Medium Specificty

 I created a short quiz using the app Formative.com, which helps teachers create digital formative assessments The quiz itself is just for fun, but the process of exploring this app and creating the quiz was very interesting. The app is mainly for use in the classroom. Teachers can create different classrooms of specific students to use with multiple different formative assessments. What I loved about the app is the possibility for facilitating real-time feedback for teachers and the flexibility of what kind of material and responses are available. I'm not as tech-savvy as I'd like to be, and I know from observation that some students will participate in a digital format that will never raise their hand to participate in a classroom discussion. The possibilities with digital communication helps bridge that gap for some students and maybe even help draw them out into real-time participation. 

Formative allows teachers to create questions that can be enlivened with all sorts of content: images, video, audio, gifs, etc. Students can likewise respond in a variety of ways. They can answer with text, or a drawing - even on the same question. Students can respond with links, video recordings, audio recordings, a huge variety of ways. The assessments can be formatted in a variety of accessible ways including multiple choice, matching, categorization, drag and drop, etc. All of this accessibility allows for teachers to get a quick view of where there students are currently with the material they are studying and that helps inform teachers for what and how to teach next. 

This kind of tool allows for quick, real-time assessment and feedback so it has multiple uses and it can be manipulated to serve many purposes from daily mental health checkin, to vocabulary quizzes, to review of safety protocols on a theatre set, to quick student reviews of a video. The limitations this app has are that it is difficult to transfer the answers outside of the app to different mediums. If the teacher chooses to share the responses with the class, it would be hard for them to see or visualize the responses without reading each individual option. It would be cool to have functionality to visually represent answers in a more accessible way, such as graphs, wordclouds, charts, etc. It also didn't include as much flexibility in format as I'd hoped: there were things in the layout that I wanted to change or move around, but wasn't able to alter.

As I explored this medium, I found it very functional, but a bit dry. I wanted to find something that allowed for the whimsy we read about in Intention. Fortunately, I was able to use the options to create a mental health checkin that I found both creative/playful and useful for the teacher to know. This was a helpful exercise because it is exciting to find ways to bend genres so that even an assessment tool can be used for self-reflection or fun. I want my students not to feel that their time in my class is just another stage of the creativity-squashing warehouse, but that they can see that within each assignment there are opportunities to discover, grow, and develop their voice. The best way for them to find that out is for me to model it in my daily interactions with them, even when using a digital assessment app. 

To check out the Formative quiz that I made, go to: app.formative.com/join and type in the code BARUTS. 


Comments

Alex Taylor said…
I love that even though you got a jumpstart on the next assignment that it still was something that fit within this assignment. I feel like you explored all the options that were available in your medium and did a great job of explaining them in class and in your write-up. I feel like this website would be great for students to use as a daily check-in or check out that doesn't require a paper or a ton of effort--especially when you're short for time.
February 1, 2022 at 8:52 PM
Lexi Jo said…
I like that you were able to explore both the pros and cons of using this technology. I think that you did a great job exploring the different ways to use formative. I also really liked that you could use this form of quiz to teach many different concepts!
February 5, 2022 at 11:04 AM
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