We have had quite a few overviews of various educational tools already including online learning tools, top ten student tools and language learning tools. Today, we are going to talk about teaching tools for a change.
Today’s set of tools will make anyone’s learning super-engaging: whether you have (or plan) kids or you want to earn some cash by tutoring someone, the tools will come in handy.
ProProfs, the site we have mentioned a couple of times on MUO already, has a variety of free educational apps and games which need a closer look. The toolset has been featured on various powerful educational portals including TheJournal, Assett and Profy.
Unlike our previous reviews of the tool features, this one will focus on the educational value of the free web apps.
1. Quizzes
Apart from creating fun personality quizzes to engage and entertain your blog visitors, ProProfs Quiz Maker can be used for educational purposes.
Idea: The tool is perfect for assessing people’s knowledge of the topic as well as identifying “weak” areas: where most people tend to err.Sample educational quizzes:
- Are you smarter than a 5th grader?
- Can you identify these historical landmarks?
- SAT Improving Sentences Quiz I
Creating a quiz might take you a bit of time (simply because you need to provide questions and several answers for each). So before creating the quiz using the tool I usually draft the quiz structure in Excel and once I have all the info, complete the form.
The very first step is to provide the quiz name, description and your questions (with answers). The quiz allows to choose between various types of question types: “Multiple answers”, “True/False”, “Fill in the blanks”, “Essay type”. The best thing is that you can make each question interactive by adding images or embedding video:
Then you will need to set the result type; the tool supports:
- Pass / fail result;
- Letter grading;
- Good / excellent result;
- Customized result (where you provide the scoring system of your own).
Here’s an example of letter grading settings (you can also set the max time and configure the certificate settings):
2. Flashcards
Flashcards section allows to create your own flashcards as well as browse through already created ones in various categories.
Idea: Easily summarize and organize complex material to let kids always have it by hand (print and download your flashcards for further reference).Sample flashcard: French verbs
Creating a flashcard is fun: you can use images, formatting and various colors to visualize your data sets more effectively:
3. Brain Games
Besides interactive fun games, ProProf’s Brain Games section allows to create several types of fun word games including:
- Word search game;
- Crossword game;
- Word scrample game.
Idea: You can get your kids easier remember the spelling of new words by creating a crossword and letting them take it several times in a row. The crossword will vary the words each time it’s reloaded.Sample crossword: Superheroes
Creating a word game really takes seconds. All you need is the concept and words in mind. After that it’s just the matter of copy-pasting: the software will create a puzzle of that itself:
And here’s our cute little MUO-authors crossword which took us two seconds to create:
Do you think tools like that could make learning (as well as teaching) much more fun (and thus much more enjoyable and effective)?
Tagged: education • learning • study tools • teachers • teaching
