Socrative
Socrative is a formative assessment app with Student and Teacher versions. Students can download their version of the app for free, and there are free and Pro versions for instructors. The difference between the two is in the number of classrooms (1 for the free version and 10 for Pro) and students allowed (50 vs. 150, respectively).
Instructors can utilize Socrative for four types of assessments: 1) quizzes with multiple choice, true or false or short answer question types, 2) a Space Race that changes the quiz into a competition, 3) a Quick Question, and 4) the Exit Ticket that allows for student reflection on the lesson and its content.
Quizzes must be made in advance, but assessment happens in real time and with the class as a whole. The app provides feedback summaries through a dashboard (also downloadable), which also allows for a top-down look at class and individual student performance. In fact, Socrative is a great tool for quickly checking whether students have mastered a recently-introduced concept or can recall what was covered in a previous lesson in order to see if further instruction or explanation is required.
Advantages: students do not need to create accounts, downloadable data and feedback summaries, an easy-to-use interface, Quick Questions good to use for listening comprehension
Drawbacks: time to create quizzes, Exit Tickets not customizable, cannot integrate into PowerPoint presentations
Mentimeter
Mentimeter is a polling tool that can be applied as a formative assessment application. In particular, you can quickly quiz students on vocabulary or check understanding of a previously-taught concept without wasting paper.
Students log onto Mentimeter through their mobile devices, so there is no need for them to create an account. There are three teacher plans which vary in the number of questions permitted and features available. Even with the free version, the polls are easy to integrate into a PowerPoint presentation or share with your students via a link and ID number. Additionally, Mentimeter is known for its Word Cloud feature which allows students to submit ideas while brainstorming a potential topic.
Advantages: anonymous answering allows quiet students to participate, quick and easy-to-implement, real-time results, unlimited number of student users allowed per poll
Drawbacks: no individualized student feedback, results cannot be hidden, better for larger classes
11/01/2019