Wormbog

This is the second in a series of posts about the iPod Touch in the classroom.  The first post talked about using the device for Internet research.  In this post I will look at online testing.

Online testing at DCHS is done using RenWeb, our student information system.  I will acknowledge from the start that there are likely much better tools for creating online tests, but this is what we are working with at the current time (Here is a helpful article about assessment solutions from Tech and Learning). RenWeb allows for creating multiple choice and essay questions.  If you have ever typed on an iPod Touch you can probably imagine that it is not the right tool for a test that is heavy in essay questions.

It was interesting to watch the students in several classes use the iPod Touch for testing.  They initially struggled to log into RenWeb because of an interface that is not friendly to the smaller screen.  We also learned early on that we have to force RenWeb into a dial-up mode so that it would drop frames and many of the graphical elements.  With the “pretty” stuff out of the way the students were able to get to the test with no problem.  As with the internet research a majority of the students preferred to take a multiple choice test on the iPod over the classroom PCs.  With a test that had just one essay short essay question the students also preferred the iPod.  On a test that required several short answer and essay questions the student would have preferred to take the test on the PCs.

In summary, the iPod Touch is a great tool for multiple choice tests.  Tests that require a lot of typing should be done on PCs.  The way I would suggest they are used is that the iPod Touch is used as a tool for quizzing and test preparation.  PCs or laptops should be used for the actual tests.

The next post will cover the app iResponse.