Formative for Real-Time Formative Assessments

Are you looking for ways to formatively assess students?  Formative is an amazing FREE tool that was created by teachers and allows for real-time assessments.  The teacher can easily create online classrooms for their classes.  Then, students register for an account and join your specific class with a code.  Below is a quick overview of the process once a teacher has an account:

Teachers can upload a document or PDF that they want to transform into an interactive activity for students.  Then, on the document, the teacher can click on any part of the worksheet and make it interactive by adding in question prompts, hyperlinks, even videos!

As the teacher, you're able to distribute assignments to students, which could also entail entrance and exit tickets.  If desired, point values can be assigned to questions.

The best part about Formative is that assessment results are available in real time.  Students can type, show their work with drawings or submit images.  Below you can see a sample screen of what a teacher might see as students are drawing an image in response to the proposed question about surface area:

As you're learning how to use the tool, know that Formative has a bank of tutorial videos that are quick and easy to follow.  Check out their tutorial videos: http://community.goformative.com/videos. 

Here is a quick 5 minute overview of Formative that will paint a clear picture of the application: 

Creating ebooks in iBooks Author

This week I had the opportunity to train a group of teachers on how to use iBooks Author to create iBooks that can be read on a Macbook laptop, iPad or iPhone.  These books are interactive and can include as much (or as little!) multimedia as you prefer--images, video, audio, links, etc.

I had not created an iBook in a while and needed a refresher so I browsed YouTube for endless tutorials.  The tutorials I found most helpful are below with a series by Matthew Henchen:

To actually create the books, we went through the process step-by-step together in just under an hour from start to finish and shared to iPads.  We chose to do blank templates and create simple books with text, images, and a Discovery Education video.  The easiest way to add multimedia is just to simply drag and drop the item onto the iBook page.  We decided to use iTunes U to share the books with a student set of iPads because it does NOT require syncing the device with each new book.

Here is the presentation I walked through with teachers.

Here is a copy of one of the books I created as an example.  I have embedded it as a PDF in case a reader of this blog does not have iBooks.

Don't be intimidated by the thought of creating your own iBook!  It's easier than you would think!