Is Socrative positive?

Socrative is an app that allows both teacher and student to interact electronically with educational activities on tablets, laptops and smartphones. Predominantly, socrative can be used through the means of questionnaires, which can produce instant results for the teacher and the whole class to visualise.

Having had a demonstration in my PGCE class of this app, I can see that it is a teaching technique that sparks debate. The positives of using such a device in the classroom is that it involves the entire classroom. In order to participate, all of the class need to be involved, with the knowledge that they are entering their results anonymously. Perhaps, this technique can break down the embarrassment students can feel when they are participating in class quizzes. It also may make cheating in quizzes less, as it is anonymous and each of the students needs their own device to participate. Another positive was the fact that the teacher can instantly gain feedback from questions and gauge the whole class' current level of understanding. This saves the teacher time on marking and also the time the teacher would take trying to grasp the statistics of learning and what areas of learning that need more attention. However, like many new teaching techniques, devices such as socrative are going to come with some criticisms.

The negatives of using such a device became clear when using socrative in the PGCE classroom. Firstly, every student would need access to a smart phone or laptop in order to take part in the quiz. This immediately made me raise my eyebrows as who's to say that every pupil can afford smart phones. It is the same as the continual arguments you hear over the prices of school uniforms. Not every child can afford to have the best and newest kit out there and surely a socrative quiz is only going to make those that haven't got the phone even more aware and could cause them embarrassment in the class. One of a teacher's primary areas to focus on when teaching to to make sure that the pupils well-being is ensured. Therefore, does using a device such as socrative guarantee whole-class participation? How can I guarantee if I used this teaching technique in class that all of my pupils would be able to do the quiz? If one or two pupils cannot, then surely the quiz has to be withdrawn from use.

Another critique would be the fact that anonymity of participants in the quiz means that yes the teacher gets a statistic of class knowledge, but they do not gain awareness of individual weaknesses. The teacher is unaware of which pupils in the overall statistic failed in some questions, and who the ones are that had questions correct. The teacher would have to rely on the fact that pupils gain knowledge when they can see the answers at the end on the whiteboard screen. Also, interaction between teacher and student is limited as there is a device in the way (be it a mobile phone or a laptop). Personally, when I am teaching, the less I see mobile phones displayed out in class the better!

Maybe it will be one of those teaching techniques that really grow and is used seamlessly in lessons. However, if it is to be used, this method needs to be backed-up with a teaching technique that undergoes knowledge of individual pupils' knowledge in class. To rely on socrative would not be beneficial for individual students, as they are being lost in an overall statistic.

Therefore, it is not so much on whether the use of Socrative is positive or not, but on how the sole use of such a quiz technique could have a negative effect on learner and teacher knowledge.

References:

http://www.socrative.com/ [Accessed 20 October 2014].