Online Multiple Choice Assessment Tools: Socrative, Kahoot and Plickers- a brief comparison

I was looking for a comparison of a bunch of online assessment tools: Socrative, Kahoot and Plickers but found nothing so here is my take on these tools.  What they all offer is the ability to poll the class with a set of multiple choice questions. Socrative and Kahoot require the students to have a device connected to the Internet into which they can enter their responses to each question.

Plickers

Initially Plickers seems quite magical because the students don’t need any devices in order to submit their choices, which could be good if you work in a school with dodgy or no Internet. Instead with Plickers the students are given a card, with a unique pattern, which they can hold up in one of 4 ways,corresponding to the students’ chosen answer corresponding only the teacher needs a device.  Each card has a number from 1 to 40. The teacher needs to note who has which card. The teacher also needs the Plicker app on their phone, using the camera they can scan the room to poll the student choices.

I remember when Kahoot came out some teachers started saying how much they preferred it. I have to say my vote still goes to Socrative. Why? Personally I tend to prepare any tests in a spreadsheet and Socrative is the only tool that will allow this. Until Kahoot and Plickers get their act together I will be sticking to Socrative.

	Socrative	Kahoot	Spiral.ac	Plickers
Students need an Internet connected device	Yes			Not needed
Teacher can upload multiple choice from CSV files	Yes	No, questions and answers must be entered one at a time.