Problem-Attic Test Generator

Problem-Attic is a website that provides teachers with a database of questions from state and national assessments to create tests and worksheets. 

If you are looking for a bank of question from the NYS Regents, SAT, AP Exams or other state assessments, Problem-Attic might be what you are looking for.

The video below will give you a quick overview of what it is all about.

Crossword Labs - easily make crossword puzzles

Crosswords can be a fun way for students to review or a great activity for the students who finish early.  The problem is that it is hard to find a crossword puzzle that goes along with the content you are teaching.  Crossword Lab is a free site that allows you to easily make your own crossword puzzles.  All you need to do is to enter the word that should appear in the puzzle and then the clue for it.  For example: dog man's best friend.  In this example dog would be the word that would be in the puzzle and man's best friend would be the clue written.

Give it a try and let me know what you think!

How to play Quizlet Live

Quizlet Live launched several years ago, but it's still one of my favorite games to play with my students.  Basically it takes a Quizlet set and turns it into a collaborative game.  Once you open the set that you want to use and select the live option a website and code are presented to students.  Students are assigned to teams and then they they need to work together to answer the questions.  Each student will have a possible response on his/her device, but only one person on the team will have the correct answer.  This means that students need to talk with one another to make sure that the wrong answer isn't selected.  If it is, the team's score resets itself.

When I really want to challenge my students, I don't let them sit with their teams.  This means they really need to know their stuff as they won't be able to talk with their team.  Students run the risk of having the correct answer, but not knowing it or thinking they know the answer when it's actually wrong.

What are some of your favorite review games?

Asteroid Blasting Review Game

Kupiter is a study website that looks like fun for your students.  It's great to review vocabulary and other content.  Students shoot at letter to spell the word to complete the sentence or match the definition. Students get points based on how accurately and quickly questions are answered.  One of the things I like most is that it works on all devices, so students don't need to download an app.  You can create a class so that there is a leaderboard.  This, along with the explosions and powerups, can really be a motivator for students.

You can create your own game on Kupiter by writing questions from scratch or by importing them from Quizlet or an Excel spreadsheet. Game links can be shared via social media and Google Classroom.

Watch the short video below for a demonstration of how the game is played.

What review games do you use in your classroom? 

My favorite free online test, quiz and worksheet generator

Take a look at this walk through of Problem - Attic and how to use it.  You will find banks of questions from many state assessments as well as national tests. 

The easiest, free test and worksheet generator

I haven't mentioned Problem-Attic in several years, but I thought that I'd bring it up again.  Since I mentioned it last the number of questions available has more than doubled.  It is so easy to search through the question bank and create tests and quizzes.  For me, it's the only test generator I use.  With all of the questions available, why would I pay for something else?

Take a look at the video below to see what Problem-Attic is like and how easy it is to use.

If you want to see my previous posts you can find them here and here.

What do you use to create tests and quizzes?

Quizlet's all-digital unconference

Quizlet is a tool that I love to use in my classroom.  I love that I can use it as an in-class activity and students can use it on their own to review.  There is so much that Quizlet can do that it would take a number of blog posts to go through it all.  Luckily for us, Quizlet is holding a free online unconference.  It will be going on over two days - August 9th and 10th and you can join in on any or all of the sessions.  If you can't make the sessions live, all of them will be up on Quizlet's YouTube channel in the future (no date has been listed yet).

Day 1 sessions include:

• Engaging all students with Quizlet
• Personal and Interpersonal Learning with Quizlet Live
• Fun variations on Quizlet LIfe
• Creating Interactive Study Material with Quizlet
• Organizing and Sharing with Quizless Classes
• Quizlet Hacks for Teachers
• How students use Quizlet
• New Quizlet Feature Sneak Peak

Day 2 sessions include:

• Benefits of Quizlet Teacher
• Time-Saving Hacks for Teachers
• Quizlet and Google Classroom
• Leading PD with Quizlet
• Creating ways to use Quizlet
• New Quizlet Feature Sneak Peak

Annotate Images and Videos

You've heard the expression A picture is worth a thousand words, but it can be so much more!  Thinglink is a site that allows you to take a pictures (or even a video) and annotate it so it's so much more.  The free education plan gives you and up to 100 of your students access to the basic ThingLink platform.  Of course your students can sign up for their own account that isn't connected to you if you have more than 100 students.  The only difference, is that if a student isn't connected to your account you won't be able to see what they have created unless they share the link with you.

The basic program allows you to annotate an image with little hot spots that pop up either a link to a website of your choosing or just some descriptive text.  You can also search for a previously created ThinkLInk images and remix them.  This means you can edit the image to add or remove hotspots to fir your need.   Thinglink is multiplatform and can be used on the computer or with the Android or iOS app.

Below is an example of a ThingLink on the human body (I can't take credit for this, it was created by a student ThingLink user).   As I've done here you can embed ThingLinks into any place that allows HTML code.  She decided to make the hot spots letters and numbers so that you can hover over them for more information.  You can also use small target like circles as the hot spots.  (If the image below isn't working, click here to see it)

QuizBean - great for quick feedback or simple quizzes

QuizBean is a website that you allows you to digitally assess students. You can use this as an actual quiz or for things like in class feedback or something like an exit ticket. As with many similar sites, there is a both a free and paid version. The free version lets you have 3 quizzes at a time, up with to 26 students total. This is not really the most idea for those who teach secondary and have multiple different classes. This might be good, however, if you have one section that is different than the others. (In the past I have taught one section of chemistry and the rest biology so I could use this with just my chemistry class).

The site itself does give you a lot of options for your "quiz." You have the option to scramble choices and choose from three different question types (multiple choice, multiple correct and true/false). I also like that you can add in images and videos in the questions and explanations in the answers.

Once you have the quizzes created you can share it with your students through Quizbean (assign to specific students or classes) or with url (direct link or embed link) . You can also set an expiration date when it will no longer be activate and the maximum number of attempts students can have.

Once the test has been taken the students can see their score and which questions they got right or wrong. You get to see how many students took the quiz, what the average score was and even look at a specific student and see who they did. You can print or export this data as a pdf, csv or excel file.

What's your go to site for online assessment?

5 Ed-Techs Tips to make your time in the classroom easier!

Thank you to Alexis for this guest post!

Hello! Alexis from Science Beans here! I wanted to talk about some technology resources that all teachers can use to make your time in the classroom easier (and a little more fun!). Technology has changed my classroom in amazing ways. Here are some tools I use in the classroom that have transformed learning and saved me time ;)

Common Curriculum (CC)

Common Curriculum has saved me a tremendous amount of time when it comes to lesson planning. I wanted to find a way to make lesson planning easier and completely online rather than creating word documents for my weekly plans. It was getting tedious and very annoying having to type and retype the plans to place them in my lesson plan binder! I did a little research and after testing some online lesson planning sites out I fell in love with CC. The service is FREE for teachers but of course has upgrade options as well. The site gives you the option to plan for multiple classes in whatever format or template you like. One of my favorite options is being able to collaborate with colleagues making common planning time a piece of cake! The PRO version is completely worth it because you can plan by units, track standards in your lesson plans, export your plans as PDFs in different formats, and have a class website! No matter what version you decide to use, the lesson plans are all saved online. If someone needs to see my lesson plans, I share them (email, pdf, etc.) no need to print! For more info, see my previous blog post here.

This is what the lesson plan page looks like & the standards listing:

Edmodo

This for me is not only fun but extremely useful! I am pretty obsessed with it (I even have an Edmodo cape that I won at an online seminar – nerd alert!) Edmodo looks like Facebook but for schools and classrooms. The transformation of Edmodo over the years has been incredible. There is so much you can do and learn about on Edmodo that different PD’s and Seminars are given to teach you the various tools. Put simple, you make a class page, the kids sign up, and you get to collaborate! You can post notes, create assignments, create quizzes, you can create a poll, or use a ‘Snapshot’ (series of benchmark questions in math and reading that will show you which standards students need help in). I like to use mine as an online classroom platform.
All of the notes, assignments, handouts, you name it, are in folders on the class sections. One of the best additions to Edmodo has been the linking of your Google Drive or Office 365. It’s not only good for students but a great way to collaborate between teachers locally or around the world. I can probably write a book on everything you can do on Edmodo, trust me it’s awesome! Check it out!





Remind

This is a cool site/app that allows you to send out text message reminders to students. When I first started using remind (when it was remind101) it was simple. You received a unique phone number, the kids would subscribe to the text messaging service with a class code you created, and voila! They would receive text reminders every time you sent out a message. They could not answer and did not have access to your personal information. Over the years, the site/app has changed its name to Remind and has some amazing features. Now you can:

The number to sign up is the same for all teachers (81010) and the class code is the only thing that changes or is unique

• set office hours where students can respond back to questions
• students can “stamp” messages using the app
• Add pictures, sounds, links, to messages or set the delivery time
• receive the messages by email
• post a widget on your school website for the messages to be displayed
• send messages to a small group of students in a class
• download a pdf of your message history in any class…..

…..and so much more! Parents have signed up and love knowing what the students should be working on. My school has also moved to using a school wide remind where school announcements are sent out.



Kahoot & Quizlet

I don’t know about you, but my students love to play games (and so do I). No matter what the age or grade level, turning an assignment into any form of competition is usually a good idea. Kahoot is a free site that creates a game out of a set of questions created by the teacher. Once the game or ‘Kahoot’ is made, students answer the questions on their own devices. The question and answer choices are displayed on the screen in the front of the class and the students can choose their answer on their devices. It tracks the points and gives you data at the end with the questions the students did well on and what they need help with! Real time data! There are tons of way to use this resource: pretest style to see what they know, review game, bellringer, as a brain break, etc. Pressed for time? Many Kahoots are shared and you can use games created by others around the world. You can also create a discussion Kahoot and a survey version.

A similar option is Quizlet where you can make flashcards virtually, which seems cool enough, but it’s not just about the creation of the cards that’s awesome, it’s what you can do with them! Students can again play games using the cards and one of my favorites is Quizlet live. Students are placed on random teams and asked questions that match a set of cards. They need to figure out who on their team has the correct answer in order to win the race! Check out the video of students playing.




Discovery Education #SOS – Spotlight On Strategies

I am an extreme science nerd, which means anything Discovery or Discovery channel related is cool to me. I had
the opportunity to spend the last 3 years as a Discovery Education Leader and learn a huge amount of resources to help change the way students learn and how they create things. One of the resources we were taught focused on the use of something known as SOS (spotlight on strategies). Discovery came up with creative ways to use various media sources and formats to engage students in any subject or concept you are teaching. Here’s an example of one known as “take a Walk”. They come in pdf format and give you step by step what you need to do to complete the strategy. I love the last part with more ideas which is one way of extending any lesson. Click the link about to check out the Discovery Blog focused on all of their SOS strategies.




Thanks for having me and I hope you enjoyed these Edtechs!

Triptico - newly resigned website makes the resources even better!

I just received the e-mail below from the creator of Triptico.

A New Triptico Website
New Website, New Blog, New Features and Lots of Brand New Interactive Resources


The new Triptico website has arrived: www.tripticoplus.com

This new website replaces the existing site and app and will hopefully have lots of benefits:

• Nothing to install
• Access the resources simply by visiting the site
• Create anywhere and save to the cloud
• Create groups and shared folders for easy sharing with colleagues
• A new activity stream of ideas and updates
• New and improved interactive learning resources
• And much, much more.

There is also a new blog which I will fill with tutorials and ideas (such as a guide to the new version of the popular 'Word Magnet' resource).

If you have (or have ever had) a Triptico subscription then you can visit the site and sign in immediately.

If you are a free user, you can visit the site and sign up for a free account to access the many free resources and features.

I hope that you will enjoy visiting the new website.

David

Making an Image Map with Google Images

I recently learned how to make image maps while watching my new obsession, The Google Educast.  Bascially making an image map allows you to take a picture and turn it into a bunch of clickable links depending on where you click.  For example, the picture in the video below has created links such that each person is a link to their Google+ page.

This video shows you step by step how to do this.

How do you think you can use this in your classroom?  Clickable parts of the microscope perhaps?

StudyBlue - flashcards and quizzes

StudyBlue is a site that I started using with my classes this year and the students are really getting into it.  I set up my classes and then invited my students to join.  The site allows users to create flashcards and then share them with the other members in the class.  Not only can definitions be added, but the cards can have pictures on them as well.  The flashcards can be turned in a review sheet and an online quiz.

I have been setting up folders for each unit and then the students make the flashcards.  This way it is not extra work for me and the students get the added learning experience of making the flashcards.

StudyBlue is not just a website; it has android and apple apps as well.

How do you review vocabulary with your classes?

Quizdini - online review games

Quizdini is a site that allows your to create matching and  multiple-choice games for your student.  You can add in explanations and  hints (even with links and videos!).

There are two versions of each game: practice and race.  Practice just times you and the race gives you a certain amount of lives to try to get the answers right.

It's not a super amazing site, but it's a fun way to have students review material.

What do you normally do for review?