As per our discussion at the meeting, there was a desire for a flashcard/quiz based learning tool that included some sort of score keeping that could be used to encourage better/more studying.
One of the things available that might work off the shelf is http://quizlet.com . You can upload question answer pairs as CSV files or build them with their interface, it has support for classes and groups, various simple games built around matching terms, and some basic score keeping. It is a free online service, which makes me a bit dubious about building curriculum around it (these things tend to disappear or change their business model rapidly) but it could be worth a look for initial testing.
There are numerous open source flashcard apps out there which could be used with some modification. Two big ones are anki http://ankisrs.net/ and Mnemosyne http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ Both support plugins and extensions, run on multiple platforms as native apps, are built on reasonably proven pedagogical techniques (implementations of the SM-2 algorithm) and could be used as a base to build upon.
Please post more.
Hey everyone,
I downloaded Anki today and played around with it. Without any modification, as a brown-bag quiz app, it works.
Later I checked out Adobe Captivate and Questionmaker. These ready-to-go commercial products seem to offer everything David was talking about – real plasticity in creating quizzes, tests, study aids – and the ability to capture and manage data on performance, number of log-ins, etc. I find the possibilities raised by these programs really exciting. It’s not exactly “gaming”, but all about dynamic learning aids nevertheless. I’ve already asked one of my instructional colleagues to give me some course material to work up a study aid with.
I’d be interested to hear of anyone else’s experience with this kind of software.
Thanks for posting these resources. I’m going to check them out and see how I might use them for my English classes.
In less than an hour, I was able to enter a data set (consisting of terms and definitions) into Quizlet, which then produced a range of games, learning tools and self-testing formats for my students. It’s not meant to be used for anything on a conceptual level. But for nuts and bolts knowledge – in this case, technical terminology – I think it’s fantastic. My score for this set went from 59 to 85 over the course of an afternoon.
Way cool! Some very valid points! I appreciate you penning this article and also the rest of the site is extremely good.