I’d like to share a promising site I’ve discovered that teachers using technology will not want to miss.
ProProfs bills itself as offering “knowledge sharing tools and online education,” including a quiz maker, brain games, flash cards, polls, and free exercises for studying for the SAT or IT certification.
At its core, and the site’s most powerful feature, is the quiz maker. This tool allows you to build custom quizzes with multiple choice, essay, fill in the blank, and multiple answer questions, add pictures or videos to your questions, and embed the final product on a website, blog, or wiki.
But that’s not all. The free plan allows unlimited quizzes and quiz takers. Want more? Upgrade to a premium account and get the following:
- Track who took your quiz
- Store, view, and download quiz results
- Use quiz analytics to identify knowledge gaps
- Copy and use existing quizzes to save time
For educational users, the cost of a premium account is $2.97/month, or $35.64/year. This compares favorably with the $49 annual subscription charged by rival Quia Web. While lacking some of Quia’s bells and whistles, ProProfs’ quiz maker has a simple interface that newbies will appreciate. And the capability to embed quizzes on more than one platform is unique.
If you want to give your students something fun and challenging, consider one of ProProfs’ brain games. These can also be embedded on a class website or blog for 24/7 availability. My favorite is HillBilly Hangman. It isn’t as intuitive as the other games, but the sound effects are outrageous, especially when you choose a letter that doesn’t belong in the hidden phrase. Try it once and you’ll be hooked!
HILLBILLY HANGMAN
For a limited time, Wikispaces is offering free “Plus” (premium) wikis for K-12 educational use, and they are available worldwide to teachers and students alike.
What’s so special about a Plus account? No advertisements, for one. And you get custom themes, double storage space, and extra privacy and security features that normally cost $5/month, or $50/year. Compare features here.
If you already have a Wikispaces wiki, you can upgrade for free by clicking on “Manage Wiki” and then “Subscription”. Then, under “Request a complimentary upgrade to Plus for K-12 education,” click “Request yours now”. It may take a few days to process your request, but be patient! Some of the custom themes are really slick.
How can I use wikis with my students? A good starting point is Wikispaces’ own EduWikis site, where you will find links to:
- A list of articles and resources that describe how to use wikis in education
- A comprehensive list of existing educational wikis to learn from
- General discussions of wikis in education
Another excellent resource is the Wiki Walk-Through site published by TeachersFirst. English teachers: Drill down to the “Wiki ideas for language arts” section for some collaborative project ideas that lend themselves well to the wiki environment.
Wikispaces also offers some very helpful “how to” video tours, including this introduction for first-time users.
Wouldn’t it be nice if every time you posted something to your blog, a Tweet would go out informing the Twitter community about it? Well, the folks at Brave New Code have made that possible with a WordPress plugin called WordTwit.
Essentially, WordTwit integrates your WordPress website with your Twitter account. Whenever you publish new content from WordPress, Twitter will automatically be updated with a brief description of your new content along with a link back to it, bringing visitors to your website.
Here’s how it works. When you create a new post from WordPress, WordTwit will Tweet a brief description along with the post’s permalink, allowing your followers on Twitter to easily read your new content. Another neat feature is that WordTwit can be configured to only Tweet or not Tweet posts with certain tags or categories.
The only note of caution is that you must have a self-hosted WordPress account to install WordTwit. At present, the free accounts offered by WordPress.com and Edublogs.org do not support this plugin.
If you’re like me, you tote a laptop when you hit the road. Most hotels and motels in the U.S. now offer some form of Internet connectivity, making it easy to check your email, browse the Web, or update your blog or website.
Many such establishments (and this extends to airports and coffee shops) have chosen a Wi-Fi scheme. Unfortunately, most of these hot spots are unsecured, meaning that any information you send or receive can be intercepted and read by others logged in to the same network. What to do?
Protect your privacy by installing a virtual private network (VPN) application on your laptop. A VPN is an impenetrable tunnel that prevents others from viewing your web browsing activities, instant messages, downloads, credit card information or anything else you send over the network.
Although there are several VPN clients to choose from, I can recommend two that I have used successfully. The first is a free program called Hotspot Shield. According to its developers, Hotspot Shield allows you to:
- Secure your web session, data, online shopping, and personal information online with HTTPS encryption
- Protect yourself from identity theft online
- Hide your IP address for your privacy online
- Access all content privately without censorship; bypass firewalls
- Protect yourself from snoopers at Wi-Fi hotspots, hotels, airports, corporate offices
This video shows how easy it is to download and set up Hotspot Shield on your computer.
The other VPN is a paid offering from Comodo called TrustConnect. Its features, according to the company:
- Securely encrypts all data transmitted over both wired and wireless Internet connections
- Creates a Virtual Private Network to hide all personal web-surfing information
- Utilizes industry-standard 128-bit encryption
- Lightweight—protects without interfering with normal computer operation
Which to choose? If you’re on a budget, go with Hotspot Shield. You’ll be served some ads, but that’s how they keep their service free. If you are experiencing lengthy delays connecting with one of their servers, you might want to consider TrustConnect. For a few dollars a month, you get a faster connection and no noticeable delay in surfing speed.
Can websites contain viruses? Unfortunately, yes, and they can spread to your computer if you’re not careful.
Depending on the strength of your antivirus software, you may be alerted and your access blocked when visiting an infected site. But sometimes the software delivers a false positive. So, is the site I want to visit safe or not?
You can get a qualified second opinion using a free tool called URLVoid. From their homepage, enter the address of the site you want to check, then click the Scan Now button. URLVoid will check the suspicious website with 19 web scanner services, including McAfee SiteAdvisor, Norton SafeWeb, and Web Security Guard. It will then present you with the compiled results. Impressive!
If you are teaching online or otherwise assigning online content as part of your course, URLVoid seems like a good bet for checking sites in advance. You might also consider setting up a wiki or similar resource where you and fellow teachers can pool respective lists of suspicious sites revealed by this scanning tool.
Got Moodle? Subscribe to the Extensive Reading approach to second language acquisition? If so, check out the Moodle Reader Module, a plugin that provides quizzes on more than 600 graded readers and books for EFL/ESL students.
According to developer Tom Robb of Kyoto Sangyo University, “The Reader module allows quizzes to be randomly generated from a larger set of items for each book. The module allows teachers to easily install the module on their own Moodle system, download the quiz material for those textbooks in their graded reader library, and configure its operation to their own preferences.”
Be aware that you must supply the actual reading materials to your students; Reader Module is strictly a means for administering quizzes based on the reading. Also, as a security measure, Tom requires that you contact him via email for authorization to download the quizzes. Visit moodlereader.org for all the details, including the option to establish your own free course area on his Moodle site.
Although Diigo has been around since 2006, I’m just now discovering this fantastic tool, thanks to an e-learning course offered by the University of Wisconsin at Stout.
According to Wikipedia, Diigo is “a social bookmarking website which allows signed-up users to bookmark and tag web-pages. Additionally, it allows users to highlight any part of a webpage and attach sticky notes to specific highlights or to a whole page.”
Well, it’s that and lots more. Once you’ve installed the Diigo toolbar, you can highlight text, pictures, or an entire web page, and then share it within a group in Diigo, or to individuals via e-mail. There are also collaborative features, including one that allows you to create a group knowledge depository. Check out the collaborative features here.
For a more general introduction to Diigo and its capabilities, see the video below. Tip: Switch to full-screen view for a clearer look at how to navigate the interface.
I have some great news for teachers who use WordPress as their blogging platform of choice.
WordPress 3.0, “Thelonious,” the thirteenth major release of WordPress and the result of half a year of work by 218 contributors, is now available for download (or upgrade within your dashboard). Major new features in this release include an elegant new default theme called Twenty Ten.
As a die-hard WordPress user, I am impressed by the new lighter interface, contextual help on every screen, over 1,200 bug fixes and feature enhancements, and a bulk updates feature that allows you to upgrade 15 plugins at once with a single click. Wow!
Need more convincing to upgrade? Check out the video:
The June 2010 issue of Humanizing Language Teaching (HLT) is a special issue that celebrates Mario Rinvolucri`s 70th birthday. Who is this person? Well, among other things, Mario is the founding father of HLT, and over the years has become a trademark in English language teaching. I would like to join the 58 contributors in the featured article and wish Mario a very happy birthday!
I first became aware of Mario’s work when I was teaching high school EFL in Japan. I was tasked with setting up the school’s CALL curriculum, and one of the software packages we eventually purchased was from Clarity Language Consultants. The package included a program developed by Mario called MindGame, which my students enjoyed playing as they practiced speaking English.
Later, I discovered HLT through an ESL listserv. It’s a wonderful read, and true to title, it emphasizes the importance of the human element in language teaching — something we all need to consider as colleges and universities move increasingly toward e-learning solutions.
Two important conferences this month focusing on education and technology should be of interest to language teachers who incorporate technology in their teaching. Both events are in the U.S.
The first is the 2010 Online Teaching Conference, June 16-18, at San Diego City College in San Diego, California. (Thanks to Michelle Pacansky-Brock for the heads-up.) It is a collaborative effort between the California Educational Technology Consortium (CETC), and Computer Using Educators (CUE). Here is a description from the event planning committee:
“This two-day conference strives to successfully integrate online education throughout the K-20 spectrum (kindergarten through college). No matter what grade level , if you are an instructor, staff, or an administrator engaged in online education and/or the delivery of online services (student, faculty, library, resources, and technical), or if you are thinking about becoming involved, come join us to exchange ideas and experiences.”
One really nice feature of this event is that you don’t have to be present to attend. Go to the registration page and sign up for Virtual Attendance. It’s free, so why not? See you online.
The second, ISTE 2010, will be held in Denver, Colorado, from June 27-30. This year’s event is sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education in cooperation with Technology in Education Colorado.
Formerly known as NECC, ISTE is an enormous undertaking that attracts mainly K-12 teachers. The quantity and variety of presentations and workshops is truly staggering.
Unfortunately, ISTE does not offer virtual attendance. To participate in this event you’ll have to actually visit Denver (what a great venue, especially at this time of year).