Full-class review games using students’ smartphones (TiLT Forum 2018)

Hello, TiLT Forum!

My presentation is about two free websites that enable teachers to run full-class review games: Quizlet and Kahoot.

Quizlet.com is a free website that hosts millions of sets of student- and teacher-created flash cards.

Quizlet supports creating flash cards in virtually any language, including those with non-Latin alphabets (e.g., Chinese) or right-to-left writing direction (e.g., Arabic and Hebrew). In addition, Quizlet has text-to-speech functionality in 17 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, Dutch, Greek, Swedish, Finnish, and Romanian.

In addition to studying your material as flash cards, you can play various games and do other types of learning exercises.

Here is a study set that I created for one of my classes recently:

https://quizlet.com/216332939/real-reading-1-chapters-1-12-flash-cards/

Quizlet Live is a new game mode offered by Quizlet.com. It’s a team game designed to be played in the classroom. Students work in groups of 3 or 4 and are incentivized to answer carefully and to discuss and collaborate with each other. Slow and steady wins the race.

Try out a demo of the Quizlet Live game here to see how it works: https://quizlet.com/livedemo

Setting up a Quizlet Live activity:

  1. Log into Quizlet.com. (This is a mandatory step!)
  2. Go to your Account Settings page and make sure you are in the system as a Teacher, not as a Student (you only need to do this one time):
  3. Open any Quizlet card set (or create your own).
  4. Click on the “LIVE” button on the card set you wish to play Quizlet Live with.
  5. Click the “Create Game” button.
  6. Instruct students to take out their phones (or other internet-connected devices) and go to quizlet.live (note that the address is .live and is NOT the same as quizlet.com).
  7. Instruct students to enter the six-digit join code and enter their names.
  8. After all students have joined the game, click the buttons on the screen to run the game.

Kahoot! is a review game somewhat similar to Quizlet Live, except that Kahoot! is a highly competitive game that incentivizes students to answer as quickly as possible.

Here is an example game I created: https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/68b27a0f-776b-42ba-b896-e8672646a0d2

Setting up a Kahoot! activity:

  1. Create an account at kahoot.com
  2. Under “Create new Kahoot!”, choose “Quiz”
  3. Complete the form (title, description, etc.) and click the “Ok, go” button
  4. Click the “Add question” button to create your first question.
  5. Type your question and set the time limit / points options.
  6. Type up to four answer choices in the boxes near the bottom of the screen.
  7. Click on the checkmark next to an answer to mark it as correct. (You may mark more than one answer correct.)
  8. Click “Next” at the top right of the screen to go back to your quiz.
  9. Either…
    1. Click the “Add question” button to add another question
    2. Click the green “Save” button at the top right of the screen to save your quiz
  10. After you click “Save”, you are given options to edit, preview, play, or share your new Kahoot quiz.

Running a Kahoot! activity:

  1. Click on the “My Kahoots” button near the top-left of the page. (If you don’t see the “My Kahoots” button, try clicking the purple button with three lines near the top-right of the screen.
  2. Click the “Play” button next to the Kahoot! quiz you want to run in class.
  3. Choose either “Classic” or “Team mode”, and set any other game options you wish to use. (One popular game option is “Randomize order of answers”, for example.)
  4. Make sure students can see your computer screen via the classroom projector/monitor.
  5. Instruct your students to go to kahoot.it (not .com) on their phones, mobile devices, or laptops. Instruct them to type in the game-pin which has appeared on the classroom screen.
  6. Click “Start” when everyone is ready.
  7. Enjoy! After the activity, you can download all students’ answers from the “My results” section of the website (click on your username at the top right of the webpage).
April 12, 2018Permalink Leave a comment

ELI Computer Lab Class: Week 10 – Career Resources

Photo: OregonDOT, CC BY 2.0 (flipped horizontally)

Some of you will go on to have careers (temporary or permanent) in an English-speaking country. You may find some of these resources helpful when looking for and applying for positions!

  • Résumé / CV: Everyone needs a short (1-2 page) résumé. If your focus is academic, you should have a full CV (curriculum vitae) as well. There are many websites which can help you create an attractive résumé, and many have a “free” option. However, you usually need to pay if you want a good-quality résumé. Here are some recent reviews of ten résumé building websites.
  • Cover letters: Most job listings require you to write a cover letter. The main purpose of a cover letter is to demonstrate that you are an excellent fit for the job you are applying for. Beyond that, expectations and traditions for cover letters are different in every field, so it is good to ask people in your field for advice. Purdue OWL has an excellent resource for writing your cover letter.
  • Business cards: Business cards are small cards that have your contact information on them. They are a very useful thing to bring to business meetings, conferences, and job fairs. There are many websites that can help you design and print business cards. Here is a recent listing of six business card websites.
  • LinkedIn profile: LinkedIn is a social network focused on jobs and careers. It is a good idea to create a LinkedIn profile and to include the link on your résumé. LinkedIn is a good way to network and to make friends in your field.
  • Job listing websites: There are many ways to find good jobs. One of the best and most effective ways is through networking (“word-of-mouth”), when friends tell each other about open jobs. However, there are also websites that help you search for job listings in your field. Two popular choices are Indeed and SimplyHired.
  • Company reputations: When you’re considering a company to work for, it’s good to know what current and former employees think of that company. GlassDoor is a popular website that lets people review their companies and express whether they are good or bad places to work.
  • Salary ranges: Salary negotiation is often one of the most difficult and confusing parts of getting a job. GlassDoor is one place to find out what people in your field are usually paid. Many other websites also exist for this purpose, including PayScale.
April 4, 2018Permalink Leave a comment

ELI Computer Lab Class: Week 9 – Organization and Motivation

Hello! The end of the semester is getting very close. And you know what that means: we have a lot of major projects, papers, and exams to deal with! This week, I would like to share a couple of tools that might help you organize your work and motivate yourself to be more productive: Trello and Habitica.

Trello

Trello (https://trello.com/) is a website that helps you create and organize to-do lists. It is especially designed for teams working together on a project, but people use it for personal to-do lists as well.

There are many ways to organize and prioritize your tasks on Trello. Here are two simple examples:

Using Trello to keep track of what you're doing now, what you need to do later, and what you have already finished
Using Trello to keep track of what you’re doing now, what you need to do later, and what you have already finished
Using Trello to plan when you will do each task.
Using Trello to plan when you will do each task.

 

Habitica

Habitica (https://habitica.com/) is a website that helps you turn your goals into games. As you study and complete assignments in real life, you earn rewards in the game. This is designed to help you keep your motivation high.

I hope one or both of these resources helps you to achieve your goals for the end of the semester. Good luck!

March 21, 2018Permalink Leave a comment

ELI Computer Lab Class: Week 8 – Vocabulary Profilers

Hello! This week, my suggested resource is a tool called a vocabulary profiler.

In your ELI classes, your textbooks and your teachers help you to preview vocabulary before you read a new text. But outside of the classroom, how can you preview vocabulary in the real world!?

A vocabulary profiler can analyze a text and show you which words you probably need to focus on and preview. The profiler finds all of the interesting or unusual vocabulary the text has. You can use this information to help you prepare to read (or listen to) a new text!

Click the link below to begin:

http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/comp/

Here is a profile for a TED talk titled “How we can make the world a better place by 2030”:

A of How we can make the world a better place by 2030
A vocabulary profile of How we can make the world a better place by 2030

On the left is the original text which I copied and pasted into the website. On the right is a colored text showing how common each word is. The most common and simple words are blue and green, while the least common words are colors like orange and people.

Here’s the important part:

In the middle is a list of uncommon English words that are used often in this text. For example, this text uses the word “capita” four times, “economy” 14 times, “forecast” four times, and “poverty” six times. If you don’t understand what those words mean, you will probably have difficulty understanding the speech! So you should review that list carefully and preview the vocabulary before reading or listening to the speech.

Give it a try: paste text from a newspaper article, magazine article, or TED.com into the vocabulary profiler and see what you discover!

March 14, 2018Permalink Leave a comment