App Review – Socrative.

A blog by @mircwalsh

App Review – Socrative.

Today’s App Review is Socrative by Socrative. I teach many different subjects but the lower level IT subjects are always the most challenging to teach as the curriculum is detailed and requires students to complete a fairly extensive portfolio. The portfolio consists of worksheets. The first time I taught the subject my class was made up of students who had various special needs including literacy difficulties and physical difficulties with writing. To combat this I created a website where instead of students writing out worksheets they were able to fill these in online.
To do this I use a WordPress plugin called WPSQT which was good and worked wonderfully from a students point of view but from a teachers side required a lot of maintenance and results weren’t instant.
Many of my class that year had iOS devices and I only wish I had discovered Socrative then but am lucky to have it this year.

Socrative allows teachers to set up a database of multiple choice, true/false and short answer questions so students can be tested. Once the questions are set students can then login from internet enabled devices or from laptops and access the questions and answer them. The teacher gets the feedback right away. I like the App because unlike the WordPress plugin the hardwork is over once you create the questions. What I really like about the App is that is is inclusive for all students. While many of mine now have access to devices those who don’t can access them on their computers.

Asides from the regular question based quizzes there is also a fun inbuilt game which challenges students to complete questions as fast as they can to get a rocket across the screen and the person or team to get it across first wins.

There are two types of Apps one specifically for students and one for teachers both are free. Each quiz is limited to 50 participants so not ideal for larger conferences but this could probably be resolved by using groups.

I have tried the App out in a few classes with not issues so far and I think I will definitely be leaving the old WordPress Plugin behind and making the switch. The only thing I would like though is that right now any reports of quiz results are sent as .xls documents I have to convert these and would like an option to have them as pdf/word documents also

Apps have definitely made these classes more fun and I can certainly say that gone are the days where students used pen and paper worksheets.

To visit Socrative online visit HERE
To get the Teacher App click HERE
To get the Student App click HERE