Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Using Educreations as a Formative Assessment Tool

Technology + Formative Assessment = One happy teacher!!  Two things that I love the most are formative assessment and using technology.  When Tech with Jen introduced this as our challenge for the month of February I was head over heals excited!!

We have been studying fractions and I wanted to know just how much my students understood about how to subtract fractions between 1 and 2.  Using Educreations was the perfect way for me do assess their understanding! According to the website, "Educreations is an exciting app that transforms your iPad into a recordable whiteboard.  It records your voice, handwriting and also allows you to insert pictures to produce your own personal video lessons that you and your students can share online."  I have used Educreations to create my own videos for my students, but they have never used it to demonstrate their understanding of a concept.  Well, today was the day!!

I checked out 5 iPads and I introduced my students to Educreations.  I did a very brief tutorial on how to use the tools to create their videos and they were ready to create.  They were very excited from the start because they felt like they were now stepping into the role as the teacher!  How awesome it must be to create videos just like the teacher! Here is a video created by one of my students.  What does this student know about subtracting fractions between 1 & 2?  What other data can you gather about this student from her video?




After reviewing their videos, I have been able to gather so much data on my students' understanding of subtracting fractions between 1 & 2.  This is the greatest piece of any formative assessment you use!  I can now target those students who are still struggling and challenge those students who are ready to move on. I love technology and formative assessment! While watching the videos, I learned that a few of my students (ones that I just knew had it!) still didn't understand the concept of creating equivalent fractions to find the common denominator.  The data that I gathered from these videos was incredible!  Like I mentioned earlier...technology + formative assessment = one happy teacher!


There are multiply ways to use Educreation as a formative assessment tool!  I would love to hear about some ways you've used it or ways that you would like to use it to assess your students!  Thanks Jen for the challenge!