Questions & Quizzes
Using online tools for learning and teaching has been something that many of us have explored, or ignored, for years. You can waste many precious hours (and lose the will to live) testing and evaluating tools until you are so confused you don’t know which button to press next.
Debbie Baff and I (Mandy Jack) love them, and today we shared a selection of our favourites, which we have evaluated and tested in a range of ways so that you can just try them for size.
We began with Todaysmeet, which is a website that allows to you create an online space to ask, receive and answer questions. You just create a ‘room’, share the web address and begin asking and answering questions. It’s a great way to get a session started, or you can use it to pose questions as you teach
so that you can gain an insight to the level of understanding. You can also get students to ask questions and maybe even answer them too.
Padlet was the next tool we looked at. Padlet allows you to summarise a large amount of information and present it in visually pleasing ways. You can put in text, photos, graphs and other learning tools and share the image with students. You can use it to organise your lesson, including learning objectives, present information for exams or to stimulate a discussion. Padlet can also be used as an interactive questions board. Students can access a questions board 24/7 and anonymously post questions. The teacher can then read off and answer (and delete anything inappropriate) the questions each day. It can also be effectively used as a Forum, where you might post a particular topic or issue, and students can post their opinions on the subject. Some great ideas for other uses here:http://www.coolcatteacher.com/how-to-use-padlet-fantastic-tool-teaching/
Zeetings was next. This tool allows you to add a fabulous range of interactive media into your sessions whether you use Powerpoint or not in your lectures and seminars. As a teacher, you create the web content and everyone participates from their own device, in person or remote, in real-time or in their own time. There is no need to download or install anything, just share the web address.
http://about.zeetings.com/ I use this sometimes as I am building my lecture content, so I plan the questions and the media explanations that I think I will need. Other times I just add questions and polls as I go, if I feel the need to ascertain just how well something has been understood.
The final thing we shared was Polleverywhere, which is another online Live Audience Participation tool. Poll Everywhere is a simple application that works well for live audiences using mobile devices like phones or tablets, but you can us a PC if you accessing the poll remotely. People participate by visiting the web page you create, or by sending text messages or using Twitter. The poll will update in real time and the results can be shared in a range of interesting ways.
Like all the others we looked at today, Polleverywhere has quite a good free application that you can upgrade if you want more flexibility. We have managed with the free versions of all the applications that we have mentioned today.
