Xerte – A Superb Free Toolkit

Xerte is a suite of tools for rapid development of interactive learning content. The online Xerte tool is an effective way for staff with limited IT skills to create high quality, cost-effective and accessible learning materials. 

With Xerte you can create materials with the same quality as the NLN materials.

This toolkit provides a quick way for tutors to create presentations or interactive exercises, such as quizzes, with built in colour preferences, font size preferences, keyboard navigation and text to speech.

Xerte templates allow the content creator to make highly creative accessible learning objects in an extremely user-friendly way. You can integrate text, images, audio, video and animations, create interactivity, drag and drop and hot spot interactions.

Click to watch the video on MoleTV

How to get hold of Xerte?

Go to Xerte website – www.nottingham.ac.uk/xerte -  download and install the Xerte engine.    

OR  just use the online tool by going to http://www.techdisplayxerte.info/. To play with it you will need username: techdis and password: jisc. Try to create your own project. On the website you can find a very simple and fast demo, as well as Xerte examples.

This is a free open source that you can share with your students by uploading it as a SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) to Moodle.

Quandary

Quandary is an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes. You can create an action Maze using Quandary and upload it to your Moodle.

An Action Maze is a sort of interactive case-study where the student is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it. After choosing one of the options, the students are presented with another situation with another set of options. Working through these branches is like negotiating a maze, so that’s why it is named “Action Maze”.

These Mazes can be used for several purposes, such as problem-solving, diagnosis, procedural training, surveys or questionnaires.

Surviving on a desert isle, dealing with a difficult landlady, and creating a needs assessment are just a few examples of Action Mazes.

Creating an Action Maze requires well-thought-out planning in advance. The benefit of the exercise is its ability to help students think through the results of a variety of choices they can make

Quandary is easy and free to download – Go to http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.php. It is only available for Windows at the moment. So no Quandary for Mac users for now.

Check some good examples here.

Click here to see examples

If you have used Hot Potatoes before, you will find creating mazes quite straightforward.  If you are not sure how to start check their Quandary’s tutorials.

Click for Quandary's tutorials

Hope you will live up your Moodle with loads of Mazes. I am sure your learners will enjoy and appreciate.

Create your Interactive Games

Click here to go to what2learn.com

Play the game on EZone

What2learn is an innovative and exceptional eductional tool which develops and tests learners knowledge in a fun and interactive way.  Loads of effective and envolving learning games will drill your students in essential knowledge. their attainment will be automatically calculated and recorded.

The games work brilliantly on the interactive whiteboard for the whole group or on EZone, so they can have a go individually.

If you want to use the games that were already created, all you have to do is to search for games, select the tag you are looking for, such as Art, Design Technology, English, French, Spanish, German, Film, History, ICT, Mathematics, Music, etc, and then just click on the game.

As a teacher you can prepare resources to support the delivery of your subject, create a range of games related to the scheme of work you are teaching. These games can be used as starter or revision tasks. To create your own games click on “Make a Game”, choose the type of game ( Hangman, question and answer, wordsearch, anagram and multiple-choice), hit the highlighted game’s name, enter the content in the adequate boxes, add a tag to your quiz and confirm the questions. To share the game you can send it via email or social web or you can copy the embed code on the right handside of the web site, paste the code to a web page on Ezone, save it and it’s ready to play.

Let me know if you need a hand.

Worksheet Genius

Worksheet Genius

I couldn’t wait for next week to tell you about this fantastic and life saver website.

Worksheet Genuis is full of printable worksheets, puzzles and activities that can be differentiated and randomized at the touch of a button.

You can design your own worksheet really quickly. A time saver especially for Basic Literacy tutors!!

English – you have Anagrams, bingo, falsh cards, matching pairs, mixed-up sentences, phonics, slideshows, spelling tests, word lists and word searches.

Maths - you can create addtion, bingo, clocks, division, subtraction, greater than / less than, larger/smaller, multiplication, percentages and place value.