Free multi-choice patience activity template

When I worked as a teacher, as well as using technology during the teaching and learning process, I also often used it to create activities that didn’t use technology during the actual session. One such activity that I created is something I have called ‘multi-choice patience’. This is a series of ‘cards’ that are printed out and given to the students. Each card is numbered and contains a multiple choice question, with 4 possible answers (1 correct and 3 wrong). Answering each question directs the learner to the next card. To complete the activity the learners have to create ‘loops’ e.g. if using the 36 card set, the answer to the 6th card, should point back to the 1st card in that loop. If it doesn’t then one of the 6 questions has been incorrectly answered, but the learner doesn’t know which one, so they have to go back and try different options, until they correctly complete the loop. Once a loop is created, they pick another card from the pack and start again trying to create a ‘loop’.

Screenshot of the multi-choice patience activity

I generally used this activity in the last week of term, when the learners were not up for anything too heavy – I would have the learners in groups of about 4, and they would race against the other groups to see which group could complete the challenge the quickest.

To create the cards, I created a template in excel, where I entered the questions and answers, and the computer randomised the answer order, and worked out the ‘loops’, randomly changing the options each time, and it is this template that I have shared so others can create similar activities.

If a teacher wants to be even cleverer, you get the learners to design the questions in one week (and you could set up something like a Google form that the learners populate) – you then check the questions, copy them into the grid, print out and cut up.

I have recently changed the template, so rather than being limited to having to have exactly 36 questions, it will now work with either 36, 30, 25 or 20 questions.

The template itself can be directly downloaded from:

http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/MultipleChoicePatience2017.xls

A complete example can be downloaded from:

http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/MultipleChoicePatienceEXAMPLE.xls

And other similar activity templates can be viewed at:

http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources_class_management.php

A video showing how to use the multi-choice patience template is:

Making PowerPoint active not passive

This is a 9th entry in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning’.

A lot of people criticise PowerPoint because of the well known phenomenon of ‘Death by PowerPoint’, but it isn’t PowerPoint that is at fault but the people creating the presentations (or the people that haven’t trained and educated them) that are too blame. What is really sad is that many people know that they have produced an ineffective presentation but still use it anyway. The problem with bad PowerPoint presentations, is they tend become a very passive form of learning – the tutor puts the presentation on the screen, talks a bit (often just reading the words on the screen) in a hope that the students will absorb this information. It doesn’t help that we often have to darken the room by drawing blinds or curtains to make the presentation show up, but that just helps with the sleepy effect and the students will drift off….

So – if we don’t want to make the presentation passive then we need to make it active – in other words getting the students to do something. Over the years I have found many ideas for making presentations more active, and have shared templates with others through this blog and the PowerPoint resources section of my website

These examples include:-

Editable text boxes

The template that I use most within PowerPoint, is editable text boxes. These are really easy to use, they reduce the preparation time for the presentation significantly and make the learning more active, so a win all round situation!

I often use these at the end of a session to summarise what has been learned, or if doing a comparing activity (e.g. advantages v disadvantages of something). Basically – you add your editable text box into your presentation, the students suggest what goes in the, you type them in (or if you have a wireless keyboard, they can type them in) at the end of the session when you save your presentation all the contributions will be kept, so you can share the presentation with the students via the VLE or similar.

Countdown timers

If you set the students a task (which is a good way of making the learning active), then use a timer to keep time – this helps keep the tutor to schedule and helps focus the learners on the task and not to drift off into other distracting activities.

Score Ladders

Some people think that competition within education is a bad thing. My background is in the area of sport science, so I believe that competition (used appropriately) is a good thing. I would often split a class into teams for an activity and pitch them against each other as a way of focusing them and motivating them. Score ladders can be used to keep score within teams (up to 6) and can be used with verbal questions or any other non-technology related activity.

Top 6 activity

I once started a new topic with a simple activity to set the scene / break the ice, where the students (split into 2 teams) had to identify the top 6 something to do with that topic. The activity worked really well, and the template that I created to make this can be adapted very easily for other topics – as long as you have a list of top 6 somethings (or an ordered list).

An example activity can be found here.

And

(note to make the next link work, right click on the link and choose ‘save’ then open the file from where you have saved it- otherwise it may open in the Internet window rather than PowerPoint)

The blank template can be found here

The blank template includes instructions on how to use the resource within the notes section (often visible at the bottom of the screen)

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The principle of all the above resources is that as long as a tutor has the ability to copy and paste then they can add these templates to existing or new presentations – make the learning more active and hopefully more engaging and effective.

All of the templates above are free for people working in education to use and to share (e.g. on their VLEs).

Using comic strips

This is the 8th entry in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning’.

Although some people may not take the medium of the comic strip seriously, comics are a very powerful medium of communication, and are used by people of all ages for political, satirical and explanatory reasons, as well as for simple humor.

We as educators can use comic strips, to explain or highlight an issue, or better still, we can get the learners to create their own. I have seen examples in Modern Foreign Languages where the learners get to grips with different grammatical elements by creating comic strips. In history we can recreate significant events through creating comics, or even create higher order thinking activities by asking the students to imagine a meeting between people from different eras e.g. what if Napoleon and Hitler had met? – how may a conversation have followed?

There are many free comic creating options available. 2 free examples are:-

ToonDoo, which has a really good clipart gallery and is really easy to manipulate the images. You can then export the result, or embed the output into a VLE, blog or similar e.g.

By davefoord | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

Another option is Stripcreator has less options than ToonDoo so is simpler to learn and use, but has less output options. An example (not created by me) can be viewed at http://www.stripcreator.com/comics/wirthling/37299

Or we can simply use the basic features of something like PowerPoint (with its array of clipart and the ability to easily import other images) to create comic strips, the advantage of this is that the students can then use some simple animations to get the speech bubbles to appear in sequence, or for characters to move around, get bigger, blow up etc. To make live easier you could create a Comic template within PowerPoint – which is something that Champagne Design have done on their blog, including a template that you can download and use.

Using technology to create paper based games

This is the 7th entry in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning’.

As a lecturer, I quickly identified that traditional ‘chalk and talk’ was not an effective method of teaching especially for someone like me with a monotonic voice and really bad hand writing. It was this that guided me into the area of using technology in my teaching, but I also looked at different ways of creating little activities to do, and over the years I produced dozens of non technological resources out of card, paper, wood and laminated sheets.

Most of these were very bespoke to a particular topic, but 2 of my ideas are transferable to other areas.

The first I have called ‘multi-choice’ patience, The tutor enters 36 multi-choice questions and the answers into an Excel grid, which then converts these into a 36 card activity, where you pick a card out of the pack, answer the question, then choose the card identified by the answer. You keep doing this until you have answered 6 questions, if you have all 6 questions correct, then the 6th card should point back to the first card in that set. You then pick another card and try to complete the next set of 6 cards.

Screenshot of the multi-choice patience activity

The difficult part of this is thinking of the 36 questions, but once they are created, very easy to print out the cards, cut them up (and laminate if used more than once).

The template can be found at http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/MultipleChoicePatience.xls with the worked example (anatomy and physiology based) being http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/MultipleChoicePatienceEXAMPLE.xls

The second activity that I created is ‘Buzz word bingo’, and was originally for myself and colleagues to use at boring meetings, to make them more interesting, but they can be easily used in a teaching and learning situation.

All you need to do is add a list of buzz words (which could be the answers to questions) into an Excel grid. This will then convert these into different bingo cards of different sizes, which you print out, cut up and give to the learners. Very easy to do especially as an end of topic revision activity, or something to do in that last week before Christmas.

Buzz Word Bingo

Buzz Word Bingo can be found at http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/BuzzWordBingoGenerator.xls

All of the resources listed here can be found at http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources_class_management.php which also contains links to resources that can be used to split classes up into random groups, and allocate topics to students.

Creating an instructional video

This is the 6th entry in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning’.

One of the best ways to learn something, is to try to explain it to someone else, which we often do in the classroom by getting students to explain a concept to the person sat next to them, or stand up in front of the group and do a presentation, but this can become a bit samey for the learners, and they are always presenting back to people at the same levels as themselves.

One option is to ask them to create an explanatory video – the beauty of this, is that you can then give them a different target audience (e.g. younger people, people outside of the subject area etc) making them think not just about the material and information but how it is communicated.

In terms of what technologies to use, learners could use their own mobile phones and the camera facility within, or you could provide them with cameras if you have access to that resource, or you can use the screencasting ideas mentioned in an earlier post (which then doesn’t require a camera at all).

However if you do have access to a camera, and possibly a few tripods, then asking the learners to create an instructional video for their subject area in the style of the ‘Commoncraft Plain English‘ videos, could be a very interesting learning activity, an example of such a video being:-

Obviously these are very polished, well planned out resources that must take hours to produce, so we are not looking for the same level of quality as these, but the idea that we break down a topic into into key elements, and communicate them in a way that is easy for other to understand.

The real beauty of this idea though, is it requires very little planning time from the tutor, the tutor does not need to have any high level technical skills, it promotes higher order thinking skills, and good Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTS) and it should be fun for the learners to do.

Using QR codes for explorative learning

This is the 4th entry in a series of ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning‘

QR codes are like a bar code, but rather than being made up of lines, are constructed of squares. An example QR code being below. A QR code is a graphical representation of a string of text, and they can be created by anyone, using something like http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

The above code is for the web address of this blog (https://davefoord.wordpress.com)

Most mobile phones that have the ability to take photos can read Qr codes – some will need to download some software (or an app) onto the device (usually free) – you then take a photo of the code, and it will convert it into the text that it represents. In the case above, because the text is a web address – if the phone is internet enabled, it will then go to that website.

There are many ways that QR codes could be used in education, some examples are:-

• Land based colleges having QR codes next to plants in the grounds, so a learner can point their phone at the code to get more information about that plant.
• Providing stretch information following an activity – lets say you have a printed worksheet that the students complete with pen and paper. If you want to give them additional reading materials, or additional optional questions – to put a long URL onto the page is of little use, as hard to type in a long URL accurately – but putting a small QR code in the bottom corner, allows them to just point their phone at it, and away they go.
• Having a set of questions (which may be used on paper in the classroom) – but having some help information, or feedback information stored on a web address somewhere (this could be on the VLE, a Blog, a wiki etc.) create a QR code pointing to this, and then put this onto the document. This allows the students to attempt the questions first, then go to the additional information later on if they need to.
• Creating information treasure trails. Setting up a trail, where the learners move around the site, locating a QR code – which contains information to do with the subject, possibly asking them a question that points them to the location of the next QR code. Yes this would take a bit of time to set up, but as allows, there is the option of setting the students the task of creating a QR code trail for their peers. The students would need to think about what questions to ask, where to place the codes, etc. Then create them (quite easy to do) and go and put them in the right places, then have fun following each others trails.

An example of something like this, has been created by an Australian PE teacher ‘Mr Robbo‘

With further details on his excellent blog – http://thepegeek.com/2009/03/26/using-geocached-qr-codes-for-revision-in-a-pe-classroom/

Using a phone to capture audio and make learning more fun

This is the 4th entry in a series on making learning more fun.

Students carry mobile phones around with them, and something that mobiles phones can do very well is record audio, either into the phone itself, or into a web based system such as Ipadio. (Which I have blogged about before)

We can use these ideas as a way of bringing variety (and therefore more interest / fun) into the learning process.

To listen about how this may work, here is an ipadio recording on this topic, that I have linked back into this blog.

Visit http://ipad.io/Txv to hear my latest ipadio phonecast

If you use things like Moodle or Blackboard then the embedding mechanism works even better, providing more information and a more attractive player.

Ideas of how you could use this technique:-

• Ask learners to interview each other, whilst they role play characters within a scenario
• Ask learners to explain the topic just taught using audio only (and therefore no visual information)
• Ask learners to create memory rhymes for key information
• Ask learners to reflect at the end of the session on what they have learnt
• For the teaching of languages, the possible uses of this is enormous – the tutor could send an audio file to the learners each day in the language they are learning, or the learners could practice their speaking and then the tutor / peers can provide feedback.

This is an area where teaching can be radically transformed with just a bit of imagination.

Using screencasting to explain a concept / revise

This is the 3rd entry in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning’.

I have become a huge fan of screencasting, especially since I discovered screenr – a free web based tool, that is really easy to use for this purpose. I often use screencasts as a way of producing ‘how to videos’ as part of my work. In a previous post on this blog, I highlighted how this idea could easily be used to create revision aids. Which either the tutor could create for the learners, or the learners could create themselves (and then share with their peers?)

Another slight twist on this would be to challenge the learners to create a concise screencast (which if you use screenr limits you to 5 minutes) that explains a concept succinctly and accurately to other people. Maybe setting a series of criteria against which the screencasts will be judged, and offering a prize for the best one (out comes my trusty air guitar that I keep giving away). Criteria could be things like accuracy of information, artistic merit, communication skills used, etc.

If you had students working in small groups where they had to plan what they were going to do, how they were going to do it, who was going to talk etc. then you have a really good activity, covering lots of Personal Learning and Thinking Skills, as well as some Functional Skills. You may need to think about where the learners actually do their recording, as doesn’t work having lots of people in the same room, but if you have access to another small room nearby which once prepared the learner(s) can sneak into to do their recording then brilliant.

If you don’t want to use screenr, which is web based and therefore needs accounts etc, then the free camstudio, would be an option – this can either be installed onto the computer or run from a USB memory stick (and is part of the eduapps suite). This will allow you to create more than 5 minutes of recording, and keeps the output off the internet (unless you share it later) so some may prefer the extra ‘safety’ of this method, but it is more fickle to set up and get the audio settings right etc. Or you can use screenr, but in a way that you keep the end products private, as shown in this screencast.

Creating a quick fire PowerPoint (Pecha Kucha)

This is idea 2, in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning‘.

One activity that you can ask learners to do in any subject or topic, is to ask them to create a PowerPoint presentation that explains a topic or subject, which they then present back to the rest of the class. The problem with this, though is that the learners often produce very bad presentations (based on having seen many bad ones delivered to them) which they then proceed to bore the rest of the class with, which if you have lots of learners in the group, then takes about 3 weeks to sit through each presentation.

One idea to help reduce these problems would be to introduce the idea of Pecha Kucha. Pecha Kucha was an idea from 2003, where the presentation is limited to 20 slides, each of which is on the screen for 20 seconds exactly, limiting the presentation to 6 minutes and 40 seconds, and with presenters rolling on one after another during a Pecha Kucha event. More information can be found at http://www.pecha-kucha.org/

The presentations become very punchy, to the point, and non-waffley. At first some learners will probably find it challenging, but all the learners will be in the same boat, and as long as it is managed in a light hearted way (and don’t assess them, or at least not at first attempt) it should be more engaging than sitting bored through each others 10 minute presentations of lots of text that no-one can read.

An example Pecha Kucha on Pecha Kucha can be seen at

The easiest way to manage this, would be to give them the starting PowerPoint template which has the automatic slide transitions created, so all they have to do is to add the content. I have created a Pecha Kucha template that can be used by others. This has the timings already built in, as well as a black horiztonal bar at the bottom which acts as a 20 second timer on each slide. All someone has to do is add the content (e.g. images) to the slides.

We then need to encourage learners to use graphics more than words – so I would point them to image searching techniques such as Xpert, and Compfight which I have blogged about before. Show them how to do screen capturing, and then cropping images, resizing etc. This can be simply done using the PrtScn button on keyboard and then pasting into PowerPoint, then using the formatting options to crop, resize, rotate if desired. You can even blur parts of the image by placing a semi transparent shape on top of the image, to blur parts, leaving the important bit clear etc, but basically you can let the learners artistic ideas to flourish, and if using this technique a few times, it would develop higher order thinking skills, as the learners have to think about what the key pieces of information are, and how best to represent them visually and to communicate them succinctly etc.

Using ‘game’ and activity templates in education

This is idea 1, in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning‘.

One of the changes to the Inspections framework within FE within the UK, is that inspectors are now looking to see if students are enjoying themselves whilst they are learning. This is actually proving a really big challenge for some educators.

One way that technology can be used to bring an element of ‘fun’ back into the learning process is by using game type activities as part of the process. I am not talking about high-tec immersive type games, but much simpler, types of activity, were the tutor enters the basic information about their subject and the computer converts this into an activity. We are lucky that there are many different game and activity templates out there, so we can use a wide variety in our teaching and learning (learners will quickly get bored of doing lots of crosswords, or lots of multi-choice questions).

Some people think that games shouldn’t be used in education as they question the learning value of them, but one thing that a good ‘game type activity’ can do, is encourage repetition, which for learning basic facts, is recognised as an essential part of the learning process, yet one that is hard to achieve in FE and HE.

I used to use QUIA (see below for details) a lot in my teaching, and because I taught sport science students (who are naturally competitive) they would often repeat activities many times to try and get a better score (especially if I did the activity first to set a target) – this for me was a great way to cover key information, e.g. names of bones, muscle actions, definitions of physical terms etc.

Here I will describe 3 examples of web based tools that can be used for this purpose

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Quia

http://www.quia.com/ is an excellent resource, although it does have a cost attached to it of $50 per year if you want to create your own activities.

• You can create activities, where you enter the information, and it turns that into a game type activity for you. Activities include battleships, matching pairs, wordsearches, ordered lists etc.
• There are quizzes, which even has built in tracking so that you can track which students have done what.
• There are survey options which are easy to use and easy to analyse afterwards, and many other options.

I personally think that the $50 per year is worth paying due to the amount of time that it can save and the quality of the final products, but even if you don’t pay, there are many activities that are on their site which have been shared by tutors which you can do for free, if you go to http://www.quia.com/shared/ you will see the list of subjects covered, then looking into any of them will reveal thousands of created resources, that you can use with learners, by just copying and sharing the URL.

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StudyStack

http://www.studystack.com/ works on pairs of information (e.g. capital city and country, author and book, psychologist and theory etc). You can either use an activity that has created by someone else, or create your own for free. Once created the pairs of information are turned into various game types, including anagrams, crosswords etc, but also simple kinesthetic type games such as hungry bug, which is like the game snakes that used to appear on early mobile phones. Young people in particular will sometimes play these retro type games for hours at times, so if we can use this for education then brilliant. The output isn’t a polished as QUIA, and the site does have advertising on it, but for ease of use and to provide variety, and being free is an excellent site. An example of a hungry bug activity created by someone else is http://www.studystack.com/hungrybug-49086 – if you then click on the icons below the activity you can play different games with the same sets of words.

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Jigsaw Planet

http://www.jigsawplanet.com/ is a web based jigsaw creating site. You can either do one of their preloaded jigsaws, or more likely we can create our own. All we need to do is upload an image, select the number of pieces, and the piece shape and it will convert this into a jigsaw for us. So for example if we wanted the students to learn a table of important but uninteresting information, we could convert the table into an image (by just doing a print screen, or using a tool like Snippy to capture a region of the screen containing the table), upload this to Jigsaw Planet and away you go. An Example of this, using a simple table of information based on countries can be found at http://www.jigsawplanet.com/?rc=play&pid=29a2685d793d

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There are many other tools out there, but these are 3 web based ones (and therefore easy to manage) that I particularly like.