I use Socrative as one of my formative assessment tools. It’s very easy to use and you can have a quiz ready to go in minutes. When other teachers come to me and want to get started with online formative assessment, this is the tool I start with.
Pros: You can easily share quizzes with other teachers, you can use graphics in the question portion (but not the answer portion), you can randomize the order of the questions and the answer choices, and you can choose to give students instant feedback. It provides quick reports to help evaluate the data from your assessment. Socrative can be accessed on smart phones, tablets and computers by going to the website. You can print a quiz from Socrative for students who don’t have a device. It also has a game component called Space Race that the student think is fun.
Cons: The students enter their names each time, so you can’t have accumulated data for a single student. Students will sometimes enter a name that is not theirs. If you are providing instant feedback ,they will take it once under a false name to get the answers, then log back in with their own name to take the quiz. It also doesn’t handle graphics as well as I want, sometimes enlarging them to the point that it’s hard to see them. I did contact Socrative about this issue and they are working to improve the graphics component. Since my content is math, I need to use equations or at least have the option to capture equations as images and post them as answer choices. Socrative isn’t there yet.
Socrative is good for a quick exit ticket and instant feedback. When I use it at the beginning of class, I can see where I need to clear up misconceptions from the class period before. When used at the end of class, I can see where students missed instruction and begin with that next time.
Give Socrative a try and let me know what you think.
Infinitely Teaching 