Minnesota eLearning Summit Presentation - Easy Formative Assessment Options For Mobile Devices

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My first presentation at the Minnesota eLearning Summit is on Wednesday, July 30. The topic of the presentation is easy formative assessment options for mobile devices.

Participants in this session will experience quick online and app-based formative assessment and quizzing options on your iPad, Chromebook, or other mobile devices and learn how to engage your students and gauge their understanding of your lesson.

Session participants will learn about specific apps and online tools and how to repurpose other apps and online interactive tools to create collaborative learning opportunities that will allow you to gauge student learning on the spur of the moment.

Crowd Sourcing:
What apps and websites are you using for formative assessment in your classroom? Please take this quick survey

Results


Resources for this session:

Flipgrid - This is a fun app and web-based tool that allows you to pose questions for your students to respond to by recording a video response. 
Try it out - Click here to contribute to a Flipgrid
21 day free trial and then a fee
More information - http://flipgrid.com/info/
iOS app - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/flipgrid./id756972930?mt=8
Video tutorial

Geddit - This website and app-based tool allows students to indicate their confidence level in terms of understanding content material as well as responding to quiz questions.
More information - http://letsgeddit.com
Resources - http://letsgeddit.com/public/articles/teacher-resources
Video tutorial

Google Forms - Free tool available from Google through the web or as an iOS app.
More Information - https://support.google.com/docs/answer/87809?hl=en
Video tutorial -

Kahoot - One of my colleagues jokingly refers to this student response system as being similar to bar trivia without the alcohol. Kahoot is website-based, but you can create a web clip icon on your iPad that links to the website and looks like an app icon.
More information - Sign up for a free account here - https://getkahoot.com
Link to website for students to join your quiz - https://kahoot.it/#/
Video tutorial - Creating A Kahoot  and Playing Kahoot
Quick Guide - https://getkahoot.com/tutorials/Kahoot_Tutorials.pdf

Plickers - Do you have just one iPad or Android device? This app/application lets you use your phone, iPad, Android device to scan paper cards that students hold up in one of four directions to indicate their multiple choice answer response.
More information - https://www.plickers.com
Plickers App for iOS
Video tutorial

Socrative - This tool is both web-based and an app. The teacher can create a quiz in advance and then gather and export student performance data.
More information - http://www.socrative.com
iOS Teacher app
iOS Student app
Video Tutorials - https://www.youtube.com/user/SocrativeVideos/videos
Creating a Quiz and Running a Quiz
User Guide - http://www.socrative.com/materials/SocrativeUserGuide.pdf

Voxer Walkie Talkie - This fun walkie talkie push and talk app can be used in many ways to gather quick and authentic performance data from students.
More information -http://voxer.com
iOS app - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/voxer-walkie-talkie-ptt/id377304531?mt=8
Video tutorial and Overview

Seven Days Until ISTE 2013

 I found this handy free embeddable countdown timer for websites and blogs from timeanddate.com (http://www.timeanddate.com/clocks/freecountdown.html).  The countdown timer is also available as a website-based timer (http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/create).

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The countdown to any date timer has an easy-to-use simple interface. Simply choose the countdown design, enter the timer title, select the date and time, and time zone of the event and click the Create Countdown button.  Simple as that!

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The website-based countdown to any date timer produces an easy-to-read countdown that stays active as long as you keep the webpage open.

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Timeanddate.com also offers a free online timer with a easy-to-use interface interface as well.  You can assign a name to the time, enter the amount of time, and select a sound to play when time runs out.

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The timer interface produced is easy to read and with the ability to create additional timer would enable a teacher to use this timer for station rotations without needing to reset and restart a timer.

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The third free online tool available at timeanddate.com is a stopwatch timer.

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The stopwatch timer even saves splits, which can be labeled onscreen. This could be handy if 

you want to time several students doing the same task and compare elapsed time or speed.

Overall, there are many handy tools available at this website for teachers to use in multiple ways in the classroom,  on a mobile device at their favorite sporting event, and maybe even to remind them of an anniversary or birthday coming up!

Google Translate Makes Blog Content Language-Friendly

Have you ever wanted to be fluent in a foreign language?  Well now you can be!

Not by spending  hours listening to self-paced Rosetta Stone language lessons or by living in a foreign country with a host family.  Thanks to a Google widget you can install in your blog layout, you can instantly become fluent in multiple foreign languages with the click of a simple drop-down menu widget that makes it quick and simple to translate the text content of your blog post on Google Blogger to another language.

You can quickly revert to the original language of your blog, especially if you're not as fluent as you used to be in the translated language and don't quite remember the original content of your blog, by simply clicking the X at the top right corner of your blog.

Imagine having a collaborating classroom partner in another country with students who speak an entirely different language than your own students do.  Now your students can easily use Google Blogger to create a blog of classroom writing and connections that can become instantly multi-lingual with a click of the Google Translate button, making the experience much more personalized for the collaborating classroom students while enabling global connections.