Quizzing

So I'm driving in my car one Saturday afternoon, and I'm listening to NPR. TED Radio Hour, RadioLab, and Spark are on one after another...what luck! Even though I am driving from one listening zone to another, I use the NPR app on my phone and plug it into my car radio (now if they would only invent PVR for radio –– would that be PAR?) and I can have uninterrupted listening for as long as my phone battery lasts.
The subject is Learning and Remembering...on one of the shows, can't remember which and my favourite story is about a young science grad who wants to go to medical school. He comes from small town USA and when he gets to Big University Medical School (I don't remember where he got in) he realizes he's ill-prepared for the work load. One month in he has his first test. He studies night and day and feels there is no way he can flub this test. Wrong. As soon as he begins, he realizes his recall just isn't working. He gets a 65.
He is not willing to give up his dream of being a doctor, but he knows he can not work any harder. He studied as hard as he could. It becomes clear he has to study better. This is when he discovers Dr. Bjork's research at the Learning and Forgetting Lab at UCLA.
What he finds out is that reading notes over and over again will help you remember some of what you read, but not for very long. For the truly deeper learning, your brain has to be asked to recall the newly acquired information over and over again. The more time you ask your brain to recall the new information, the better, and the different applications (like real world connections) you use, even better.

So our young med student creates quizzes for himself...he asks fellow students to quiz him (Hello Socrates!) He also learns from Bjork's research that mixing data up or "Interleaving" works best. So rather than "blocking" information to study, mixing things up with previous learned data, or completely different subjects will result in better great recall.



All this leads to the presentations I made to both our ES and HS faculties. Quizzing. I am not talking about "testing" but maybe I'm splitting hairs.  We can test for many things...checking in for understanding, for prior knowledge, exit tickets, formative assessment –– not every quiz need generate a mark. Tests, Dr. Bjork tells us, can also provide an opportunity for learning.
One last thought, testing just to assess knowledge can create fear. We know our prefrontal cortex will shut down when threatened so we need to take the fear out of quizzes. Let's make them fun.

Here are three tools to start you on your way:

Socrative:
Hmm, great name, huh? This a an online tool that lets you shoot a quiz, exit ticket, discussion prompt and more to your students either through their website or to a mobile app. Imagine your students solving a quadratic equation on the bus/car ride home. What's great about Socrative is how spontaneous you can be. Kids don't need to create accounts, so accessing the quiz couldn't be easier. Once your students have answered, an excel spreadsheet report is made for you to download.

Google Forms:

If you've used other online survey tools, like Survey Monkey, you'll be comfortable with Google Forms. You can create questions with multiple choice, text, or paragraph answers. Images and videos can be inserted as well, so if you've been flipping your classroom, or you need to differentiate, you're all set. An option to view a summary of the results gives you graphs that help you analyze the data yourself or share with your students.

Flubaroo: 
Flubaroo is a google sheet add-on that will mark your quizzes for you. This works great with Google Forms and is not complicated to use. At a glance you can see which questions cause the most trouble, and which students are having the most difficulty.