Creating jpeg quizzes with PowerPoint

Now that PowerPoint allows you to easily save your slides as jpegs, it's a simple job to create these quizzes for mobile phones or any mobile device using PowerPoint. Just watch for the way PowerPoint numbers the slides so that you don't get caught out with slide1 being followed by slide11 (rather than slide2). To prevent this, you may want to re-number the slides slide01, slide02 etc.

Download the resources here.

My previous post on creating jpeg quizzes using MS Paint can be found by clicking here. It also contains the videos showing the quiz on a mobile phone.

Subscribing and reading RSS feeds

Those of us who use RSS feeds sometimes take it for granted that students or teachers know how to subscribe to feeds and read them. I recently had a request to create a handout on how to do this for the textwall but the instructions will work for any RSS feed so here is the handout.

Creating a Google Presentation

This is pretty straightforward to set up, like Google Forms. A Google Presentation with the right settings allows learners to type into the slides at the same time as other learners.

One idea for this technique is to ask learners to type a question they may have on the topic. You can then run through the questions as a slideshow and answer each one in turn. I've used this with groups where each person has added a reflection to one slide. Although you can ask people to do this in various other ways, there is something about showing everyone their responses one at a time in large text that engages the audience.
Download a simple handout on how to set up a Google Presentation here: pdf handout
For more ideas on how to use Google Presentation see my previous blog post on the subject: http://bit.ly/lsgooglepres

RSS, podcasts and Joe Bloggs

If you don't currently subscribe to James Clay's elearning stuff podcasts, why not? Latest episode here starring myself and Dave Sugden: podcast #080

Spinvox Goddess

Sometimes Spinvox gets it spectacularly wrong!
This is an old post that I never got round to publishing so here it is:

Google forms has a new feature (new to me anyway!)

Oh wow! On Google Forms, using Multiple choice, you can now go to a specified page depending on the answer.
This is the pop up information when you select 'go to page based on answer'.

"Note: "go to page" questions work only on forms with multiple pages. Choose "page break" from the Add Item menu to add additional pages."

Would love to see examples of how you have used this feature in replies to this posting.

LAMS

Many years ago, I was enamoured with LAMS. It had an intuitive interface and was the best mirror for how we might want to plan a lesson for an individual (or a class but having differentiated routes available)
I wonder if it's worth revisiting it? It can now integrate with Moodle!
I think the trigger for this was a discussion with Jacqui Smith of Selby College about ways to encourage her learners to be more analytical in their answers. She teachers Psychology. LAMS would provide a stepped approach that could coach a learner to adopt a deeper analysis and provide more sophisticated answers.

http://lamsfoundation.org/