click "Cancel."

12. Your report will be in an Excel spreadsheet. The original report is shown below. You will need to do some tweaking to make it look the way you want.

13. You will need to increase the row height in order to see the entire answer for each student. You may also need to adjust the column width.

14. Here is what a final report for that question may look like:

You can then either save the files in a folder as the students do these, or you can print them out. Happy writing!

Credit to Gregg Lunt for coming up with the idea.

Using Socrative in the Classroom - Part 3

In this post we will explore how to make a quiz on Socrative.

First, log in to the Socrative teacher site.

After you log in, you will see the main quiz screen. When you get to the quiz screen, select "Create a Quiz"

You will need to give the quiz a name:

You can now add questions. The quiz give you multiple choice and short answer options. If you want to make a true/false question you can make a multiple choice question with just the true or false options.

If you select "multiple choice" you will get this screen:

You can type your question and then provide possible answers. You will need to check the box of the one that is the correct answer.

If you want to add a short answer question, click "short answer".

The first question will move up and your second question is now ready to be written. 

Once you are finished with your quiz, make sure you save it.

You can now give the quiz to your students. Click the "main screen" tab on the top left.

Click "Start Quiz"

You can select which quiz you want to give. It defaults to the last quiz you created.

You can also choose between "student paced" and "teacher paced" quizzes. 

A student paced quiz allows the students to take the quiz as fast or as slow as they wish. 

A teacher paced quiz allows the student to answer only one question at a time. This allows the teacher to dictate how long a student takes on each question. Once the teacher clicks to the next question, the students are not able to go back to answer previous questions.

Select which one you want and then give the students the room number. The students would take the quiz and if you click "live results" you would get the results on your screen.

The live results would look like this:

Since the teacher would have to grade the short answer questions, the results of those questions wouldn't show up here.

When the class is finished (or time is up), click "end activity"

You will then be given an option to have a report e-mailed to you, download the report, or have no report at all. You can go back later and retrieve the reports if you wish.

If you select "email report", you'll get a report in your email. I selected "view as Google Doc" when I got the e-mail, and here is what the report looks like:

Sometimes students forget to log off of Socrative after they finish. If you wish to get everyone logged off, you can select "clear room" (on the main screen) and those students will be logged off.

It is nice to have a collection of quizzes on Socrative. One suggestion would be to make sure they have easily identifiable and sortable names. Otherwise you end up with something like this:

Happy quizmaking!

Using Socrative in the Classroom - Part 2

Previously we used Socrative to create an "exit ticket." In this post we will explore how to ask a single question on Socrative. This would be good for a "starter" activity, for a quick way of gauging student understanding during a lesson, or for a quick snapshot of how well your class "got" the lesson.

First, log in to the teacher site.

After you have logged in, you will see a screen that looks like this:

If you wish to ask a single question, you can click one of the top three choices and ask that question. You can put a question or a problem on the board, have the students answer it on Socrative, and the results would show up as a bar chart on your screen.

Here is how you would do a true/false question:

Click "True/False"

Have the students log in to Socrative with the proper room number.

Ask the question (either verbally or on the board)

Have the students answer the question on their computers. Here is what their screens will look like:

As the students answer the question, their answers will show up on your screen.

You would follow the same procedure for a multiple choice question.

The students would see a screen like this:

As the students answer the question, the results would show up on your screen: 

You can also do a "short answer" question. 

For example, in a chemistry class I may ask

Is the equation  (give the equation) an example of a combination reaction? Explain.

The students would then type in their responses. The responses would show up on your screen:

After the students finish responding, you can have them vote on the responses. Click "Vote on responses" after the class is finished.

The choices will appear on the students' computers:

They can then vote on which one is the best response. As the students cast their votes, the tally will show up on your screen:

Next time we will go over how to make a quiz on Socrative. Enjoy!