Monday, 15 October 2012

Start with some quizzes or student comments with Socrative








Socrative is maybe not the best of names but it offers some useful tools to tutors to use in a class. At the beginning you can have some quizzes for them to do - multiple choice or asking them to include their own answer. If you know of someone else using the software and can get their Socrative quiz number then you can use theirs too, or instead, if you like.


On logging in the tutor is allocated a 'room' number. Students enter that on their devices and will then get to see the quiz or whatever that is provided there.

A nice feature is the way that the teacher can display the live results of the quizzes and also have them sent as a spreadsheet by e-mail.

It seems to work on a pc or mobile device quite happily with a clear interface actually best viewed on a mobile as the content tends to stretch across a normal screen and look a bit strange.

There are additional options for creating quizzes using a template that can be downloaded so the tutor can take their time setting up more detailed quizzes and answers in their own time rather than on-line. I haven't noticed yet how many times this can be used with, or what options are not available in, the free version but it's certainly worth a try to see what you can do with it, even just to have the students occupied at the start of a lesson while the late-comers wander in.

It hasn't the most intuitive of interfaces - for instance, it takes time to figure out how to make quizzes available and it expects students to include their name as Surname, First name which, together with the title, says something about the team behind this! I guess the way people enter names can be changed, though, and may just be a demo thing.

t.socrative.com and m.socrative.com are the mobile sites for tutors and students respectively. You can play around yourself with two devices and pretend to be a student or get the wife and kids to help check that it all works as you want.


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