For student assessment, I checked out a couple of very good tools: Kahoot and Padlet. I was introduced to Kahoot by a colleague a few months ago. She showed me a quiz that she had created and I thought it worked well, but really didn't get how super fun and easy this site was for students & teachers. It works almost like the clickers that teachers use to get classroom feedback, except the students can use their phones, iPads, or chrome books to answer the questions presented. When the class is working on a quiz together, with a time limit for each question, it can seem like a competitive game - which is a very engaging & motivating way to capture student attention. It could also be a little discouraging to struggling learners (slow readers or those with a processing delay), so I would give students slightly more time than needed to accommodate everyone. Fortunately, Kahoot lets you choose how long they have before the option to answer is gone. I like that flexibility.
Creating a quiz, jumble, survey or discussion in Kahoot is really easy, especially if you are able to find one that has already been created by another user. You are able to duplicate that Kahoot and then edit it to fit your students. As a librarian, I like to create quizzes based on books that we read in book club. Kahoot had a quiz for just about every popular book I looked up, even the most recent one, Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone! So, I duplicated it and made some edits so that we can use it for our next club meeting. With the Kahoot jumble, you can create a puzzle that asks the student to put the events of the story into sequential order - something I would really like to use for historical fiction. I could also recommend it for our social studies teachers.
Kahoot allows the use to upload pictures & videos to make the quiz or lesson more more engaging to students. Participants get to choose a fun username and results to each question are revealed as the game is played with the top three winners depicted graphically by podium levels. Cool huh!
The other assessment tool that I think students & teachers would love is Padlet. It looks a lot like a white board with post-it notes stuck all over it, except we don't use any paper or ink. The teacher can ask the class to add comments on a question posed above the "pad" and each student logs in and adds a comment, question, or response to someone else's post. This could allow everyone to get in a comment, even the quiet/shy students. Students could also post a comment anonymously, which could bring more in-depth questioning to the table. I could see students using padlet for brainstorming ideas, planning an event, sharing questions about a lesson as a ticket-out-the-door, etc. Padlet allows the users to post multimedia, making the resulting board visually appealing. For our book club, I could have my students use Padlet to post questions, comments, and favorite lines from the books we read and when the group meets, we can read and discuss what was shared.
Lastly, I belong to a bicycling club that needed a new name, so I created a survey in Google forms. It was easy to set up and the graphic designs were perfect for this subject. I also liked the pie chart that showed the results of the participants. My only concern was whether the survey could be opened by someone who did not have a google account. The answer is "yes" anyone can open the survey, even without the Google connection. I would recommend this platform for anyone that needs a free survey for educational or recreational purposes. Below is a link to my survey:
Survey: Bike Group Name
