Assessment

 It is so important for teachers to incorporate a variety of assessment types and techniques into their classroom. Assessment is important in the classroom so that teachers can check students progress and understanding and examine whether students are able to meet the lesson's learning objectives. Using various means of formative assessment is important in the classroom so that teachers can re-teach students concepts and areas that they are struggling with or having difficulty fully comprehending. Fortunately, there are different ways that technology can help with this!

One technological app that is great for formative assessment throughout the lesson is Kahoot. Kahoot is a phenomenal app that combines quiz questions on a lesson while allowing students have have fun by making the quizzes more in the format of a game. One concept about Kahoot that I particularly like is that I am able to create my own quizzes based on my own lessons. This allows me to tailor my questions for my students based off of the areas that I would like to check their progress or understanding. Additionally, teachers can examine questions that other teachers have posed to their students on Kahoot, which is useful when developing these quizzes and formative assessments. As seen below, there are an incredible amount of historical resources already on Kahoot. 

In a history classroom, using Kahoot is a great way to pose check-in questions to students throughout a lesson. Every few slides on a presentation, students can simply be asked a simple question or two on Kahoot to check their progress. This is also a great tool for teachers to use for an exit ticket at the conclusion of the lesson. This just requires students to have a phone, tablet, laptop, or other electronic device that they can use in order to connect via a teacher-supplied code to that day's quiz questions. Then they go through the quiz questions one-by-one.

One of my favorite parts of Kahoot is its ability to make learning and checking students progress fun with students. Students are awarded "points" in Kahoot for answering questions correctly and also for the speed in which they answer correctly. This helps students to stay engaged with the lesson and some students may even try to compete with each other to see who can get the highest score. My only issue with this points system, is that I would rather see students spend a little extra time on a questions to answer it correctly, rather than have them feel as if they want to answer it quicker just to try to get extra "points" in the app. 

Kahoot overall is a fantastic resource. It does require every student to bring their own device to class and have it with them on a daily basis. With more and more schools requiring this and implementing these types of programs, I do not think that this is a major issue today but it is something for teachers to keep in mind for their classrooms.