It's becoming increasingly important that using formative assessments in the classroom helps teachers determine which students need help in understanding what is being taught and in what areas. The accessibility of technology tools to help with these assessments are more varied than ever. Quizalize is a free webtool that allows teacher to create interactive quizzes that can be used for informal formative assessments as well as great review activities.
Quizalize allows the teacher to create multiple choice questions and designate which answer is correct and which answers are incorrect. You are able to provide information that explains why an answer is the correct answer or why the incorrect answers are wrong. You can include a picture for each question, and you can select whether each quiz can be done in class or as homework. The teacher can also determine whether the students are allowed only 1 try or can try additional times. You can also determine how long the quiz is available, anywhere from 1 hour to 1 year.
Once a quiz is published, a code is generated that allows students to join the activity. Students can enter the code at a specified URL and play the game. The quiz keeps track of the participants as well as the scores. This helps the teacher go back and see how well the students did in the quiz and how many attempts they made.
Best of all, Quizalize is free. You can also import question sets from Quizlet to create a Quizalize activity, instead of making it from scratch. You can also browse Quizalize activities made by other users. Unfortunately, Quizalize is not available as an app for downloading, but that could change in time.
