Distance learning made "easy" with Formative

A while back I shared 8 Reasons to Love GoFormative. All of what I mentioned back then still holds true, but in this new era of remote teaching, GoFormative has become the most powerful tool in my teaching arsenal. Let me share why.

It is important to note that some of the awesome things I'll be sharing are available to premium/partner users. However also important to state that GoFormative is offering access to their premium features for those facing school closures and that any premium features you use during this time remain active in your Formatives even if later you downgrade to a free plan.

GoFormative and Google Classroom

 GoFormative "talks" to Google Classroom. There is nothing worse than trying to introduce a new tool to students. That initial walk-through of setting up student accounts, having students remember passwords, etc is a pain even in the best of times. GoFormative allows you to import your classes, assign work and pass back scores to Google classroom. Students do not have to do anything other than click on the assignment in their Google classroom, log in to GoFormative using their Google credentials and get to the actual work at hand.

Everything in One Place

This is the best part. GoFormative allows you to embed practically anything directly into your formative assignment. What this means is that you can have a full lesson on Formative that starts with a screencast or video, then a simulation, followed by a slideshow and a Quizziz, all in one place. No need for students to open up new tabs or get lost while trying to remember where to go.

Last week I was tasked to give a PD on using GoFormative for distance learning and created this slideshow walking you through what I consider the best things to embed for distance learning.



And just to be clear, embedding is not a premium feature. It is always available as a stand-alone embed, though as a premium partner you can embed directly into a question type.

And while we are on the subject of embedding, if you embed a Google document using the "second way" mentioned above, and give editing rights to the document to your students, you can effectively transform that document into a discussion board that the students can type into while still in GoFormative!

Of course, if you want to close the "discussion board" you simply change the permissions of the document back to anyone with the link can view.

Real-Time feedback

Once students are working in your Formative, you can give feedback in real-time or asynchronously.  This GoFormative article shows you how. Now, while in a Google meet (or Zoom), you can also choose to display the student answers, hiding their names (which is an actual feature in GoFrmative) and have a full discussion about their answers.

Formative Library

If you don't know where to start or just want to find something quickly, GoFormative also has a library of teacher-created Formatives shared by teachers that can help pave the way to your use of GoFormative during this time.

Some more information about the use of GoFormative during school closures, including a recording of a webinar that walks you through setting everything up can be found in their article "COVID-19 Virtual Classroom Action Plan"

This is how GoFormative has made my transition to remote teaching easy. How about you, what tools are you using and found especially powerful during these times?