A New Bag Of Tricks

What a busy first week it has proven to be, but all the same its been highly enjoyable especially when trialing some new tools in my classes. So here they are....

www.classtools.net

Very simple little site that allows you to create free educational games, activities and diagrams in a flash. Although it is hardly the most polished of perfect application, it does produce some really engaging content. It also lets you embed your creations into web pages or blogs for easy sharing and completion. Well worth a look.


www.iquizmaker.com


What a fantastic little piece of software this is. A desktop application that lets you make quizzes that can be completed via an Ipod. Ive had a quick go using this in a class this week with the students creating 10 questions as a test exercise. We then uploaded it to a students Ipod and passed it around for all to complete, with the kids really enjoying the idea of mobile anytime learning. So where to from here? I plan to use the program to create a few more quizzes and eventually ask the IT technician at school to install the program on the network so students and other teachers can use it to make quizzes within classes, hopefully then we can begin to harness the endless possibilities of mobile learning. In the mean time you can check out quizzes that have been created and shared by others at http://www.iquizr.com/. Hopefully my students can begin to share some of their own quizzes at the site.



www.ask500people.com

This I must say this is quickly becoming my favourite new tool (Thanks Julie). What it does is it lets you ask a question that can then be answered by people from all around the world. The entire process is super simple and questions can be embedded into websites, blogs etc for easy sharing. The best and most exciting aspect of this process is that when people answer your questions, their place of location is recorded and displayed on a google map. This feature allows great analysis and discussion about your questions as students can look for patterns between countries and see exactly how different people around the world think. So far I have used this to ask a question about sports coaching that the students designed during an activity in class. So have a go for yourself in answering our question below. As you can see the possibilties are endless. Check it out.

http://www.ask500people.com/questions/what-is-the-most-important-characteristic-of-a-good-coach