Saturday, January 12, 2013

Socrative and BYOD

I recently created a Socrative account. 

After listening to Amber talk about it in our last ELITE session, I thought I'd create an account and try it out on my own first: laptop on my left, newly acquired hand-me-down iPhone on my right.  And can I just say, it's pretty cool!

Since my students are currently tackling the book Night, a book that I feel can only be used in classrooms if large amounts of discussion are occurring, I have been wanting to use some Socratic seminar techniques.  So I thought: Socratic, Socrative.  Perfect!  But then I logged in to Socrative and realized it was much more quizzy with results coming to the teacher in a spreadsheet.  I'd forgotten about that. 

So maybe it won't work so much for contributing online to real time discussions as much as I'd hoped, but I totally see the value in other aspects.

So, I created a quick quiz/survey.  Something that would be quick and easy for the kids to do on their own devices, but also quick/short enough that they could share a device with a classmate and finish quickly (even if quizzing independently).

The first question, multiple choice:

Do you think Elie Wiesel carefully selects words to convey tone and mood?
a-Yes, absolutely. (this should be the correct answer)
b-No, not really.
c-I'm still confused on Tone and Mood.

Answers to this simple question gives me a great idea of how my students are thinking and reading the text--and who I need to reteach/revisit tone and mood with.  And they can be honest with me without having to do so in front of a classmate.

The second and third questions involve responding with examples of words/phrases that support either mood or tone. 

I'll be giving this quiz/survey on Monday and will report back. 

Again, I'm starting small and will build from there.  It's pretty exciting!



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