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T/H to Glenn Hervieux 13 Dec 15 01:30:03 Great writeup by Tony Vincenton Quizizz, quiz game that can be used for formative assessment and how it compares to Kahoot!.

50 different examples of formative assessment, by a specialist in "new visions for public schools." These are inventive and will keep students guessing while enabling you to find out what they know -- or don't. This is a slideshow that can be played automatically, and is under CC so can be freely copied and used.

These tools help you ensure on the fly that students understand what you are teaching.

"We're not going into detail on what rubrics are or how to write a basic rubric (you can learn that here). What we want to do is present the process of designing rubrics through the lens of students taking ownership of their learning, and teachers becoming facilitators rather than teachers, so that their Rubrics will ROCK! So we're talking about designing rubrics as formative assessment-and not only formative, but driven by the students themselves (astute readers will also find the great Stephen Covey within this blog.)" Looks at ways to have students design their own rubrics -- great for individualizing/differentiating learning.

Offers 4 different tools than can help you and students with video and Web work: Scrible to annotate electronic texts lets students work collaboratively and teachers can use annotations for formative assessment and comments; VideoAnt lets you use video as texts to timestamp video for access later, type up notes in a sidebar, and share annotations; Kaizena Shortcut is a Google extension that allows detailed feedback, and can also be used for recordings; EDPuzzle lets teachers create lessons for instructional videos like Khan Academy and give feedback on students progress. These all sound worth a try.

A model of how a whole class discussion can lead to formative assessment, revision and expansion of ideas, and collaborative learning with very young learners.

This is an excellent example of how principal and teachers work through formative assessments and customization of teaching materials collaboratively. It can happen!

"Many schools are currently using Forms as a way to easily and quickly record data from teacher observations. The advantage is of using a Google Form is that it compiles all the data into a spreadsheet which allows school leaders to quickly and easily see trends in the school's classrooms." Suggests that the administrator can also use the Google spreadsheet to collect data on what teachers are doing in the school as a whole. Video shows how to go to the Template and create your own by copying the document. Links to template.

The descriptions of the tool uses are of great interest. This is a thoughtful blog article. Tools mentioned are Visme, Padlet, Recap, Voxer, Picktochart, Nearpod (virtual field trips), Formative (assessment), Quizizz, Buncee (projects), Blendspace to share Websites and create lessons, Storyboard, BloomzApp for messaging and planning as well as translation. Much to explore here.

"Today the lecture system is the preferred teaching style used by 89% of science professors. Indeed, lecture is a comfortable format for many instructors and a non-threatening one for students. It is low cost, easy to control, and an excellent method for organizing course content. However, many of us are becoming more aware that during lecture students are not actively engaged with the topic, they don�t seem to listen for very long, and their retention of concepts is minimal. Studies show that students are not attentive 40% of the time they are in class and that although attention is high for the first 15 minutes, it declines rapidly until the final 10 minutes of class. " K. Timberlake makes a good case for student-centered strategies, such as group work, and mini-lectures, peer presentations, and formative assessment.

"An Apple app which lets you quickly scan and mark paper-based quizzes using the special mark sheet and your mobile device. The children simply make a mark on their answer sheet to show their answer." (M. Burrett) "Quick Key eliminates hand-grading of quizzes, tests, and formative assessments, even for teachers working in paper-based classrooms, without a computer." Clever app - reads and grades.

"What I like the most about this chart is the fact that it emphasizes the social and affective component in learning, something which is often overlooked in today's digitally-focused learning paradigms. These mechanical skill-based and market-oriented paradigms reduce students to 'cheerful robots' and view pedagogy as 'merely a skill, technique, or disinterested method' to teach pre specified subject matter' (Giroux, 2011). Instead, education should be viewed as an important locomotive not only for gainful employment but also for 'creating the formative culture of beliefs, practices, and social relations that enable individuals to wield power, learn how to govern, and nurture a democratic society that takes equality, justice, shared values, and freedom seriously.(Kindle Location, 67 from "On Critical Pedagogy")." The checklist is also quite short.

This page explains how to create a Google form. You can make a quiz for your students and email it to them, collecting data from the form. You can require respondents to sign in to use the document, which helps with security. See the sidebar on the left for more instructions and tutorials.

"Students use PeerWise to create and to explain their understanding of course related assessment questions, and to answer and discuss questions created by their peers." Register yourself as teacher and then sign in your students. Instructors easily view student participation. The site has screencasts to show what students do and what instructors think about their work.

Another superb teacher-training video from R. Stannard on using Goggle Forms to create questionnaires, surveys, and quizzes.

This is not about the technical how-to of G-Docs. The teacher instead discusses the pedagogical aspects of how collaboration works, as students write a collaborative essay and discuss it together as they write. The teacher also explains how she does formative assessment as the students write. Using Goggle Docs she can see who contributes and how much.

"WordWriter is a new writing tool from BoomWriter. WordWriter allows teachers to create vocabulary lists that they want students to incorporate into a writing assignment. Assignments are distributed directly to students through the class lists that teachers create in their BoomWriter accounts. Students do not need email addresses to receive the assignments. Teachers can log-in at any time to see if and when a student has completed an assignment." "WordWriter assignments offer a good way to have students practice using new vocabulary words in context. Through the assignments you can have students demonstrate their understanding a word's meaning. You could also use WordWriter assignments to assess a student's ability to use the correct form of a verb. " T/H to R. Byrnes

"Students classed as less able are being hindered by being grouped into ability-based sets, according to new research published today in the Cambridge Journal of Education." This is something I have always suspected -- good to see some research out there. Project-based learning (with careful supervision and formative assessments along the way) is a much better idea. While the study is based on secondary students, I think it applies equally across all grade levels.

A very short blog entry and video tutorial. Links include one to how to set Google Forms to close at a certain time, so you could make a timed test.

Extensive review and comparison of tools that turn review material into games. By Matt Miller.