Bringing formative assessment to the classroom with Mouse Mischief
May 27, 2010
Here at Instructify, there are a few terms that make us sit up and pay attention. One of them is formative assessment. Just saying those two words can send Dr. Hobgood into an hour-long session on the importance and practical applications of formative assessment with an ear-to-ear smile the whole time. Recently, the advent of wireless clickers has provided a new tool for teachers to plan formative assessment strategies in the classroom. But like all new technologies, this equipment is somewhat expensive, and not practical to put in every classroom (especially with students’ propensity to walk out of classrooms with items).
Enter Microsoft’s rather oddly named application Mouse Mischief. Mouse Mischief is a program that takes an ordinary wired or wireless mouse and a PowerPoint presentation and turns it into an interactive teaching environment where teachers can engage in…wait for it…formative assessment of their students’ understanding and comprehension of the lesson plan or subject they are studying, allowing for the all important on-the-fly reevaluation of learning goals. If you can make a PowerPoint presentation, you can certainly integrate Mouse Mischief in short order — the interface is pretty intuitive.
A few caveats for this kind of activity: You need to have PowerPoint installed (Microsoft doesn’t say whether or not open-source equivalents of PowerPoint will work, so you should probably assume they won’t). You also need to have either a computer with enough USB slots for each student to have a mouse (which usually means you will need a USB hub, as most PCs only have a handful of open USB ports). And of course you need enough mice for children to use. These can be of any variety, and your school probably has a few extras lying around in the supply closet anyway. More information about the nuts and bolts of setting this up can be found on their Help and How-to page as well as demos and examples of using Mouse Mischief.
