Benefits:
- Can be used on multiple platforms: smartphones (Droid and iOS), iPods and iPads, tablets, or desktop/laptops.
- Free to use
- Assessments are sharable with other teachers, bolstering collaboration and enabling the sharing of data from shared common assessments
- Easy to set up with anonymous and named student capability for students
- Teachers can select from pre-prepared quizzes or verbal question/Socrative pol answer type questions.
- Socrative will create/send a score report in Excel, allowing you to disaggregate data to make decisions about further instruction (and providing an artifact!)
- Students do not have to create their own accounts, so no personal information is shared.
- Images can be included in questions
- Can place a strain on wireless network, and if connectivity is lost during an assessment, data is lost (therefore, I would only use this in a formative manner).
- Students can answer using aliases, so teacher must monitor carefully that students enter their own names if the assessments will be graded.
- Students from other classes can chime in on discussion (anonymously) once their class is over if they remember your class code (this has happened).