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Online Exercise Creators: |
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Comments by: Stacy, Mary Jane, Maryanne,
Karen, Mark A., Hana, Carolyn, Katrhyn, Alla, Mark S, Amanda, Keiko
Discovery Channel / Edufind Test
Center / Game-O-Matic /
Headline Makers / Hot Potatoes /
The
Study Place / Quia / Quiz Faber / Script-O
/ Spell master / Web Worksheet Wizard
| Exercise Creator | Advantages | Disadvantages |
| Discovery Channel | Quite well-designed and
developed with four different functions: Lesson Planner, Puzzle Maker,
Quiz Center & Worksheet Generator. Using Puzzlemaker, teachers can make crossword puzzles, math squares, and word searches. Using Quiz Center, teachers can create and administer quizzes, knowing that they and their students will receive instant feedback. The Worksheet Generator allows teachers to create custom worksheets and to take advantage of over 300 ready-made worksheets. The Lesson Planner allows teachers to create, edit, view, print, and store the lesson plans. I'm particularly impressed by the various scoring methods possible with the Quiz Center. I also like the fact that with the worksheet generator there is a choice of using a word bank of not. There are so many alternatives. But what I liked best about it was the choice of options for scoring. Students could get scores on the fly, or have multi-try, or send quizzes to the teacher for scoring, or scored quizzes to the teacher. The eMail option to get quizzes and scores makes this a great choice. Also, in the quizzes, there are options for quiz format. This might not be so good for summative work, but for pre-test and formative work, it would be great - and a nice alternative to the normal class routine. It is very well developed, pleasant to use, it was nice to find a library of clipart images and some new forms of exercises, which aren't offered on other sites. One of the things I like about it is the possibility to create activities that can be done on or offline. It's quite practical for last-minute ideas right before a class. (1) It is well organized and easy to use. You can view sample puzzles or worksheets and follow instructions step by step. (2) Puzzlemaker is wonderful. If you don't have enough time to decide which words should be included in the puzzle or exercises, you can use Word Lists. History Topics are helpful. (3) Clip Art Gallery : You can add graphics to your worksheets or puzzles. (4) Worksheet Generator : When you are tired of making homework or exercise for either classroom use or online situations, you can make quizzes with this tool. Worksheets to go is also useful. (5) Quiz Center is good for online exercises or homework. |
(1) Good for from
beginners to intermediate students, but not for an advanced level of
students because word levels of puzzles are main. (2) In the puzzlemaker, there are ten puzzles, but it seems to me that some of them are not familiar and I do not know what they are. I couldn’t get my cloze exercises to be interactive---the student would have to print out the exercise to fill in the blank and then check with online answers.
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| EduFind Test Center |
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| Game-O-Matic! | You can create a variety of games using your own input, | but the same can be done so much more easily on Quia |
| Headlines-Makers | Use:
create various types of online activities Clear
installation document. Can
create a form in minutes! If
you don't want to download the Maker on to your computer, you can just
leave it on their server…just remember the worksheet link. Can
edit work after submitting it. |
Need
to know BASIC HTML. Teacher receives no feedback on student performance (not that I could tell) In
the cloze exercise there is no opportunity to add feedback or limit
number of tries. Last
update was
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| Hot Potatoes | The tuturial is great and very
helpful. Very easy to use. I was interested in the Hot Potatoes feature of gap-filling since Critchley suggests this as a good way of testing vocabulary and having a positive washback effect on vocabulary learning. I used Hot Potatoes for creating my exercise on vocabulary. It impressed me by its usage simplicity. The only thing the teacher needs to know is the contents of the exercise he/she wants, all the rest is done by the program – which saves a lot of time. Another excellent feature was a Mash Program, which incorporates all created exercises into one series of web-pages.
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There is no recent version of
Hot Potatoes for the Mac. In trying to use an academic reading as the input text, I discovered that it was hard to come up with all possible "other correct answers", but I will continue to try it out. I also discovered that when I saved two Hot Potatoes files to my computer and tried to open them, they don't have the same format exercise format' they have a sort of html format. I need to spend more time figuring out the correct way to save these files for future use. I tried so many times to attach music files to Hot Potatoes exercises and then upload it all to a free website at Geocities, but it never seemed to work quite right. So, if I ever plan on using music or movie clips, I'll try The Study Place! One reminder for all who want to try "Hot Potatoes": If you are using this for the first-timers (students who never have online instructions/activity before), it is very important to define and show the meaning of matching in this activity. I got a lot of questions from students about "how to match" at the time when I used my activity. It is very important to plan a lesson plan on the first week, allowing students to spend time getting familiar to the dragging system. Lots of typing in---can’t import a test (I don’t think) |
| The Study Place | It is very simple for
low-level students to use. I liked how when I was creating
exercises, it let me choose from Life Skill topics, something very big
in adult education. As with Quia, I like how The Study Place lets
you set up a class and a place for your study to come and find your
exercises. I really like The Study Place. The design is very simple, but user-friendly. The instructions for setting up lessons are really easy to follow. I tried uploading an mp3 file just to see what would happen, and it worked like a charm. I like that teachers can have students' assignments e-mailed to them. Students can also save their work in a portfolio. The site is also a good resource for sharing lessons since teachers have the option of contributing their lessons to the archive. The design is admittedly very simple, but that could be an advantage for a teacher who is still getting used to using computers in the classroom. It also seems like the site is geared toward adult education since some of the choices for setting up lessons and the resources seem to be related that student population. Something I like is that you can see how many times the students have tried each exercise and how they have improved their marks |
I've had problems with dead
links at The Study Place. Besides, it only offers true/false and m/c
type questions/quizzes and does not have the functionality to randomize
items. I have also realized its limited scope for creativity and its unstability regarding links. |
| Quia
example: |
Quia offers much quizzes
(ease of creation, use, recordkeeping, stats) I felt like the $49/year option would be worth it if I wanted to use it in classes. Like Discovery, it was easy to navigate and use, and there were a lot of good options. I signed up for a 30-day free trial and was able to create a web page where I can put my activities, quizzes, surveys, and upload files. I think this is a really great program that gives the teacher a lot of variety and flexibility. The layout of the web page and exercises is very simple and would be easy for low-level ESL students to use. There is a large variety of activities you can create and they give you a lot of choices as far as how many hints you want given to students, when you want the answers given to them, etc. You may want to check if your college or school has a subscription or wants to get one. Mine does and many of us in the ESL department use it for beginners to advanced. All levels of students like the activities and the page is easy for students to use. Many of my students bookmark it at home also. |
The only disadvantage I see to
this program is that it costs $49 a year. But for everything that
it offers, I don't think that's too bad Anyone can do the assignment if they are not in class with you. Teacher must anticipate all possible answers – or be prepared to review all quizzes etc
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| QuizFaber | Quiz Faber appears to have be
designed by an Italian EFL student who is a computer programmer. It also
appears that he frequently makes improvements to his program for making
online quizzes. the Quiz Faber software is free. |
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| Script-O! | Using Script-O, teachers can
create online quizzes, tests, and activities and then publish them on
the Web. Students have immediate access to their scores and to
explanations to their responses. The quizzes can be custom
tailored, for use in all subject areas, as placement tests, in distance
learning courses, for needs assessment, and as course evaluation. The
quizzes may contain multiple choice, matching, cloze, and gap-fill
exercises. Teachers can choose to have scores sent to their
students as well as to themselves. Other options include the
following: inputting an explanation for correct and incorrect answers;
making the quizzes password protected; providing instant access to test
scores; and restricting access to the quiz once it has been
administered. Finally, the site is very easy to use and follow,
very appealing, and includes the following: sample quizzes, a video
tutorial, an instructor's center, support, a "what's new"
section, and FAQ. I like the fact that we can search by level, subject and date. |
I put in a quiz but couldn't
figure out how students access it. I don't think what teachers put on is
immediately accessible which I sometimes need if I didn't prepare enough
time beforehand.(if the students click on
"Instructor login" in the right column and then to "Find
Quiz," I think they will get to the the exercises that the teacher
creates). The layout seemed very bland and many of the pages I got to had nothing |
| Spell Master | This is a fun site for creating vocabulary word games. I tried each of the four samples (JigWord, MatchWord, SpeedWord & PhraseDaze) and thought they were fun and easy to use. MatchWord even allows two students to play together, which would be a fun communicative activity. Creating games with your own words is also very easy. You can save the games you create for later use by right-clicking on a "save" button and saving it to your hard drive, or you can copy the link to the web page where the game is created. The game is saved there for 24 hours. |
Although I liked the site (I can even use it for myself to practice French/Spanish vocab J), I think exercise creators like Hot Potatoes have more interesting and interactive features. With Hot Potatoes, you can create exercises that give at least a little bit of feedback to students. |
| Web
Worksheet Wizard example: |
Use:
to create a lesson, worksheet or class page on the World
Wide Web Passworded Able
to be edited The
company's credibility is maintained because they are able to control the
content of worksheets (i.e. no vulgar words, profanity etc.) No
need to know HTML. Linked
to a students' site for web design. Can
do a search for existing worksheets. |
Students don't receive
feedback Some of their links were dead Much less graphically appealing and limited in functions Worksheets
deleted after 6 months (although the author is warned). Only
one image per page.(not clear on this, since the sites I visited had
more than one image) |
Dafne
Gonzalez
May, 2004
