Interactive exercises and quizzes

 

(Week 4: Feb 3 - Feb 9, 2014)

 

 

Moderators:

Larisa Olesova (Russia), Helen Davies (France) and Svetlana Obenausova (Czech Republic) (only from Thursday onwards)

 

 

 

Objectives: 

 

By the end of this week you will have: explored different tools to create online interactive exercises, quizzes, and surveys created activities using some of these tools and shared them with the community using the Participants Productions Page and in your blog/wiki   comments on exercises or quizzes of other participants in the Participants Productions Page attended a live session/listened to the recordings commented on the Live Session using the Edmodo Group commented on the readings using the Edmodo Group

 

Activities

 

Task 1

• Read about the possibilities of the tools in the Suggested reading below
• Choose one or two interactive exercise makers (from the table below) and explore them 
• Choose other ones if you don't like your first choice
• Make a short test exercise when you find a tool you like

 

Task 2

• Create an exercise for one-two of these skills: reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary or grammar
• You can also use the exercise makers for CLIL - e.g. teaching history or geography through English 
• post the link to your exercise in your slot of the Participants Productions Page 

 

Task 3

• Explore the software for creating online surveys and quizzes (from the table below)
• Create an online quiz or survey for your students or for participants of this ICT4ELT session
• Post the link to your survey or quiz in your slot of the Participants Productions Page

 

Task 4 

• Go to the Participants Productions Page and have a look at exercises or quizzes of other participants
• Place your comments in the slot provided to two or three of them, try choosing those that have not received feedback yet.

 

Task 5 

• Embed the exercise (if you used Learning Apps) in your wiki or blog, or save your exercise as a file in your wiki (Hot Potatoes, Quandary, etc.)
• Place the link to your survey in your wiki or blog or embed your survey there.
  

   

Task 6

•  Join us for Arjana Blazic presentation about "Tools for online testing" at the Webheads Elluminate vRoom on 7th Feb. The session will be at 19:00 GMT
• Check local times in Qlock or The World Clock
• Information on the "Live Sessions" is found here. 

Task 7

• Post your comments about the live session to the Edmodo Group here.

 

Task 8

• Read this week readings (at the bottom of this page) and post comment on the readings to the Edmodo Group

 

Here are some useful tutorials to get you started

 

• Learning Apps

 

• Hot Potatoes - this is standard tutorial from the producers of HP, underneath you will find our tutorials with pictures.
• Configuration of exercises
• More about crosswords
• Reading comprehension exercises
• Inserting pictures
• Uploading your exercises to the Web

 

• Survey Monkey: Creating an account and a first survey
• Web Sequitur and Web Rhubarb tutorial
• Quandary tutorial and examples of mazes
• A tutorial with screenshots and another example
• Eclipse Crossword
• PhotoPeach used for quizzes 

 

 

Tools to explore

 

 

Interactive exercise creators
No registration needed	Registration needed
Hot Potatoes  [download] There are detailed tutorials above with pictures and explanations	Learning Apps highly recommended, easy to use and exercises look really good
Web Sequitur & Web Rhubarb [download] (demo version is free)	Edmodo - you can create quizzes for your classes and see students' results
Quandary  [download] There is a detailed tutorial above	More optional tools for those who want to experiment more:
Eclipse Crossword [download] - great for printed worksheets, yet you can also create html exercises.	Educaplay
	Quizstar you can create online quizzes for your students,  automatically grade quizzes and view the quiz results online
	Quizlet - you can use a large database of activities or create your own
	PhotoPeach quizzes
Online worksheets
No registration needed	Registration needed
Tools for Educators	Worksheet Wizard
Online Surveys and Poll creators
No registration needed	Registration needed
	SurveyMonkey the best tool for your surveys
	Edmodo - you can create polls for your classes
	Micropoll
	Survey tools - a selection of 9 tools
	Surveys and polls - a selection of 10 tools

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-check I have.... explored at least one tool (interactive exercise, worksheet or survey) created at least one activity with one of these tools and posted the activity link to the Participants' Productions Page and in my blog/wiki comments on exercises or quizzes of other participants in the Participants Productions Page attended the live session or listened to the recording  commented on the Live Session using the Edmodo Group      commented on the readings using the Edmodo Group

 

 

 

Suggested readings

 

• Assessment for learning: Improving feedback in interactive exercises. Mar. 2011. (Based on HotPot exos.)

 

• Babicka, B. and Nevaril, J. (2008). Hot Potatoes - How Not to Get Burnt.  (Interesting hints on the usage of Hot Potatoes. After opening the file, click on the text to enlarge it.)

 

• Computer-based language learning with interactive web exercises (2011). (Mainly based on Hot Potatoes; presentations at an Italian Conf.: ICT for Language Learning, Oct. 2011)

 

A short note: HotPotatoes terms of use have changed:

"Hot Potatoes is now freeware. The complete version of the programs is now available for free, from the Downloads section . The free version of Hot Potatoes for Windows is version 6.3, and the Java version is 6.1."
"The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. It is not open-source."

 

• Godwin-Jones, Robert (2007). Creating interactive Web exercises for language learning.

 

• Torres, Isabel Perez (2003). Creating Materials Online with Free Teacher Tools. TESOL Spain, Newsletter 2003.

(This article focuses on this utility of the Internet. Some sites are presented where teachers can easily design activities and exercises online, such as quizzes, tests, puzzles or surveys, which require no advanced computer skills. Included are only those tools that are free for educational use for obvious reasons.)

 

A short note:

2 of the sites mentioned in the article no longer exist; one is Headline Makers:  lang.swarthmore.edu/makers/index;

when you click on the link you get the message: The server at lang.swarthmore.edu is taking too long to respond.

You can find the old site here and a new one here

 

The other is Trackstar; the link takes us to a site about Online Casino and Gambling; the present site is:

http://trackstar.4teachers.org/trackstar/index.jsp

 

• What are authoring tools for MFL? (2005) (An interesting article about Authoring tools. However, some of the software referred to is not free.)

 

Looking for more inspiration?

• http://www.edhelper.com/vocabulary.htm
• http://elllo.org/ - Very good for listening practice.
• http://www.digibridge.net/teresadeca/school/activities.htm - Teresa's Web-based Activities