The Socrative website allows teachers to easily engage and assess your class through quick formative assessments. The assessments can take the form of quizzes, polls, exit slips and space races. The set-up takes very little time and are very reliable so there is little technical downtime. The quizzes also allow for open-ended questions to be asked and students can vote on which response they think is best. This is definitely a quick way to determine where student understanding is before, during, or after any lesson, all while engaging students through technology.
All assessments can be accessed through the website from any device or using the free downloadable app. There are separate apps for teachers and students. the teacher app allows for real-time visual results for the assessments and the questions are automatically graded!!!! This a feature any educator can appreciate.
Pricing for Socrative is moderate. There is a free option, but this free option only allows for 1 public room though per session. This means that the room can be used for each classroom but can get agitation when sorting the results. Upgrading to the Pro edition will run $29.99 a year. The Pro edition allows for up to 10 rooms that can be set to be either private or public. there is a higher capacity for each room boosted from 50 students for the free edition to 150 students per room with the Pro upgrade.
I personally like the idea of allowing smart devices in the classroom for applications such as Socrative. This provides an opportunity for responsible device use instead of a strict ban. Most students have a strong connection to their devices and Socrative is another app that can allow perspective of their devices to be academic tools.
