Nicholas Peachey : Activity

Quick Twitter Video Activity

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:16:29 GMT

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2010/01/quick-twitter-video-activity.ht

Educators seem to be constantly searching for new activities and ways to use Twitter with their Students. At the same time developers seem to be constantly looking for ways to build on the success of Twitter and develop apps and sites that will extend its functionality and increase its usefulness and usability.

Chitter.TV is one of those sites. It allows you to visit various live TV channels from a range of sources, see what people are saying about them on Twitter and add your own comments.

To add your comments you'll need to be logged in to your Twitter account, but once you are it's just a simple case of watching what is happening on the channels you are interested in and then writing your comment underneath and posting it directly to Twitter.

Chitter.TV has quite a range of channels to choose from and they are not all English language ones. They vary from news channels to MTV and light entertainment channels all the way through to kids channels.

Here's how you could use Chitter.TV with your students

Send your students Chitter.TV get them registered and then ask them to go to the Sky News channel at: http://chitter.tv/index.php#skynews
They will see a brief news summary of the main news stories of the moment. Ask them to watch the clip (it's about 2 - 3 mins long) and post headlines for each news story in the clip and / or key facts to their Twitter stream.
They'll be able to watch the news clip a few times as it loops, so this should give them some useful listening and summarising practice.
You could even get them to write complete sentences from the news clip, like a dictation.
You could get them to comment on or describe what they have watched.
You could get them to tweet about which of the news headlines they felt was most important or which was most relevant to them.
You'll then be able to check out what they have written in their Twitter stream and correct or comment.

I think something like this would work well as a homework / self access task rather than a classroom task, but I guess you have to decide that for yourself.

I hope you enjoy this and do post a comment if you think of other ways to use Chitter.TV with your students.

Here you can find 25 more video related activities for EFL and ESL learners.

Cropping YouTube Videos to Create Activities

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:16:20 GMT

http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2010/01/cropping-youtube-videos-to-crea

Using YouTube videos with students can be really great, but finding a video with the exact language you want and at a suitable length with too many other distractions around can be really difficult. That's why SafeShare.TV is so useful.

SafeShare.TV is a tool that has two primary functions. The first is to enable you to share YouTube videos using a direct URL that frames the video without the advertising and other distracting features that might cause students to wander off into less suitable materials.
The second and perhaps even more useful function of SafeShare.TV is that it enable you to crop the video clip so that only a particular part is shown. This is particularly useful when you want to build activities or tasks around clips that focus students on particular linguistic features.

How to use SafeShare.TV
First find a YouTube clip that has a section that you would like to use. I chose this one from ‘Room with a View’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tehft3GDw6k. At 9 mins it's quite long so I just wanted to use a few sections.

Copy the URL and then go to: http://www.safeshare.tv/. Paste the link into the field then click on ‘Generate safe link’.
This will create a new link to the video which you can then use with your students to show them the clip.
When the students open the link they will only see the single video clip with it’s title, like the example below.

If you want to crop the clip so that only a short part of it shows, then generate your safe URL and then click on the link that says 'Do you want to only share a part of the video? click to crop.' This will open a small video viewer. Click the video to watch it, then click on ‘Set Start’ at the beginning of the segment you want students to see. Watch the segment and click ‘Set End’ at the end of the segment. Now click ‘OK’

Once you have clicked 'OK' your safe link will be adapted to only show the section of the video you have selected. You can then either copy the link to share with students or share it through a variety of social networking mediums.

Here's a quick video tutorial showing how to do this.

You can download this video here or download a copy for i-Touch or i-Phone here

How can we use this with students?
Clipping videos makes it much easier for us to create activities and tasks that focus on specific areas of the video clip without having to watch the whole thing.

You can select example phrases to show the use of language in context, such as a telephone call or a scene that shows someone booking into a hotel etc.
Here’s an example: Booking a hotel room This was trimmed from a much longer clip on YouTube
You can show students the beginning to a clip and ask them to predict what’s ‘going to’ happen next.

Here are two examples:
1. What's going to happen?
2. What's going to happen?

You can show the beginning and end of a clip and ask students to predict what ‘has happened’ in between.

Example:
They watch this one
Then this one

You can show students a number of sections from the same clip and ask them to order them either by using linguistic or visual clues and explain their rationale.

Here are 5 clips for you to try to order:
Clip 1
Clip 2
Clip 3
Clip 4
Clip 5

You can show each student in a group a different sections of the clip (like the 5 sections above) and then ask them to work together to describe the part they watched and put the different sections into the correct order as a group.
You can use the sections to focus on the use of specific structures, like this one for ‘should have’ Should have clip or this one for the use of 3rd conditional 3rd conditional clip
At the end of these types of activities you can show them the complete clip. http://www.safeshare.tv/v/Tehft3GDw6k

What I like about it

It’s free and easy to use
It gets your students right to the part of the video you want them to see
It allows you to easily split videos into shorter clips
there’s a simple ‘bookmarklet’ that you can drag to your favourites bar, then whenever you find a YouTube clip your want to use you just click on it to get the SafeShare.TV link.

What I’m not so sure about

Sometimes it doesn’t work on my MAC
It would be great to have an embed code as well as a URL

Well those are some suggestions to get you started cropping YouTube videos. I hope you find them useful.

You can find 25 more video related activities for EFL and ESL students here.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

4 Similar Tools to Wordle

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:52:58 GMT

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2009/12/4-similar-tools-to-wordle.html

Wordle, a very simple tool for creating graphic word clouds of texts, has rocked the Edtech world and inspired a huge number of blog posts and teaching ideas, including my own back in September of 2008. That's why I decided to use it as the basis for the first task in a web based 1 week open free workshop on Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers that I'm moderating for SEETA.

As so many people are already familiar with Wordle, I thought I'd also share a few similar tools that can be used instead of or alongside Wordle with other web based resources to create useful learning materials for students. I've also added these here for anyone who doesn't make it along to the workshop.

Wordnik (no connection to the Nik in my name) is a great tool for helping students find out more information about word and create lists or related words to help them remember the words. It provides lots of great examples of the words being used and draws on social media sites for the examples, so you can see how the word is used in Twitter, see what images are tagged with the word in Flickr and lots more.
I wrote about Wordnik about a year ago when it was still Wordie, so look at this review if you want a bit more information. Creating word lists
I also created an activity for students to help them use the tool to work autonomously to develop their vocabulary. It needs a bit of updating now that the site has changed to Wordnik, but should give you some ideas about how it can be used I hope. List Your Favourite Words

Wordsift does a similar thing to Wordle, in that it produces a word cloud of words from a text, but it is far less visual and more functional. Once your students have produced the word cloud they can start actually clicking on the words and exploring their meanings and getting examples.
I wrote a review of WordSift here which shows a bit more about how to use it.Analysing Vocabulary in Texts
Here’s an example of how I’ve tried to integrate it with other web based tools and resources to create an activity for students to work on independently. Find Out More About Texts

Vocab Grabber is another tool that can be used to get more information about the words from a text. Vocab Grabber is more of a Dictionary / Thesaurus tool that pulls in information about words in a text, gives examples and also shows related words and word families.
I wrote this activity which exploits some marketing videos that have scripts along with WordGrabber and another tool called Future Me. I tried to use the combination of these tools to show how students could build good habits to enable them to learn, remember and revise new vocabulary. Develop Your Marketing Vocabulary

Easy define is a new tool that I just spotted this morning. It is a bit like a dictionary - word list creation tool. You simply type in a list of words ( or even paste in a complete text) and it will generate dictionary entries for all the words. You can then download these as a doc file or copy and past them. It will also produce a list of synonyms.
This is a great tool for creating paper based vocabulary worksheets. Once you’ve typed in your list or text and generated the definitions, you can simply download it and edit to create vocabulary records or matching activities. Should be a big time saver. You could get students to create word lists from their Wordle images.

I hope these tools are useful and if you know of other similar tools that you think are useful, please do post a link to them below, especially if you can include links to any materials you've created with them that you would like to share.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

The Web 2.0 School of the Present

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:29:55 GMT

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2009/11/web-20-school-of-present.html

I was recently invited to participate in a really interesting workshop organised by Richard Johnson, Director of ELI Seville. The focus of the workshop was 'The Language School of the Future' and it produced a number of scenarios for the possible development of private language schools, which varied from the 'business as normal' model to a total shift away from scheduled classroom lessons. I'll post more about those scenarios later in the month, but it did occur to me that before we look to the future we could pull language schools and language departments into the present.
The 'Web 2.0' age has brought us more than a bunch of social networking apps and free web tools, it has also brought about a fundamental shift in the way many web based companies do business. I started to wonder if that change could be mirrored in the physical market place by moving towards a new approach to the language school and the way technology is used in it and how it fits into the face to face business model.

What follows are some suggestions for what I feel could bring about a shift in the way language schools market themselves and integrate technology, not just into the classroom, but to the whole school environment.

How to make your school a Web 2.0 school of the present

1. Ubiquitous open wireless access
This is probably the most basic and fundamental change that you could introduce in your school and the one thing that could have the biggest long term impact.

Make wireless Internet access freely available from anywhere in the school, without restriction, to anyone who wants to walk through your door, regardless of whether they pay for a course and regardless of how they use the access (within the bounds of the law and socially acceptable norms etc). Don’t password protect the access make it easily available to anyone and everyone.

In doing this you have removed one of the most significant obstacles to the exploitation of web enabled technology within your school. Teachers will have FAR fewer problems using Internet in classroom and will feel more confident about trying things out new things and experimenting in a more spontaneous manner.
They will have far fewer problems accessing online professional development materials and web based teaching materials and they will be in a much better position to start developing themselves and joining the numerous online communities of teachers globally that support and develop each other.
You will soon find more students and teachers coming to your school with laptops and other mobile devices to use the free Internet access and staying longer. You will have succeeded in making your school 'sticky'.

2. Make your whole school into a learning zone
Once you have open access wireless connectivity in your school, the whole school can become a learning zone, not just the classroom. Help students to exploit this.

Make room for people to come and hang out in your school, a kind of relax cafe area where they can bring in a laptop or other portable device. Make it friendly and sociable (don’t provide computers for them or computer booths where they sit facing the wall, make it open where people can wander around and see what others are doing etc.
Have member(s) of your teaching staff on hand in this area to provide free assistance to anyone who wants to come in and learn. It could be anything from a bit of help with their pronunciation or advice in pointing them towards the best online materials available to help them learn autonomously, or giving advice to parents on how to help their kids learn online.
Make sure you have plenty of visible information about good learning tools and freely available resources and where online learners and teachers can find and try them all over your school.

All of this might seem like you are giving away your 'product' but if your teachers are good and people are learning informally in your school, they may soon find that they want to learn more and take more formalised classes.
3. Get teachers developing online materials and sharing in the benefits
Lots of schools try to get teachers creating and sharing materials but there is seldom any reward or acknowledgement of the amount of time and care this takes. Get your teachers together and start training them to use blogs and wikis and get them producing and publishing their teaching materials online. Try to get them to pool these materials into one easily searchable wiki type site or a group of interconnected blog sites.

Make sure that they know that they will retain copyright and ownership of all the materials they produce and that they will continue to own these materials even if they leave your school. The materials will become part of their professional portfolio.
Make the materials your teachers produce freely available and open to the whole world to use, comment on and feedback on. This will help to make your teachers more aware of the quality of the materials they are publishing and get feedback to create and improve their materials. They will also find out how their materials are being used.
Plug in revenue generating tools such as GoogleAdsense etc, look for sponsorship and advertising and make it clear that all teachers who contribute will get their share of any revenue that is generated. Make it clear that the school will not take a percentage of any of the revenue generated, but will only benefit through the links, branding and reputation it develops through displaying the quality of its teachers / materials and teaching.

In the early days any revenue generated through advertising will be small, but as the scale of the resources grow, so will the revenue.

4. Getting technology into your classrooms
A lot has been said about the pros and cons of interactive whiteboards (IWBs), but whether you like them or hate them, they are part of the natural evolution that is taking place within the classroom and most schools will soon have them. One criticism of IWBs is the price, but they don't have to cost a lot as there are low cost hardware systems available and free software which is every bit as good and in some cases better than the software that would come with a commercially purchased board.

So here is what you can do to get your school equipped with low cost IWBs. Find your techiest geekiest teacher (the one who talks about things like Ubuntu and Linux) give him or her a budget and some free time and ask that he or she provides you with a home made interactive whiteboard installed and ready to demo. Tell him or her that if it works they can have an extra time to produce more.

If your teacher is successful you will then be able to put interactive white boards in every classroom for less that 100 euros a room (you will still need to have a computer and data projector for each classroom too, but this will have saved you significant amount of money)
The best place to start researching about how to create a low cost IWB is Johnny Lee's website. Also get your nominated teacher to have a look at the Wiimote Project site.
Here are 3 sites which produce free or low cost web based apps that can be used to replace the commercially produced IWB software.
Dabbleboard
Scriblink
Twiddla

Having IWBs in class isn't a magic bullet, but it does at least get live Internet into your classes and increase the chances that your teachers will start using a more diverse range of multimedia materials than they would normally find in a course book.
5. Get your teachers connected from anywhere
One of the best ways to get your teachers trained and web savvy is to make sure they have web access wherever they are. Subsidize your teachers' purchase of an i-Pod touch (even better an i-Phone if possible) and train them how to use it to download materials from i-Tunes, get free apps, view YouTube video, download free audio and video podcasts etc etc etc etc etc.

Train them to use it in class (well before they actually need to) to show images, video get information etc. Within the next year the i-Pod touch is likely to include a camera for video too and this will enable teachers to start producing video projects with their classes too.

6. Provide multimedia capable computers
It's amazing how many schools I visit that provide computers that don't have speakers. microphone or webcams! These are fundamental necessities for exploiting the true range of web based resources available and for transforming computers from passive information display devices into dynamic creative communication tools.

Make sure every computer that you provide for the classroom, media lab or staffroom has a built in webcam and microphone as well as speakers or that these things are available.
WebCams can enable teachers to bring the world into their classroom and take their classroom to the world in a very powerful way and for free.
Make sure these computers are fitted with video, image and audio editing software. All of this can be accessed or downloaded free from the Internet. This can make a whole range of video and audio based activities possible.

Of course the success of all of these measures is really dependent on training and motivating your staff, but by providing easily accessible wireless connectivity you are greatly increasing opportunities for staff to start developing themselves and each other and promoting in atmosphere in which learning can take place at anytime and anywhere in your school, not just in the classroom.

I hope you find these ideas interesting, useful and at least a little bit provocative. By all means leave comments criticisms or suggestions.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

10 Teacher Development Task for Web 2.0 Tools

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:38:56 GMT

http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2009/11/10-teacher-development-task-for

Over the last couple of months I've been busy travelling round a bit and doing some face to face training and workshops. As part of the materials for these workshops I created a number of tasks for teachers which I hope will help develop their ability to use technology and to evaluate and create materials using web based tools. I've decide now to share those tasks so anyone who wants to use them to train other teachers or to develop their own skills can take advantage of and make good use of them.

Capturing the art shark http://www.flickr.com/photos/artolog/1693491849/

There are ten tasks and they can be done in any order, except for the tenth one which should be last. Please feel free to use and share these tasks and by all means leave any comments or suggestions for improvement. I will also be hosting a teacher development week using and discussing these tasks and the related tools from 7th to 15th December 2009 on the SEETA Moodle site: http://www.seeta.eu/ so by all means come along for that if you want to share ideas and learn a bit more together.

10 Tasks to help teachers develop their use of learning technology

Task 1
This task explores the use of TokBox, a synchronous and asynchronous video conferencing and communication tool. In this task you will look at and evaluate some teaching materials I have created using the tool and see how you can use it to create your own materials.
Go to task
Task 2
This task explores the use of Voxopop, a tool for the creation of web based audio discussion threads. In this task you will see how other teachers have used the tool and have the opportunity to participate and contribute to an online audio thread.
Go to task
Task 3
This task explores how Forvo, the web based pronunciation dictionary, works and what it can offer teachers and learners. In this task you will explore some of the entries and have a chance to add your own example pronunciations to the dictionary.
Go to task
Task 4
This tasks explores the design of Listen and Write, a tool for the creation of web based dictation activities. In this task you will be able to try a dictation exercise and see how autonomous learning is supported through the design of the tool. You will also have the chance to create your own activity.
Go to task
Task 5
This task explores the use of ESL Video, the web based video activity creation tool . In this task you will be able to examine and compare three different video activities to see how the tool can be exploited. You can then attempt to create your own activity based around a video clip of a bank robbery.
Go to task
Task 6
This task explores the use of 280 Slides, a web based tool for creating online presentations. In this task you will see how you can use the tool to add video or images to presentations and so create video based learning activities or multi media presentations.
Go to task
Task 7
This task explores the use of Dvolver, a very simple tool for creating animated movies. In this task you will be able to watch a video created using the tool and then evaluate its potential and limitations whilst creating your own animated video.
Go to task
Task 8
This task explores the use of Wallwisher, a web based 'sticky notes' notice-board. In this task you will be able to look at how the notice board has been used to share a range of web 2.0 tools and also have the opportunity to contribute your own favourite site to a notice-board to see how it works.
Go to task
Task 9
This task examines the use of Wordle, a web based tool for creating graphic representation of texts based on word frequency. In this task you will learn how to create your own graphic image based on a news article and explore some potential uses for the tool.
Go to task
Task 10
This final task looks at Penzu, a simple tool for keeping a web based journal. In this task you explore how to create your own journal and then create your own reflective journal entry based on the work you have done in the previous task.
Go to task

I hope you find these tasks useful. Please do leave a comment or suggestion for improvement or any recommendations for links or other examples of materials created using these tools.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

How to Sheets

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:55:30 GMT

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-sheets.html

I've just been creating some training tasks and materials which I'll be using later this week. As part of that I've created a few easy 'How to' sheets showing some basic functions a four Web 2.0 type apps and have published these on Scribd.
There will be more of these to come later, along with the exploratory tasks that go with them, but for now here are four how to sheets that you can either use online or download / photocopy to use with students or trainee teachers.

How to create online presentations and import videos from YouTube using 280Slides
How to create an online journal using Penzu.com
How to create and change the appearance of word clouds using Wordle
How to create an animated movie using Dvolver

I hope these are useful and look out next week for a few more and for some learning tasks for trainee teachers too.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

My New Favourite YouTube Tool

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:37:10 GMT

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-new-favourite-youtube-tool.h

This is something that I spotted on Twitter a couple of days ago and have been playing with ever since. It's not actually a piece of software an app or even a site, it's a simple piece of code that you can use to change the URL of a YouTube video that transforms your page into a visual search tool that maps topics and relationships between videos.

So what it does, is it changes this dull YouTube page:

into this. A visual map of relayed videos. Each time you hover the mouse over one of the circles another set of related videos pop out and the you just click on a circle to play the video.

To appreciate the difference you really have to experience it, so here's the link to the original YouTube page with a video about Marrakesh
And now here's the 'warp'ed link with all the related videos which will start to show as you hover your mouse over them.

So how is it done?
Very simple, just replace the 'watch' in the URL to warp.swf

Example:
My Marrakesh video was at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-FUM74WsQo
So I change that to http://www.youtube.com/warp.swf?v=e-FUM74WsQo

This should work with any YouTube video.

So what's so great about this?
Well taking my original video on Marrakesh, it now enables my students to search for related video information around the same topic very quickly and simply.

As you move from video to video you create a kind of breadcrumb trail of dots which you can then click on to navigate back through the video you have watched.
You can also click on the videos to play them full screen in your browser (nice feature IWB users)

This is a great way to get students researching information around a topic you want to discuss in class or just creating and exploring conceptual associations. You could do this in class if you have data projector and try to get students to explain the connections, like six degrees of seperations. For example, how did I start with avideo of Marrakesh and end up with one of Shakira dancing?

I really enjoy this tool. It's also really handy for finding new music that's connected to the music you already like. Just 'warp' a music video from YouTube that you like and start exploring the connections.

This tool will though access all and any YouTube videos, so keep that in mind when you consider using it with your students, especially younger ones.

Hope you enjoy this.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

Creating an Online Journal for CPD

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:38:09 GMT

http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/2009/10/creating-online-journal-for-cpd

The importance of careful thought and reflection on what we do as both teachers and learners can not be overestimated in terms of the learning process and retaining information in a way that we can actually use it and make it part of our experience and practice.

Keeping a teaching or learning journal can be a really important part of this process of reflection and writing entries can help us to reformulate what we have read or analyse our experiences and draw conclusions from them which we can later return to, share and reflect on again.

For me Penzu is a really good tool which can help me and my students or trainee teachers to do this.

How to create your learning journal

Go to: https://penzu.com/ and click on ‘Sign up’.

You will need to create a password and enter a username, email address and agree to the terms of use. Then you just click on ‘Submit’.

You can then start creating your journal entries by adding a text and title. Each entry is dated automatically and you can move from one entry to another using the tabs on the right of the page.

To add pictures, you simply click on the ‘Insert Photo’ icon at the top of the page and locate an image on your computer and upload it.

?Once you have uploaded your pictures you simply click to insert the ones you want to use.

The picture will appear in the margin and you can then drag it up or down to line it up with the text. Users click on the images to enlarge them.

?To share journal entries you click on the share icon and this enables you to email your entry to someone else. You can either include your name and email along with a message or this can be done anonymously.

How we can use Penzu as a journal tool.

We can write short summaries of articles we have read and make a note of what our personal main points of interest or learning were from the article.
We can keep a journal of our teaching or training work and reflect on how classes went, compare these to our expectations and make notes of things we would like to try differently next time.
We can use it as an action research journal recording what we do in each lesson and setting out our objectives for the action research project. We can also ask students to use it to keep a journal of their reflections on our teaching and we can ask them to send us entries anonymously so that we can get unbiased feedback from our students on our teaching.
We can include it as part of a peer to peer development program and partner up teachers to watch each others classes, reflect on what they saw and send each other entries.
We can use it as a simple record of what we did in the class and what we want to do to follow it up in the next class.

The vital thing with all of these activities is that we return to our entries and reflect on what we wrote some time later. Immediate responses to what happens in our classes can be very subjective and emotional. If we record those responses and then come back to them at a time when we can be more objective we are often able to gain much greater insights into what happened in the class. In this way the journal enables us to capture thoughts and feelings that would otherwise be lost.

What I like about Penzu

It’s free and very simple to use.
The entries are private, but be can be shared
We can add images to make the entries more memorable
It can be accessed from anywhere
It’s quick and date stamps entries for us

What I’m not so sure about

It would be nice to be able to add a few hyperlinks (I think this is possible in the ‘Pro’ paid for edition.
It would be nice to have the option of having images in the text rather than just in the margin (again, probably available in the ‘Pro’ edition)

Well that’s about all I have to say about Penzu for now. I’ve focused on its uses as a tool for teacher development here, but it is also a great tool to use with students too. For more information on using Penzu with students check out my teaching manual Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers, which you can read or download for free.

Related links:

Best

Nik Perachey

Finding a Language Exchange Partner

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 15:00:05 GMT

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2009/10/finding-language-exchange-partn

I've just spotted another language exchange website to add to a rapidly growing list of these sites. Scrabbin is distinctive however, because it is one of the simplest I've seen and because it also offers people the chance to arrange face 2 face events and meetings.

It's very simple and free, you just create a profile, log in and then search for a suitable partner to exchange languages with.

When you create your profile you specify the kind of exchange you want to have, i.e. voice, email and / or face to face.

You then browse the profiles of the people who speak the language you want to learn and leave them a message to see if they want to partner you.

All very simple stuff. Does it work in terms of language learning? Well I guess that depeds on you and the partner you find, but at least it's a simple free way to find someone to practice using the language you want to learn with.

There doesn't seem to be any age restriction on the site and they do seem to take privacy quite seriously, but if you recommend this to your students I would still be very careful to make sure they know not to share personal information regarding their address etc and would caution against any one to one face to face meetings.

Hope you find Scrabbin useful.

Related links:

Best

Nik Peachey

Create Quick Online Polls

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:41:40 GMT

http://quickshout.blogspot.com/2009/10/create-quick-online-polls.html

Vorbeo must be one of the quickest and easiest poll creators I've ever seen. All you need to do is to go to there website at: http://vorbeo.com/

Type in your question add different answers each one on a new line, choose your colour and size etc. As you do that, a code is generated lower down on the page.

When you are ready you simply copy the code into your web page or blog and publish it.

Users simply click on their answer and click vote and they are taken to a new page to see the results. try this one to see how it works:

Do you use technology in your classroom?

Yes - every dayYes - sometimesNo - neverNo - not very oftenNo but I get my students to use it outside the classroom

This is really no frills stuff, but it is simple, quick and easy and also free. You don't even need to register or part with your email address. All user responses are anonymous.

This is a great tool to use with students

All responses are anonymous so you can use this to get some honest feedback on your teaching if you are doing action research.
You can create opinion polls based on videos from YouTube (just embed the video and poll questions in your blog page) or text.
You can get students to create their own research polls for their peers and then discuss the results in class.
You can use it to get some feedback on your blog.
Students who write blogs can use it to get quick responses from readers.
You could even use it as a comprehension check for online text audio or video activities that you create for your students.

You can create a number of questions and embed the code for each one in the page, so you aren't limited to just one question, but you are limited in terms of giving students some response to their answer. They will only see how other people have responded so they won't know whether they are right or wrong.

I think this is a great simple tool that is really easy to use. I hope you find a good use for it. So what do you think?

Will you use Vorbeo

YesNoMaybe