Thing 18: Student Assessment and Feedback Tools

A little bit different of a post this time, because well... so much to look at!  And concision!

There was so many cool tools ( ;) ) I kind of got lost down the rabbit hole looking at them all.  I chose 5 to look at and share out my bullet point thoughts:

Dotstorm:
- cool way of digitizing voting/brainstorming
- like the weighted votes, lets people think about how MUCH they like ideas.
- I can see this being useful for both educators (improving efficiency of meetings by allowing for polling / raising ideas outside of meetspace) and for students (great way of giving students an option for guiding instruction!)

Vizia:
- kind of love this.
- Allows for short answer responses in the moment, interesting way to capture thoughts and understanding.
- Eliminates paper study guides.
- Content, question and answer all in one place.
- A way of "chunking" video media, making sure that scholars are gleaning as much as possible and not losing focus (even positively losing focus by getting lost in thought!)
- Already shared with peers :)

Kahoot:
- huge engagement: the competitiveness brings students to the table.  Plus there is a level of anonymity that allows students to engage safely.
- Quality varies wildly for those made by other users.  Sometimes the rigor or question construction suffers.  Best case scenario is creating your own.

Plickers:
- SOOOOO cool and accessible.
- Anonymous, meaning there's no risk in sharing answers.
- The teacher view when scanning makes it clear which students need help, creating a virtual map of where in the room you need to focus your efforts.
- on the fly statistics and analysis.
- low tech when compared to traditional clickers.  Less set up and less maintenance.

RemindChat:
- A little different; more of a communication tool than assessment tool.
- Awesome!
- I have a hard time sharing my personal contact with parents because of preserving my private life.  This solves so much of that.
- Options for controlling one way and two way communication is robust.
- Great way of organizing feedback from students who may have questions outside of class (either at home or in "support")