Formative is a real-time tool that gives you the ability to assess your students' understanding, and give them immediate feedback.
Because Formative works with any device, it is a great tool to use with student Chromebooks or tablets. You can create a free account using your @unionsd.org GAFE username and password. Once you have an account, you can create an assignment and send it out to students using a "Quick Code." It is easy for students to access Formative from the USD Symbaloo Landing Page. They enter the assignment code and can "Continue without logging in" to participate in your assignment. However, you might like to keep track of student work and progress. To do that, you'll first need to create a class.
After students access Formative through the Symbaloo page, have them click Signup, click on sign up as a student, and press the red bar "Sign in with g+." On the next screen, have students enter the Class Code (not case sensitive), and then press "Let's Do This" to join your class.
You can upload a PDF or Word document and have students answer questions on top of the canvas. You can create a new document using multiple choice, true/false, typed response, or show your work/drawing responses. You can even embed a YouTube video.
When students join the assessment, you'll be able to see their answers in real-time, and send them feedback.
Formative has a GoFormative Guide and Walkthrough Google Doc that you can find here. Since they are a new company, having launched in January, they are constantly adding new features and updating the document. You might like to bookmark it rather than make a copy.
Megan Mullaly, a teacher at Dartmouth, has been using Formative. She offered this, "I've used Formative before starting a unit to pre-assess, during a lesson to check for understanding, and the end of a unit as a summative assessment. I like it best for the checking for understanding (my questions were too long/involved with the summative). One of my struggles as a middle school language arts teacher is to provide quick feedback; Formative gives immediate feedback--a game changer. When I use Formative during a lesson, I am way more in tune with what worked and what I need to go back and re-teach in a timely manner (not after I've avoided a stack of exit passes for a day or two!). And of course the kids are more aware of their learning and understanding with the immediate feedback. It did take me a little bit to get used to the format/display. To start, keep it simple--only ask a few questions and use multiple choice and true/false style until you are more comfortable with the format. Also, I would suggest checking out the videos on their Youtube channel: formative youtube ."
Formative is a fledgling company and is interested in getting constructive feedback from users. Please let me know if you're interested in helping out their developers.
EduWin for Kristy Chia and her Third Grade Class
Kristy Chia's students are using Chromebooks to take pictures of their Third Grade Memories. Using the Camera app, students can add filters to the photo before they take it, a bit like in PhotoBooth on Macs.
Once the picture is taken, the students save their photo in Google Drive. Using the photos, they are creating Google Slide presentations. With the photos in Slides, they have learned to crop and use the photo editing tools.
After their presentations are finished, they plan to narrate their Slide presentations with Movenote. These Third Graders are putting so many new skills to work in this project. Congratulations!
If you or one of your colleagues are doing something in your class that uses edtech tools, please let me know. I'd love to share it with other teachers.
