Learning with games and quizzes!

In this post I'm going to discuss some interesting apps for making games and quizzes! Before we get into this, my Prezi went well on Wednesday! The students seemed to like it and followed it well! So a thumbs up for Prezi from me and my students! The first app I want to blog about is Hot Potatoes. Although I think the name is ridiculous, it's actually really cool! The features of this download are JCloze, JQuiz, JCross, JMatch and JMix (these names are also ridiculous). JQuiz is really good for making quizzes and the questions can be multiple-choice or short answer, which is ideal for a good variety of questions. JCloze can be used to create blank-filling exercises, which I think would be great for Psychology because there are a lot of key words and terms to learn and these can easily be confused. JCross is for creating crosswords, JMatch is to create a matching exercise and JMix is a jumbled sentence exercise. I have had a play around with this software and overall I think it's fantastic! My only issue with using it is the lack of computers in the classrooms that I normally teach in! If I was to use it, I would have to book a computer room, but I think this would be worth it if students could complete these exercises, I am definitely considering it as an end-of-term treat! My next victim of discussion is Socrative. This, I love! It allows for live activity so it's really easy to monitor students' progress to see if any individuals are having any difficulties. And although it's difficult for me to get computers, Socrative also allows you to create quizzes and print them, so I could actually use it without having to book computers! Students love worksheets so these quizzes will be very beneficial to my teaching. I think this is my favourite software for creating quizzes! Finally, Kahoot! I don't like it. It looks quite childish and I think my students would feel like they're back at primary school if I asked them to use it. The entire design is just unsuitable for further education, in my opinion. I much prefer Socrative because it's much easier to use and a lot more age-appropriate. I would not use Kahoot in my teaching due to its appearance and mainly because I prefer Socrative for a number of reasons! So after looking through them and having a play around, I am going to plan a lesson of activities for my lovely students at the end of term using Hot Potatoes and Socrative! I think they'll love it, plus it'll be a great way for me to see if they've actually learned anything from my lessons!