Review of Online Teaching Tool
This week, I created a quiz for my Grade 4 students on Quizizz, (link there!) as a review of Social Studies 3 concepts. I chose to do this because I want to use this Social Studies 3 quiz as part of my Course Prototype Project. My own students became my guinea pigs for Quizizz! Alec provided so many amazing tech resources for us to check out. I chose Quizizz because it seemed the least time consuming to create. I will definitely have to check out some of the other platforms when I have more time to sink my teeth into them. Overview of Quizizz: Quizizz is a data base of many online quizzes that students can take. Teachers have two main options: create a quiz themself, or use one that is already created. I decided to create my own quiz. From there, teachers have the option to assign the quiz or do it live in class. Quizizz pairs with Google Classroom, and allows the results from Quizizz to be automatically uploaded into Google Classroom. Review of Quizizz: First Attempt: Because Quizizz pairs with Google Classroom, I set it up as an assignment for my Grade 4 class on Google Classroom. Students will use their own device to join the quiz and complete it. It sounds very simple, but in fact, it was quite challenging to use. I had my students log on to Google Classroom, click the assignment Quizizz link, and take the quiz. However, upon first using Quizizz, there were many hoops the students had to jump through: confirm login, accept Quizizz’s terms of agreement, select play from school, select student mode, enter their birthday, choose a username, create an avatar and set the background- all before even beginning the quiz! For 8 year olds, this was incredibly challenging. When the class finally all made it onto the Quizizz website to begin the quiz, we discovered a class code was needed. I didn’t know what the class code was or how to find it, so as any teacher would do, you come up with another way! As I mentioned before, Quizizz allows teachers to assign the quiz, or to do one live. At this point in the class Quizizz adventure, we tried performing the quiz live. Thankfully this worked! The students were able to follow the prompts I displayed on the smart board, and enter the live quiz easily. As for the quiz itself, the students had multiple responses about it. Most of the students enjoyed it, however the default mode is to have each question timed, with a visual timer at the top showing how long you have to answer the question. This made the students very panicked while taking the quiz. When I created the quiz, I had the questions build upon one another. However, the default mode is for the questions to be shuffled, which defeats the purpose of building for comprehension. So I spent the whole evening that night trying to figure out how to change these settings. Once I had that fixed, I re-posted the same quiz as a fresh assignment for the next day. There is no way to turn off the time limit for each question, so I set it for the maximum time of 15 minutes. I was able to find the settings to hide the time limit bar, and to turn off the shuffle. (However, I can see how keeping the questions on shuffle would help prevent cheating). Second Attempt: The next day, I took a few students at a time to do a walk through of the same quiz as the day before, to teach them more directly how to log on and start the quiz independently. Once all students had a small group tutorial on Quizizz, we tried the same quiz again. The second attempt went so much better! I was able to fix a lot of the problems that I experienced the first time around. The students were relieved to see no time limit on the quiz, and the program didn’t make them go through several hoops when beginning the quiz. For the most part, the students were able to begin the quiz independently. After completing the quiz, Quizizz will suggest other quizzes for the students to take. That evening, I went back to look at the student results. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the grades had been automatically inputted to Google Classroom for me! However, I quickly realized that the scores from the day before had not been imputed. This shows that scores will only be added to Google Classroom if the quiz is posted as an assignment- not on the live function. Quizizz will show teachers the highest score for each student (if the student took the quiz multiple times), but Google Classroom will only input the score of the first attempt, even if later attempts have a higher score. For example, one of my students began the quiz, and accidently closed the internet browser (the joys of forth grade). When she got back to the quiz, she needed to start over. Her first attempt had a score of 25% (because she only made it part way through), however her second attempt had a score of 91%. Google Classroom saved her grade as 25%, and Quizizz saved her grade as 91%. Summary of Strengths and Weaknesses: Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Potential for Teacher Use as Content Creation Tool: Now that my students are used to Quizizz, I could see myself doing it again. For new teachers using this tool, I would suggest they look carefully into the settings of the quiz, to see what options are activated. Also, I would suggest ample amount of time to get your students started on their first time using Quizizz.
2 Comments
Donna Wicks
11/24/2020 11:13:13 am
Thank-you for your great review. I loved hearing about how you used it with your class and how teachers may want to look at the settings prior to the first use. It was interesting for me as I do think this would be too challenging for my students to use. I really like the read aloud function and I may have to have a look at that feature now and see if that might make this something they can use.
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Ginger Alexander
11/28/2020 08:05:27 am
Thank you for a different opinion on this tool. Teaching different levels changes our perspective on a tool. Nothing worse than thinking something will work easily and then it all changes and shifts and we as teachers have to roll with it and find a solution. Sounds like some stressful moments happened for you. I love that it has a read aloud option! The shuffle option would frustrate me for sure. I like that it puts a grade directly into Google Classroom. That always make life easier.
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