Technology and Assessments

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Checking for understanding is good for both students and teachers. We’ve rounded up a variety of digital tools to help you do it.

Since Kahoot is a great platform for creating a fun, social and game-like environment in the classroom, teachers worldwide are using it in their classrooms.

Through formative assessment, teachers check student understanding, get valuable data on student learning, and then use that data to modify instruction. When teachers know what students know (or don't know), they can adjust to meet students right at their level. The best formative assessment tools also help students self-reflect and assess, figuring out where they are and where they need to go as learners. Browse the tools below to find one that meets your needs. There are formative assessment apps for everything from discussion to quizzing, polling, and student responses to interactive lessons and videos. Interesting seeing how two of the best formative assessment apps compare? Check out our EdTech Showdown featuring Kahoot! and Formative.

By locating the right tool and building data collection into your routine, you can easily have the formative assessment data you need for responding to student understanding.

Kahoot has been a buzz in the #edTech world for several years now, but only recently has Quizizz come to the formative assessment scene. If your students enjoy game-based quizzing on Kahoot, why switch? I only recommend replacing an old favorite if there’s added value with a new one.

There is a very wide variety of digital formative assessment tools that can
be used for free. I’ve made simple graphics for 18 of them. Most of the
tools work with any web browser, so they are great for laptops, computer
labs, iPads, Chromebooks, tablets, and smartphones.

Educational technology has its pluses and minuses. It’s up to teachers, administrators, and district personnel to decide whether the good outweighs the bad.

In order to learn what our students need and how we can better design our lessons to prepare them, we use formative and summative assessments.  Assessments are vital in for determining what learning has occurred, what areas need to be reinforced, and what our next steps must be. This kind of information helps to guide our instruction and provide additional opportunities for our students. Assessments give us the information we need to provide feedback to them, to guide their learning, and to set new goals.

Summit High School in Oregon is experimenting with a mix of new technologies to build teacher-student feedback loops that help personalize instruction.