My New Favorite Web Tool - Socrative

I believe I have stated before that my teaching situation is unique. I teach at a very rural school, with limited technology. There is also not a lot of teachers that desire technology in their classroom here. Because of this situation, I am able to park our lone mobile lab of 20 computers in my classroom. So far, no one has expressed an interest in driving it to their room.

So my kids have their own laptop, all day long. I realize this does not always happen, and I am grateful for it. Well, since my kids all have a computer, we get to do some pretty cool stuff.

The latest tool we have been using is Socrative. I believe it is still in some form of beta, as you have to sign up and some people have expressed that they have not been given access.

After signing up, Socrative gives you a space for you to interact with your kids in a secure room. You can set up questions for them to answer in the form of short answer, multiple choice, and a few others choices. This website actually removes the need for a classroom response system. (Woohoo since we are never affording that!)

So far we have used the site as a place to conduct our spelling bee, answer group questions for social studies, and do math problems together. To allow my kids to be anonymous, I have given them a number from 1-21 to include with their answer. This allows me to know who answered what, and without the other kids making fun of their answers. After the kids respond, I can project all the answers up on the big screen.

After you have signed up Socrative will give you two links. One will be for the teacher, and the other link will be for the kids. A great feature is that the kids must sign into the room, and you get to keep the same room. Another great feature is that you can create pre-made quizzes that you can load up for the kids. It would be great to see a hub form where teachers can save and share quizzes they have made.

Have you had a chance to check this tool out? How are you using it?