Over the years I have used tests and quizzes as a valuable teaching tool with my fourth, fifth, and sixth grade Sunday School Classes.
I have found that this tool helps me to find out what points I failed to convey to the student or where the student has misunderstood part of the lesson.
Then, too, the review of the questions helps to correct the understanding of the lesson and reinforce the teaching process.
A small reward for excellence in each quiz helps to keep the interest on the part of the student. My students say the quizzes are the best part of the Sunday School lesson!
More recently, I have been intrigued by the captivating influence of the computer and computer games on the students of this age group and wondered how I could use this tool to get the attention of the students. It seemed only a natural first step to try out putting a mini-quiz on a computer.
I then proceeded to develope a mini-quiz program and tried it out on the class. It consists of a set of five questions which can be either true/false or fill-in-the-blank. The student types in their name and proceeds to answer the questions.
The quiz provides an immediate response to the student by telling him if his answer was correct or not. If the answer to the question was false or if the question is a fill-in-the-blank type, the program provides the correct answer to assist the learning process.
The program keeps track of the student's correct answers and displays the quiz results at the completion of the test. It also saves the test results for each student for the teacher to examine after the students have taken the quiz.
The quizzes are prepared by myself after the lesson is presented and the quiz is available to the student prior to the next Sunday's lesson or after the lesson is finished. Thus, it does not impact the normal teaching process.
The response of most of the students has been positive. They are eager to come to Sunday School and try out the next computer quiz. Those who are not early enough to try it out are anxious to get at it after the lesson. Sometimes Is I have to pull the plug so they won't miss the worship service. This response have been happening over the eight week trial period for the quiz.
I felt the computer I selected for this experiment must be
a. inexpensive
b. rugged
c. transportable
d. programmable in BASIC
e. integrated with a TV and cassette recorder.
These features would enable a teacher or Sunday School to put together computer system together with existing household items and a minimum of cash.
My selection was the TIMEX Sinclair 1000 computer. It is relatively low priced ($50 at this writing) and meets the other requirements. However, most any other available personal computer can also be used. All the other apparatus except the small screen TV easily fit in a briefcase.
