thesocialworkpad

A great site to use with your students.

Recently I wrote about another site (Kahoot) that is great fun.  Kahoot allows you to collect data, show progress, and display comprehension skills of the students.  I stumbled across another great web-based tool, Quizizz.  Quizizz does something similar to Kahoot, but is more student centered.  In Kahoot, the teacher makes the pace of the questions, in Quizizz, the students can play the game at their own pace.  These are some of the highlights of Quizizz.

• Quizizz is free!
• Teachers develop questions ( that can have pictures attached), that the students will answer, by looking at them on a large screen, or on individual devices.  Quizizz works on all web-based tablets and computers.  Teachers can also choose from games already developed in the Quizizz community.
• Students get a code to use when logging in.  The facilitator has the ability to cross off names on the board that are inappropriate.
• Prior to starting the game/quiz, the facilitator is given the opportunity to set various settings, such as, the amount of time for each question, have the questions played in random order for each student or not, allow points or no points, give higher points to the person that answers the  fastest etc..
• Facilitator starts the quiz when everyone is signed in.
• Teacher and students can view the leader board and the progress of each student can be displayed.  Top leaders names will be displayed.
• Students get automatic feedback on questions answered incorrect on their personal device, so students can review questions and what they got wrong.

This is what the facilitator of the game can see.

This is a great tutorial for creating a Quizizz.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9f2_A6bNDA

For the most part, Quizizz is an easy  tool to set up, that has a lot of positives.  There are some drawbacks that I think are important to mention when using  Quizizz. Many of the students that social workers have on a school caseload, are diverse learners.  I try out many of my tech tools on intermediate grade students who struggle with reading.  Quizizz is based on a person reading a question and choosing an answer. So its best practice to attempt to use pictures associated with your questions.

My students played a practice game on the primary level that had pictures that associate with the questions.  Since the questions were scrambled, a couple of my students were frustrated as they yelled out, “I can’t read the questions!” in a playful voice.  I immediately realized that I couldn’t quickly assist them, as each of the students’ screens had different questions.  They were familiar with the Kahoot style game, where everyone had the same question presented on the board at the same time.

Another issue that arose was the students feeling anxious with trying to get their names on the leader board.  Some of my students don’t handle failure well, and this feature annoyed them , causing a few to complain and lose motivation.  The humorous images that play after a right or wrong answer (this feature can be disabled), also got irritating to some of the students, especially those who were getting questions wrong.

If a facilitator is using a smart board to display the log in code and progression of the game, some students may be angered as others can see their progress.  The facilitator may wish to minimize the image on the screen, so that it doesn’t display everyone’s progress.  The facilitator can usually see progress on their computer screen privately, without it being displayed on the smart board screen.

Finally, some students will finish sooner than others as Quizizz is individually timed (unless you choose other wise), so plan to have something for the students to do that finish first, as you know, review of the questions only goes so far :).

In closing, I would give Quizizz a thumbs up for being innovative, interactive, entertaining, and educational.  This tool is definitely worth trying.  I made a Quizizz on the Pixar movie Inside Out (dealing with emotions) by reading the book to the students.  The movie hadn’t come out yet,but the students had seen the trailers. This was a great way to motivate them to learn more about emotions.  Please leave a comment on how you would use Quizizz in a counseling setting.