Formative Assessment and Gameful Learning in a High School Classroom

As secondary schools continue to adopt bring your own device (BYOD) or one to one technology policies, portable computing devices have become ubiquitous in schools. Such devices open new avenues for teachers to assess student’ learning and engage students with challenging content. I will discuss two applications currently being used in the Physics classroom at Chelsea High School. The first is “Go Formative” which is used to assess student’ progress during class. The second is the “Mind on Physics” app which serves students with questions to help promote understanding of Physics concepts. Students complete learning missions and earn medals representative of their mastery of the content. These questions help reinforce concepts discussed in class, challenge deeply rooted misconceptions and engage students in learning Physics. In this talk I will describe these two applications and present ideas for other applications of mobile technology.