Results! BYOD and Socrative

Today's BYOD lesson using Socrative went well!  I felt like playing around with Socrative over the weekend really paid of when it came to implementing it in class today.  And I'm glad I started with just a few small, easy questions with a variety of response types so that I could see the differences as the results came in.

I had about the same numbers of students BYOD in each class as I did last time--about two thirds of all students overall.  Students were allowed to share devices and work together or work independently on laptops/classroom computers.  This made up for the kids who did not have their own devices.

Almost all students were successful in getting into the Socrative "room" quickly and easily. I posted the web address on my Powerpoint agenda and on the side board so students could easily access the information.  Logging on to Socrative was only a problem for two different students, and these individuals were able to easily join with another students to continue working.

I liked my multiple choice self-assessment question because it gave me a very quick idea of who was understanding mood/tone and who needed some reteaching.  The bad thing was that I didn't know that information until after they'd submitted the "quiz" and completed the mood/tone questions.  I'd rather know first, group appropriately, and then give them the questions.  I could easily do two separate quizzes in the future to determine this. 

For my open ended questions, students were quick to find text support/examples of mood/tone and type them into the space.  I wish I would have made my prompts in the questions more specific.  Some students were simply recalling (sometimes poorly!) from memory different pieces of text rather than finding specific quotes from the book like I wanted.  As the day went on, I realized this and had students get more detailed, specific, and use quotation marks plus page numbers. 

I liked that as soon as I clicked "End Activity," I could select "Send Email Report" and the results would come immediately to my email in the form of an Excel spreadsheet.  I could save these (which I didn't this time) if I needed to take grades on the assignment.  It's also handy that you could set Socrative to GRADE the quiz for you!  Since it's in Excel, you can sort and alphabetize or rank/order.  So handy!  I could also just create a folder in my Inbox and shoot them all over there for later, if needed. 

It seems like there are many instructional implications for Socrative without having to do a ton of work on the part of the teacher.  EXCELLENT!  I would definitely use Socrative again, especially now that the kids are familiar with the process.