There are several free or low-cost third-party assessment tools available over the Internet:
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The Discovery School website “offers teachers of all subjects and array of powerful tools” for assessment (school.discovery.com/teachingtools/teachingto ols.html). Use Puzzlemaker to generate crossword puzzles, word searches, and math squares. Visit the Quiz Center to create and give quizzes. Try the Worksheet Generator to create custom worksheets for your course materials.
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Higher education and K–12 instructors use Quia (‘key- ah) “to create customized educational software online, built around their own course materials and made available to students over the Web” (
http://www.quia.com/company/quia_web.html
). Quia is a subscription-based service.
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Half Baked Software, Inc., created Hot Potatoes, a set of applications that allow instructors “to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web” (
http://hotpot.uvic.ca/
). You can also include MP3 audio files and math symbols as part of these assessment activities. Hot Potatoes requires a licensing fee, unless you work for a publicly funded, non-profit educational institution.
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QuizStar is a free web-based tool for K–12 instructors to create and assign quizzes, manage student results, and allow students “to review the results for further learning” (
http://quizstar.4teachers.org/
).
Some publishers offer assessment tools that accompany textbook activities. For example, Glencoe Online Mathematics provides an Online Study Tools site (www.glencoe.com/sec/math/studytools/index.ph p4).