A few weeks ago, one of my grad students Crystal, showed me a website that was "great". I checked it out and moved on.   I did not really check it out in detail.  Last week, I went deeper into the site and found something I have been looking for, for years.  It is a free online quiz service (it also offers much more, but the quiz service is what I was interested in).  Now, I am not a huge test kinda teacher.  I like more authentic assessment, but I have always wanted a way to ask multiple choice questions and have it graded for me for fact recall on my content.  Mike and I had used google docs, but it will not easily grade for you (it can, but a long process).  So any ways, I thought I would give this service a try. 

-Next, you pick the right answer and click add more questions. Till you are done.
-You can upload images, maps, and more.  I used a few maps and artwork (see image above)
-When you are done, you click make it active and assign to your classes.  It has time limits, settings for retakes, and more.  I just used the basic version, they take the quiz once and it shows them their score.  
-Student then take the quiz, hit submit and they get a screen with their score, the whole quiz opens showing them what they missed and got right (if you provide feedback it will show here).  
-In my account, I get a report with average, each students score, link to their quiz, and a break down of the quiz.  This provides me with really quick feedback of what students have misconceptions about.  You can see some of the break down in the PP above.   


So, I owe Crystal an apology.  She was right, this is a great site.  You have a great find here and my students loved the instant feedback and it made my job more efficient.  Thanks again Crystal,  Let us know how it works for you. 

The link to quiz star is  http://quizstar.4teachers.org/ 

Cheers, Garth

Last month, I began teaching feudalism and the Middle Ages of Europe.  I purposely started this new unit of study the week before Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Going into the week of MLK Day, I gave a brief explanation of the feudal social classes.  Students worked in an extended "Think/Pair/Share exercise where they were responsible for creating social classes in the school, their community and the country.  Most students created groups based on popularity; as it was explained to me, "...popularity gives you power like money would have given you power in the Middle Ages".  The week of MLK day I used the Civil Rights Movement and the 1950s/1960s to talk about social classes and who had the power in America during these times.  As teachers often do, I assumed students had a good grasp on what life was like for African Americans during the 50s and 60s.  I was wrong.  We talked about the major events of the Civil Rights Movement and the beliefs of some of the key players.  I also showed a movie from the Teaching Tolerance program.  Like most lessons, the current day connections became more interesting and important than the historical connections.

Students had lots of questions about social inequality, enough so that I decided to spend more time talking about American history and doing history backwards (present to past).  I used a great website created by the Library of Congress called Voices From The Days of Slavery.  The site contains audio interviews of former slaves.  I played several narratives for the students and had them fill out sound analysis worksheets available from the National Archives (I changed it to fit my needs).  Students were captivated by these narratives.  It was the first time they had "heard" history from the people that lived it. 

The impact of listening to these narratives, compared to reading each narrative, was tremendous.  Students became engaged in why any society feels the need to create social inequality.  Several of my classes had great debates centered around the argument of whether social inequality is created by people, or naturally occurs because of human nature.

The point of all this...Students gained more depth of understanding of a topic in my class becuase of the use of technology.  The video and the audio narratives engaged students in conversations, compelled them to investigate further information independently, and allowed them to use critical thinking (higher-level) skills to understand the past using the present.  My students took time to think about the world and the enduring impact social classes and inequality has on the world around us.
Students are still making reference to the narratives and have even brought in articles from local newspapers with questions about the impact of social inequality on current events.  I may have moved on in class, but students are continuing to discuss a topic that is over a month old.
-Mike