Today I gave Socrative, a new Student Response System (SRS), a try (free for now while it is in Beta). The beauty of Socrative is that it is not only an "app" that must be downloaded (Android available now; iOs and Blackberry to come soon). In addition, all functionality is also web-delivered to any device that can browse the Internet. This can be done at a desktop/laptop computer, tablet, smartphone, or any other device that can browse the Internet. According to the site, they are working on a PowerPoint plugin as well

Here are the types of assessments they offer:

TOOLS & GAMES

- Polls: Audience voting

- Short Answer question : Open ended form for audience to answer questions

- Exit Tickets: Check student understanding with a few quick questions before they leave class each day.

COMING SOON- Space Race: Teams of students answer questions in this fast-paced rocket race game. First team to get their rocket across the screen wins!

- Chicken & Egg: Fun quiz game where students earn points in this fun version of Jeopardy where the whole class plays at once.

- More quiz, game, and exercise tools. 

For more information, check out their blog. 

What follows is my experience with the service today (thanks to those on Twitter that responded to my request!).

Once invited (apply here), Teachers/admins do all the prep work and question admin online. The teacher dashboard looks like this:

Students/respondents access the questions by navigating to the URL http://m.socrative.com and logging into the room number that has been assigned to you. They will need to know what this room number is.

Once the room number is entered, the student will see a screen like this if the question has not yet been deployed by the teacher.

Once the assessment is deployed, what the student will see depends on the type of assessment. I tried the "Exit Ticket". This type of assessment (that you can also customize) asks the student the following:

First/Last Name

"How well did you understand today's material?"

"What did you learn today?"

"Please solve the problem on the board." (assuming there was one on the board to solve)

While the students are submitting responses, the teacher/admin will see something like this:

When the assessment is closed, a report is automatically generated and emailed to you as an Excel spreadsheet.

The results of my trial "Exit Ticket" assessment looked as follows:

Overall, this seems like a really nice service. Accessibility is varied. It's quite straightforward and easy to use. It makes the purchase of actual "clicker" devices unnecessary and leverages the computers (smart phones) that students are already carrying around with them.

While there is much more here that I haven't explored yet, it's worth giving it a try. And, of course, the effectiveness of its use is largely dependent upon how the teacher uses it.