Information and Communications Technology: in the 21st Century Classroom 9783110401455, 9783110401448

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgment
Introduction
To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources
To Apply and Analyze Knowledge and Competences Using Formative Evaluation Tools
To Synthesize and Evaluate Using Assessment Tools
Future Trends (I): Pedagogical Conversational Agents
Future Trends (II): Mobile Devices for Education
Conclusions
List of Figures
List of Tables
Index

Citation preview

Diana Pérez Marín Information and Communications Technology in the 21st Century Classroom

Diana Pérez Marín

Information and Communications Technology In the 21st Century Classroom Managing Editor: Aleksandra Mreła Language Editor: Mark Judge

Published by De Gruyter Open Ltd, Warsaw/Berlin

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

Copyright © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín ISBN: 978-3-11-040144-8 e-ISBN: 978-3-11-040145-5 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Managing Editor: Aleksandra Mreła Language Editor: Mark Judge www.degruyteropen.com Cover illustration: © Thinktock/YanLev

Contents Acknowledgment

VIII

1 Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy 3 1.2.1 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge 7 1.2.2 To Apply and Analyze Knowledge and Competences 1.2.3 To Evaluate and Create 8 1.3 How to Use This Book 9 1.4 Exercises 10 1.5 Solved Exercises 11 1.6 References 13 2

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To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources 14 2.1 Introduction 14 2.2 Education Portals 15 2.2.1 Definition 15 2.2.2 Features 18 2.2.3 Taxonomy and Samples 20 2.3 MOOCs 25 2.3.1 Definition 25 2.3.2 Features 26 2.3.3 Some Repositories of MOOCs 28 2.3.4 Using a MOOC in Coursera Step-by-step 29 2.4 Google Resources for Education 32 2.4.1 Gmail to Communicate with Students 34 2.4.2 Google Drive to Create and Share New Resources On-line 39 2.4.3 Google Calendar to Organize Your Class Events 53 2.4.4 Google Video to Find Videos and Google Book to Find Book 56 2.4.5 Google Sites to Create Your Own Website and Google Blogger for Blogs 58 2.5 Dropbox 63 2.6 Exercises 67 2.7 Solved Exercises 67 2.8 References 70

3

To Apply and Analyze Knowledge and Competences Using Formative Evaluation Tools 72 3.1 Introduction 72 3.2 Hot Potatoes 73 3.2.1 Introduction and Installation 73 3.2.2 JCloze 75 3.2.3 JMatch 81 3.2.2 JQuiz 85 3.2.3 JCross 91 3.2.2 JMix 94 3.2.3 The Masher 97 3.3 JClic 99 3.3.1 Introduction and Installation 99 3.3.2 JClic Player 101 3.3.3 JClic Author 105 3.4 Exercises 115 3.5 Solved Exercises 116 4 To Synthesize and Evaluate Using Assessment Tools 4.1 Introduction 120 4.2 Delicious 121 4.3 Webnotes 126 4.4 Prezi 132 4.5 Animoto 136 4.6 Exercises 139 4.7 Solved Exercises 139

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142 5 Future Trends (I): Pedagogical Conversational Agents 5.1 Introduction 142 5.2 Overview of PCAs 144 5.2.1 PCAs Taking the Role of Teachers 144 5.2.2 PCAs Taking the Role of Students 148 5.2.3 Pcas Taking the Role of Companions 151 5.3 Let’s Practise with the Willow Agent 154 5.4 Taxonomy: How to Choose Which PCA to Use 157 5.5 Exercises 159 5.6 Solved Exercises 159 5.7 References 160 6 Future Trends (II): Mobile Devices for Education 6.1 Introduction 162 6.2 Hardware 163

162

6.2.1 Tablets 163 6.2.2 Digital Whiteboards 166 6.3 Software 168 6.3.1 For Tablets 168 6.3.2 For Digital Whiteboards 172 6.4 Exercises 175 6.5 Solved Exercises 176 6.6 References 176 177 7 Conclusions 7.1 Introduction 177 7.2 Synopsis Table 178 7.3 Troubleshooting 181 7.4 Exercises 182 183 7.5 Solved Exercises List of Figures List of Tables Index 194

186 193

Acknowledgment I would like to dedicate this book to my loving husband. Iván, my days and nights are full of light thanks to your company. I give thanks every morning for the opportunity of knowing you, and for being able to share my life with you forever and always. And, many thanks to our beloved unborn baby, for being with me during the hours of writing, and rewriting, patiently listening to the continuous typing. Hopefully, when you are bigger, you will be able to read what your mummy wrote while you were still a little embryo. I love you both very much. I would also like to dedicate this book to my family and friends. Thank you for always being there with me since I was a little child. Thanks to my mum and dad for educating me, for loving me, and for allowing me to become the person that I am now. Thanks also to my sister, Sonia, who is one of the biggest presents life has brought to me. My life would have not been the same, without you. Special thanks to my University, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, which has been a  second home to me. Thanks for giving me the  opportunity of working there as a  teacher and researcher. My lifelong passion has been, and continues to be, the desire to teach. With this book, I hope that teachers, and future teachers, find the tools that make this passion of teaching fruitful and an experience so wonderful that your students get the same excitement that you feel teaching your subject. Finally, thank you to you, my reader, because this book is useful as long as you read it. Please, do not only read, but practise using the  tools, feel the  passion of teaching, apply the knowledge, and enjoy!

1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction Let me start this book by sharing with you my experience while I  was watching the video “The history of technology in Education” by SMART1. I enjoyed that video very much. Please, watch it, and if you cannot watch it, at least consider Figure 1.1 with one of the snapshots of the video.

Figure 1.1: A snapshot of the video with its storyline

I imagined myself teaching in the  Pythagoras Academy in 510 BCE just talking to my students. I would have questioned them about the purpose of nature, language, music, arts, math, etc. I would have waited until they all had answered and shared their insight and ideas. Later, I felt sad because I imagined that it would have been just 20 students, while most of the population lacked a proper education. Moreover, I felt really sad when I realized that there was no technology, as simple as a notebook or a  textbook, so that the  students could take and share notes, or even register in some way the knowledge, to transfer and enrich it. If you were not there listening, you missed it! Later, according to the video (in America), there were the first public schools in 1600. I felt happier because Public Education meant more students who could come to class, and there was basic technology for them: a blackboard, some chalkboard slates and books. But then again, I felt sad, because I imagined I would have made my students repeat a hundred times the same sentences so that they memorized them by heart. Is that the purpose of teaching?

1  See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFwWWsz_X9s (last visit on June 30th, 2013). I assume basic knowledge of how to use Internet, if not please read Cadenhead (2002) a step-by-step guide to start using Internet. © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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 Introduction

Three hundred years later, the audiovisual age started. This was a  huge change in general, and as usual, such changes affect education too. So, I  imagined myself entering the classroom with my overhead projector, asking the students what they saw, and discussing that with them. I felt happier as a teacher with pedagogical goals, and with some technological advances at hand to enhance the teaching experience. Again, the technology is seen as a tool, and if, as a teacher, you learn how to use it, it can feel really good to have such tools! Moreover, there are other ways for students to gain and share their knowledge: listening to radio programs, watching TV and reading books. Some researchers tried to use TV as a powerful teaching medium, according to the old Chinese proverb: Tell me and I’ll forget show me and I may remember involve me and I’ll understand

Television makes “showing” possible, it was more than talking and listening, and you could even record the programs with a video recorder, using VHS tapes to watch the programs several times. Even, at the end of the decade, with the first computers, you could start watching some information on your computer screen. Later, it would be possible to record your own CD or DVD and watch it whenever you liked. Can you see a problem with that? It seems wonderful, but read again the Chinese proverb; we are just at the second line, what happens with the most powerful line: “involve me and I’ll understand”? Watching television or a  CD/DVD in your computer are passive activities, you are a spectator whose opinion is not sought. You do not need even to think! You are not asked to get involved, so how can you get involved? And then, the Internet appeared! It was such a big revolution, first for the military and researchers at universities. They could know what happened far from their home, and they got involved! Researchers thought that the Internet could be the answer for education, too. The Internet provided something new, something that no previous technology had provided, it provided “interaction”. You may be thinking right now, and why is interaction so important? Well, interaction allows the student to get involved and, according to the Chinese proverb, to understand. If the  student is no longer a  spectator, but is required to participate, to modify parameters and to change what happens, to introduce new aspects, to answer, to play, then this is the  new dimension that technology could provide in a  one-to-one personalized setting, as a  complement for other teaching methods. Moreover, new technologies have appeared in the  last decades. Hence, in this book, which I  am writing with the  purpose of helping you become a  21st century teacher with pedagogical goals, I would like to help you understand the technology of this era so that you can use this as a complement to your teaching.



Overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy  

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Teachers in the 21st century share the same goals that teachers had in previous centuries, even those in the Pythagoras Academy. We (I am a teacher, too) all want students to learn, evolve, and attain and practice competences. I have not studied Pedagogy myself, so I  am not the  person to consult, and this is not the  book to read, if you want to learn about Pedagogy. I am a PhD in Computer Engineering for Education, and this is the focus of my research and my passion. However, although all my education is in Computer Science, I  realized from the  very beginning that without Pedagogy, computers cannot be used for education. In general, whenever a  Computer Engineer applies the  computer to an area of interest, s/he must learn about that area, and in my case, this area has been Education. So, please let me help you with the  topic that I  have been studying for more than ten years now. Let me tell you that they have been ten wonderful years, in which I have seen how educational portals (you will learn what they are in Chapter 2) have evolved to become MOOCs (more about that in Chapter 2, too), complex and very sophisticated desktop authoring tools used to create educational computer exercises have evolved to friendly, easy-to-use on-line interactive computer educational programs (more about that in Chapters 3 and 4). Also, I’ve seen how the  usability and interaction of educational programs have reached an edge with natural language dialogue –as provided by Pedagogical Conversational Agents (more about that in Chapter 5), and the most amazing change, the evolution of computers to the point where they can be integrated into mobile devices such as smart-phones, tablets, and also digital whiteboards and multi-touch tables (we will learn more about these in Chapter 6). As you can see, there is still much to read, and please do not only read, but practice with the  step-by-step solved exercises, and try everything indicated. Remember the Chinese proverb, and another one of my favorite quotes, this time by Benjamin Franklin: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” So, please get involved! In the next Section, I will provide you with an overview of Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom, 1975). Yes, I know, I told you this is a book written by a Computer Engineer, but remember, this is a book of how technology can be used for education in the 21st century, so it should start right, with pedagogical goals, and Bloom’s taxonomy can help you to categorize educational goals, so please keep reading.

1.2 Overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy In 1956, Benjamin Bloom developed his taxonomy of pedagogical goals. It involved three domains: cognitive, affective and psychomotor. In this book, the focus is on the  cognitive domain, which has a  hierarchical nature: it is assumed that learning of higher levels depends on the learning of knowledge and skills in the lower levels.

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 Introduction

So, although the  taxonomy has later been revised and expanded (Anderson, Krathwohl, & Bloom, 2005), the core idea remains the same: We must remember a concept before we can understand it. We must understand a concept before we can apply it. We must be able to apply a concept before we analyze it. We must have analyzed a concept before we can evaluate it. We must have remembered, understood, applied, analyzed, and evaluated a concept before we can create.

These sentences can be visually represented as a  pyramid of levels as shown in Figure  1.2. I  like the  pyramid representation, as do many other teachers and researchers, because it shows the  hierarchical nature of Bloom’s taxonomy, and it can serve as a  guide for teachers to choose the  level in which they are working in their class (although sometimes in a class several levels can be combined). Usually, however, beginners start with basic knowledge and comprehension (levels 1 and 2 – to remember and understand). As they understand the  knowledge, they can apply and analyze that knowledge (levels 3 and 4 – to apply and analyze). Finally, students become experts in that knowledge (synthesis and evaluation), being able to evaluate and create new knowledge (levels 5 and 6- to evaluate and create).

Figure 1.2: The six levels of the Bloom’s taxonomy



Overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy  

 5

The teacher, according to the  level of the  students in the  particular area of knowledge under study, must select a pedagogical goal. Any pedagogical initiative must have a goal in order to provide a clear idea of what is to be achieved, and so that your students know what it is expected of them. So, before choosing the technology, before organizing the material, before anything else, make sure that you have a goal for your class! Figure  1.3 is a  wheel provided by “More than English” (2013) with some goal verbs classified in the levels of the taxonomy. There are many classifications on-line that you can find useful. For example, the summary published by the Counseling Services of the  University of Victoria2 adapted from Allyn and Bacon (1994), or the Bloom’s taxonomy action verb sheet published by Clemson3 (2013).

Figure 1.3: A wheel of verbs of the Bloom’s taxonomy (source: More than English, 2013)

2  See http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learning/exams/blooms-taxonomy.html (last visit June 30th, 2013) 3 http://www.clemson.edu/assessment/assessmentpractices/referencematerials/documents/ Blooms%20Taxonomy%20Action%20Verbs.pdf (last visit June 30th, 2013)

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 Introduction

However, with just a  verb you cannot create the  pedagogical goal. In general, to formulate a pedagogical goal you must use the following elements (at least 1 and 2, while 3 is optional): 1. An action verb in the infinitive (e.g. to remember, to apply, to translate...verbs in Figure 1.3) 2. Content (data, concepts/procedures/processes/attitude…) 3. (if necessary) Circumstances (level of domain/media used/scope) A well formulated pedagogical goal could be: “To analyze the quality procedures used to evaluate higher education”. Finally, irrespective of the level of Bloom’s taxonomy, teachers must take into account the  particular features of their class: the type of students, their number, the area of knowledge, resources and time so that the goals are realistic and achievable by the students. For instance, if I am an English teacher of 20 students who have never studied English before, and they are really motivated, my first pedagogical goal for the class would be that they learn the numbers 1-10 (one, two, three and so on) in the first lessons. So, according to the rule previously given to formulate pedagogical goals: 1. I would choose a verb from level 1 of Bloom’s taxonomy: remember. For instance, “name” (see Figure 1.3, it just appears the first in the remember category) 2. I would add the content: “the numbers from one to ten in English” 3. No circumstances needed here. The goal that I  will tell my students would be: “Today, our goal is to name the numbers from one to ten in English”. Once I know that, my students know that, and we can start using technology to help us to achieve our goal. For example, I  could use a  computer program that makes the  number appear together with the  name, requiring the  student to repeat it, or I  could create a  song containing the numbers from one to ten. It would have not been realistic, if for the  same class, my pedagogical goal was chosen from level 6. Imagine that I entered the same class of English learners without previous knowledge of the language and I formulate the goal: “Today, our goal is to create an English poem”. Surely, the result would be a disaster as students would not have either the vocabulary or the grammar to succeed in the task. In the  following subsections, we will focus on each level of the  taxonomy in more detail. It is important that you understand these levels, and are able to formulate goals in each level, so that you can make use of the technology in this book to help your students achieve these pedagogical goals.



Overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy  

 7

1.2.1 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge The first level of the  taxonomy corresponds to the  goal of remembering. The definition of Bloom for this level is to remember previously learned information, such as data (e.g. names, dates, numbers, facts,...) or concepts (principles, methods, theorems,…). Some action verbs for this level would be arrange, define, describe, duplicate, identify, label, list, match, memorize, name, order, outline, recognize, relate, recall, repeat, reproduce, select or state. The “knowledge” level is appropriate for beginners who are learning the basics of some new knowledge. For instance, this level would be appropriate for little children that are learning the letters of the alphabet. A pedagogical goal for them would be: “To memorize the letters of the alphabet”. They need to know the letters so that they can advance to higher levels of knowledge. It could also be appropriate when reading a text, to find out what the students remember. In this case, a possible pedagogical goal would be: “To name the  main characters of the  story”. It could be a  useful activity both for students of a  foreign language and for those practicing reading skills. The second level of the  taxonomy corresponds to the  goal of understanding. The definition of Bloom for this level is to demonstrate an understanding of the facts. It could be a sequence in a procedure, or processes. Some action verbs for this level would be classify, convert, defend, describe, discuss, distinguish, estimate, explain, express, extend, generalize, give examples, identify, indicate, locate, paraphrase, predict, recognize, rewrite, review, select, summarize or translate. The “comprehension” level is appropriate for students who have learnt something, and now they have to prove they have understood it. For instance, this level would be appropriate for children that have learnt how to add numbers. A pedagogical goal for them would be: “To give an example of adding two numbers”. They need to understand the procedure of adding before doing something more complex such as a  product. It could also be appropriate when reading a  text, to find out what the students have understood. In this case, a possible pedagogical goal would be: “To summarize the story in your own words in three lines”.

1.2.2 To Apply and Analyze Knowledge and Competences The third level of the taxonomy corresponds to the goal of applying. The definition of Bloom for this level is to apply knowledge to actual situations. Some action verbs for this level would be apply, change, choose, compute, demonstrate, discover, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, manipulate, modify, operate, practice, predict, prepare, produce, relate, schedule, show, sketch, solve, use or write. The “application” level is appropriate for students who already understand some knowledge, and they have to start applying it. For instance, this level would

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 Introduction

be appropriate for children that have already learnt and understood how to add and know they need to solve a math problem in which it is necessary to add. A pedagogical goal for them would be: “To solve this Math problem by using one addition”. This is a task much more complex, than just knowing the numbers, understanding how to add, but now they need to apply the addition to solve the math problem. It could also be appropriate after reading a  text to write a  different ending applying the knowledge of the story and some writing skills. In this case, a possible pedagogical goal would be: “To write a different ending in which the main character of the  story changes his behavior so that he is now less shy”. It could be a  useful activity both for students of a foreign language or for those wishing to practice reading and writing skills. The fourth level of the  taxonomy corresponds to the  goal of analyzing. The definition of Bloom for this level is to break down objects or ideas into simpler parts and find evidence to support generalizations. Some action verbs for this level would be analyze, appraise, breakdown, calculate, categorize, compare, contrast, criticize, diagram, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, identify, illustrate, infer, model, outline, point out, question, relate, select, separate, subdivide or test. The “analysis” level is appropriate for students who already understand some knowledge, they know how to apply it and now they need to analyze it to be able to do generalizations. For instance, this level would be appropriate for students that have already learnt and understood how to add, and they know how to solve math problems by using simple techniques on more complex problems in which not only one technique is enough but several techniques must be combined to solve the  problem. A pedagogical goal for them would be: “To solve this Math problem explaining the techniques used and how they have been applied together”. This is a task much more complex, than just knowing the numbers, understanding how to add, or to apply one technique to solve a math problem. It could also be appropriate after reading a  text to write a  review of the  story, or for medical students when they have to analyze the data provided by a patient to diagnose the patient’s illness. In this case, a possible pedagogical goal would be: “To diagnose the illness of the patient according to the data provided”.

1.2.3 To Evaluate and Create The fifth level of the taxonomy corresponds to the goal of evaluating. The definition of Bloom for this level is to compile component ideas into a new whole or propose alternative solutions. Some action verbs for this level would be arrange (depending on how you use the verb it can belong to different levels), assemble, categorize, collect, combine, comply, compose, construct, create, design, develop, devise, explain,



How to Use This Book 

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formulate, generate, plan, prepare, rearrange, reconstruct, relate, reorganize, revise, rewrite, set up, summarize, synthesize, tell or write. This level is appropriate for students who already understand some knowledge, they know how to apply it, how to do an analysis and, now they need to evaluate the  knowledge and think of other possibilities. For instance, this level would be appropriate for students that have already learnt and understood how to add, they know how to solve math problems by using simple and complex techniques, and now they need to evaluate whether each combination of techniques is optimum for each case. A pedagogical goal for them would be: “To devise the  optimum combination of techniques to solve each problem on the  list provided”. This is task much more complex, than just knowing the numbers, understanding how to add, or applying one or more techniques to solve a math problem. It could also be appropriate for finding a better solution to a problem. In this case, a possible pedagogical goal would be: “To find a better solution to the problem than the one provided”. The sixth level of the  taxonomy corresponds to the  goal of creating. The definition of Bloom for this level is to make and defend judgments based on internal evidence or external criteria. Some action verbs for this level would be appraise, argue, assess, attach, choose, compare, conclude, contrast, defend, describe, discriminate, estimate, evaluate, explain, judge, justify, interpret, relate, predict, rate, select, summarize, support or value. This level is appropriate for students who already understand some knowledge, they know how to apply it, how to do an analysis, how to evaluate it, and now they need to create their own knowledge. For instance, this level would be appropriate for students that have already learnt and understood how to add, they know how to solve math problems by using simple and complex techniques, they are able to find the optimum combination of techniques to solve problems, and now they are faced with the task of proposing a new technique to solve problems. A pedagogical goal for them would be: “To propose a new technique to solve the problem given”. This task is much more complex, than just knowing the numbers, understanding how to add, applying one or more techniques to solve a  math problem or finding the  optimum combination of already existing techniques because it requires creating something new (it could be a  modification of previous techniques combined together). Such a goal would be appropriate for a PhD student.

1.3 How to Use This Book So, great technology has evolved a lot in the last centuries, and there is a taxonomy with pedagogical goals classified in several categories, but how can I use this book? The answer is simple; this is a practical textbook, so I would not advise you just to read this book as a  novel. On the  other hand, this book pretends to be interactive. But, how can a  book can be interactive? The idea is that you practice the  solved

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 Introduction

exercises in each chapter, and solve the exercises that there will always be at the end of the chapter (the last Section). All the exercises are solved at the end, but please do not cheat, and try always to solve the exercises first on your own! There is also a forum on the book’s website in which you can share your ideas and experience when doing the  activities with other colleagues around the  world. Remember the Chinese proverb, and as I said do not only read, or do the activities, get involved!

1.4 Exercises Let’s start with a few exercises to get warmed up. Remember that all exercises are solved at the end of the chapter, but do not read the solutions until you have tried to solve the exercises on your own first! It is also possible that you may find alternative answers to these questions; in which case, you can share these on the  book’s website. 1. Watch the  video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzi2RIt8_nk4, and write the  top ten reasons for using technology in education according to that video. You can also share your opinion with other readers of the book on the website! 2. You have seen the  opinion of institutions, but what about students? Let’s watch the  video of an adult student. In particular, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=rvyP-cwpHN8 is the  final video project, a call to action, of a  Master’s degree student in Education Media and Design Technology. Think about reasons why you could follow the call to action, and start using technology for education, and congratulations because if you are reading this book, you are about to put those reasons into practise! 3. Finally, what about little children? And teachers? Find at least one video with the opinion of a child, and another video with the opinion of a teacher about this topic. You can also ask colleagues, and see what they think, taking account of different factors: age, socio-cultural background, education, etc. 4. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, categorize these verbs as educational goals in one of the six levels of the taxonomy: a. Understand b. Translate c. Compose d Cite e. Estimate

4  I have checked the links for these exercises on June 30th, 2013. If the link no longer works, please let us know at the book’s website, so that we can update it or add a similar working link. Even better, why not suggest another link?



Solved Exercises 

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f. Know g. Apply h. Synthesize 5. Formulate a pedagogical goal for each one of Bloom’s taxonomy levels for the area of knowledge in which you teach (or would like to teach).

1.5 Solved Exercises 1) The top ten reasons for using technology in education according to the video are the following: –– Students love it. –– It engages key components of learning. –– Professional development. –– Makes life easier for teachers. –– Improves test scores. –– Help students with low attention spans. –– Learn from the experts. –– Encourages completion of homework. –– Saves money. –– Remove obstacles. 2) My personal reasons (this is a subjective question that you may answer completely different and there is no right or wrong answer) for using technology for education are to provide my students with more opportunities and experiences. I  strongly believe that there are many possibilities for creating educational computer programs that students could use before going to class, during the class or to study after class, communication programs that foster collaboration among students, and mobile devices that allow students to work from any place connected to the Internet. Some years ago, a pedagogue told me something that I  would never forget (it should be well understood by a  pedagogue, but for a  computer engineer it is very informative): “Try with your students several approaches, do not repeat always the same, reinvent yourself and you will always enjoy teaching”. Since then, I do not only talk during my lessons, or try to explain a concept in different ways, but instead use multiple instructional methods, combining these in order to experiment with methodologies and technologies so that I can find which ones provide the best results for the students and for me!

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 Introduction

3) I  chose YouTube to look for videos, I  really like that website. Although as you may know, there are many more free Internet channels for education on the  web5. For example, Academic Earth, Big Think, Brightstorm, CosmoLearning, Futures Channel, Howcast, Internet Archive, Khan Academy, Learner.org, ResearchChannel, SchoolTube, Videojug, WatchKnowLearn, WonderHowTo, YouTube EDU or Vimeo. In particular, my choice for the opinion of a child was the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VSymMbMYHA It was nominated as Best Educational Use of Video/Visual 2010 in the edublog awards, and it is very graphic when describing the problem of new generations that do not connect with teachers who do not understand that new generations live in a different era with new resources and new possibilities, and that they need their teachers to be aware of those advances too. Regarding the opinion of teachers, I have chosen the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWcp8smECj8 What are your choices? Please, share them on the book’s website! 4) Understand, 2; Translate, 3; Compose, 5; Cite, 1; Estimate, 6; Know, 1; Apply, 3; Synthesize, 5. 5) I teach “Computer Science for Education”, so a sample pedagogical goal for each one of Bloom’s taxonomy levels would be the following: –– Level 1 (remember): “To define what an educational computer program is”. –– Level 2 (understand): “To classify the possibilities that computers can bring to Primary Education” –– Level 3 (apply): “To relate computer software for education to the  Bloom’s taxonomy level that they can cover”. –– Level 4 (analyze): “To differentiate between the cases where it is useful to integrate an educational computer program before, during or after the class”. –– Level 5 (evaluate): “To collect evidence of advantages and disadvantages of using computers for education”. –– Level 6 (create): “To create your own educational theory about how computers can be used for education according to several students’ factors such as gender, age or socio-cultural background”. Remember, these are just my samples, so please share your answers with other students on the book’s website, or if you are working in class with this textbook with other students in the class!

5  You can find the links for these websites in the reference section of this chapter.



References  

 13

1.6 References (last visit to all links on June 30th, 2013) Academic Earth, on-line at academicearth.org Anderson, L. W., Krathwohl, D. R., & Bloom, B. S. (2005). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing. Longman. Big Think, bigthink.com Bloom, B. S (1984). Taxonomy of educational objectives. Published by Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Pearson Education. Bloom, B. S. (1975), Taxonomía de los objetivos de la educación, Marfil, Alcoy. Brightstorm, brightstorm.com Cadenhead, R. (2002), How to use the Internet, Que Corporation, U.S.; 8th revised edition. Clemson. (2013). Bloom’s taxonomy action verb. On-line at http://www.clemson.edu/assessment/ assessmentpractices/referencematerials/documents/Blooms%20Taxonomy%20 Action%20Verbs.pdf CosmoLearning, cosmolearning.com Futures Channel, thefutureschannel.com Howcast, www.howcast.com Internet Archive, archive.org Khan Academy khanacademy.org Learner.org, learner.org More than English (2013), on-line at http://morethanenglish.edublogs.org/for-teachers/bloomsrevised-taxonomy/ ResearchChannel, youtube.com/user/ResearchChannel SchoolTube, www.schooltube.com University of Virginia (2013). Adapted Bloom Taxonomy of educational objectives. On-line at http:// www.coun.uvic.ca/learning/exams/blooms-taxonomy.html Videojug, www.videojug.com Vimeo www.vimeo.com WatchKnowLearn, www.watchknowlearn.org WonderHowTo, www.wonderhowto.com YouTube EDU www.youtube.com/edu  Other interesting links to keep reading (there are many more!) http://www1.prometheanplanet.com/es/ http://www.pearsonfronter.com/ www.multiclass.es biblioteca.sfpaula.com www.geniusnet.com www.avtic.es www.redalumnos.com www.twiducate.com misait.com/es www.edmodo.com/es www.auula.com www.mimio.com/es

2 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources 2.1 Introduction As explained in Section 1.2.1, the focus of the first and second levels of Bloom’s taxonomy is on remembering and understanding new knowledge. In this chapter, my goal is to introduce several online educational resources that you may find useful to achieve goals in these levels. See Figure  2.1 for a  general overview of the chapter.

Figure 2.1: General overview of chapter 2 (tools for levels 1 & 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy)

The resources described in this chapter have been chosen because, from my experience, I  have had the  opportunity of checking that students are able to use them, and that they are tools that serve to accomplish the  formulated pedagogical goal. Another reason is that they are free, and I  can give you a  step-by-step guide to their use. Please, do not think that these are the only resources available on-line, © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.



Education Portals 

 15

they can change, and there are many more possibilities, this is just to get you started and give you the basic knowledge and skills to keep working! As you get familiar with these tools, I  am sure you will be able to find others that you can find even more useful for your particular case. Moreover, you will be able to create your own resources. So, let’s start with the possibilities of Educational Portals in Section 2.2, their evolution to Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOC) in Section 2.3, some on-line Google Resources for Education in Section 2.4, and Dropbox in Section 2.5. The chapter ends, as always, with several solved exercises. Remember that this book is not a novel, and that you must practice what you read in order to take advantage of it!

2.2 Education Portals 2.2.1 Definition The Internet is a huge source of information. However, you cannot believe everything published on the  web. Education Portals are websites created by the  education community for the education community. These websites offer many services and a lot of content. For example, tools to find knowledge, didactic resources, collaboration tools, counselling, and even fun activities so that your students learn while they are having a good time (Bedriñana-Ascarza, 2005). So, just by looking at this definition, if I ask you to go to http://education-portal. com/, take care, this is a tricky question, would you tell me whether that website is an education portal? Well, the answer is no. An education portal is not only a repository of courses. Does this mean that this site is not useful? Not at all, we will learn in Section 2.3 about the concept of massive open on-line courses, and how some education portals have evolved to become huge repositories of these courses. However, there are still many education portals able to offer a range of services and content to accomplish goals in levels 1 and 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy that I would like to share with you. So, let’s study in detail which features are needed so that you can be really sure that you have found an education portal. To do that, please read again the definition provided for education portals in the first paragraph. It says that an education portal must be a website. However, we have just seen that not all websites are education portals as you can also see in Figure 2.2.

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Figure 2.2: An education portal is a website, but not all websites are education portals

If we keep reading the  definition, it says that an education portal must provide services. A service is an activity offered to serve a certain need of the users of the portal (usually students, teachers, or parents). Some sample services are the following: –– A search engine: It allows users to write one or more keywords to get specific information about the topics in the educational portal related to these keywords (see Figure 2.3) –– Communication tools: It allows users synchronous communication (e.g. a chat, all users must be connected at the same time) and asynchronous communication (e.g. a forum). –– Training: It provides links to courses and other didactic resources for students, teachers, parents, etc. –– Counseling: It gives advice about the  most appropriate content and activities according to certain criteria (e.g. pedagogical criteria). –– Fun: It provides educational games so that students can individually or collaboratively play to study concepts and competences.

Figure 2.3: An education portal must provide services, e.g. a content search engine



Education Portals 

 17

There is no minimum (well, one!) or maximum list of services that an education portal must provide to be considered an education portal. So, is Gmail an education portal? Well, the answer is again no, because although Gmail is a website and if offers services, it does not meet the  most important requisite, read the  definition again: education portals are created by the  education community for the  education community. This is a very powerful requisite. Not anyone can create an education portal. Usually, there is an institution or at least a group of teachers behind it. This assures the  quality of the  material, and involves more teachers, students, parents, and even companies that would like to offer some free content. On the other hand, because the content is usually free, and there is no contract, some education portals maintained by teachers depend on their amount of free time and efforts to update the portal. Thus, sometimes the education portal disappears, or to be able to afford the website hosting, many adverts are published, these can be really annoying. This is the reason why I will try to focus your attention on educational portals supported by institutions. Figure 2.4 shows a sample education portal supported by the Harvard Community6.

Figure 2.4: A sample education portal (website, with education services and contents)

6  See http://edportal.harvard.edu/, last visit August 2nd, 2013.

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 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources

2.2.2 Features The main features of an education portal are the following: 1. There must be didactic resources (about several general topics or a specific topic). 2. The knowledge must be organized according to features of the users such as: a. Role: student, teacher, parent, etc. b. Area of knowledge: biology, language, chemistry, etc. c. Age: children, young people, life-long learning, etc. d. Language: English, Spanish, German, etc. 3. It must be self-contained, i.e. without dependencies on external links. 4. It must provide added value services. So, let’s pick the sample education portal shown in Figure 2.4, and find the features indicated: 1) Where are the didactic resources? Well, it seems that there is no specific topic of knowledge, instead it seems be a general education portal. It is OK. So, this general knowledge must be organized according to certain criteria, if we look on the  right upper corner, we can find two interesting links regarding didactic resources “youth programs” and “adult programs”. Let’s click on “adult programs”. Have you already done it? What do you see? I see something like Figure 2.5, can you see the same? (if not, do not worry it is the Internet, it is possible they just updated the website!) My first advice here is that you always have a  look around the  webpage. Get familiar with the links, they usually group other possibilities. If you cannot see what you are looking for at the beginning, do not worry, keep exploring, the computer is not going to break, and once you practice with several education portals, you will start finding common patterns, such as, looking on the upper menu, or using the search engine located on the right upper corner marked in green (see Figure 2.6).

Figure 2.5: Some didactic resources found in the sample education portal



Education Portals 

 19

Figure 2.6: The search engine to help you find information in the education portal

And, another question, do you know what happens when you click on the logo on the left? Let’s try! Have you tried it? Yes, you did it! You went back to the home page. This is another useful tip whenever you start exploring so much, you do not know how to come back. In those cases, again, do not worry just click on the logo (usually on the upper left corner) and the website usually will go back to the home webpage, just like that! OK, so we found a  faculty speaker series, it seems interesting! We could keep exploring how to download them if they are free to download, or just view them on the webpage. Remember that the third feature is that the education portal should be self-contained, so usually it does not redirect you outside (although it may happen in some cases, nothing is 100% perfect, in those cases if there is no logo to click and go back, you can just use the “Go back” option of the browser, copy again the link or even better save the links that you find interesting as bookmarks so that you can always click on them to safely go back to the home webpage). Finally, according to the  fourth feature, the education portal should provide added value services, what do you say about trying now to find those “added value services”? Let’s look again at the website. See what I just found in Figure 2.7. This time I clicked on the “Free membership” link, and I found that even if I do not live in the Allston-Brighton area, I can sign up for the Ed Portal’s email list to stay up to date on what is happening there. What did you find?

Figure 2.7: Some services provided by the sample education portal

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 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources

2.2.3 Taxonomy and Samples Figure 2.8 shows a possible taxonomy of education portals according to three main criteria: the type of information provided (general or specific), the geographic scope (international, national or regional) and its informative or formative nature. Informative education portals just want to share information of an institution (institutional) or educational resources. On the  other hand, formative education portals aim to virtually educate (even with virtual classrooms) or to provide didactic material.

Figure 2.8: Services provided

As you can see, there are many possibilities, and my advice is that you explore many education portals at the beginning, for instance, now, explore the links provided in the  references, the examples given, but later, when you are working, choose 2-3 education portals, the ones that you find more relevant for your work, and focus on those education portals. The idea is that you do not need to check every five minutes what has been updated, but just be aware that there is a  huge source of free, high-quality material waiting for you in those education portals. OK, so let’s explore more education portals, classify them according to the taxonomy provided and how they can be used to accomplish levels 1 and 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy.



Education Portals 

 21

The first education portal that I would like to share with you is the one provided by the  Oman Ministry of Education (http://www.moe.gov.om/portal/sitebuilder/sites/ eps/english/home.aspx). Have you looked at it? If the link no longer works, just try to type into a search engine like Google the keywords “oman education portal”, and surely you will find the  link in one of the  top ten of the  results. So, now you have the  webpage, something similar to Figure  2.9. Again, it may have changed. Let’s classify the portal: Information: General Geographic Scope: National Nature: Informative, Institution – the Oman Ministry of Education Now, let’s find resources! The information is organized according to categories, so if we click on “students” we can find, for instance, some “studying tips”. It is now time for you to explore more options of this education portal. Enjoy it!

Figure 2.9: Oman Ministry of Education portal

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 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources

The second education portal that I would like to share with you is the one provided by the New Zealand Transport Agency (http://education.nzta.govt.nz/), which you can see in Figure 2.10. Let’s classify the portal: Information: Specific (road safety) Geographic Scope: National Nature: Informative, Educational Resources Moreover, if we click on “resources” we can find, for instance, by clicking on “secondary curriculum resources” some “case studies”. You can keep exploring more possibilities.

Figure 2.10: New Zealand transport education portal

The third education portal that I  would like to share with you is the  international Education World portal (http://www.educationworld.com/), which you can see in Figure 2.11. Let’s classify the portal: Information: General Geographic Scope: International Nature: Formative, didactic materials Moreover, if we click on “Teachers” we can find, for instance, by further clicking on “New printable back to school writing activities” some “writing assignments”.



Education Portals 

 23

Figure 2.11: A sample international education portal

Let’s continue with a fourth education portal, the BBC education portal (http://www. bbc.co.uk/learning/), which you can see in Figure 2.12, and let’s classify the portal: Information: General Geographic Scope: International Nature: Formative, virtual education If we click on “Art and design” we can find, for instance, by clicking again on “BBC Arts” some “readings”. There is also a  video you can watch in English with some multimedia for the reading. Finally, let’s explore a fifth education portal that is an example of a regional portal (http://kids.nypl.org/), which you can see Figure 2.13. Let’s classify the portal: Information: Specific (literature) Geographic Scope: Regional (New York) Nature: Informative, Institution (New York Public Library) If we click on “Books” we can find, for instance, a list of available audiobooks for children and the media format in which they can be listened to on the computer.

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 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources

Figure 2.12: BBC learning education portal

Figure 2.13: Sample regional education portal

MOOCs 

 25

2.3 MOOCs 2.3.1 Definition According to McAuley et al. (2010) a MOOC (Massive Open On-line Course) is “an on-line phenomenon that integrates the  connectivity of social networking, the facilitation of an acknowledged expert in a field of study, and a collection of freely accessible online resources”. If we compare this definition to the  one provided for education portal in Section 2.2.1, we can see there are some similarities such as: both are online education resources, and both were created by the education community. However, there are several important differences: 1. Education portals do not necessarily include courses in which thousands of students enrol, study, and complete assignments. 2. Education portals do not necessarily include the connectivity of social networking. Given that they were created earlier, usually chat-rooms, newsletters and forums are the key collaborative tools. On the other hand, given that MOOCs were created later, since 2010-2011 (Daniel, 2012), social networks are key elements, bringing with them new possibilities for collaboration. 3. MOOCs are like the  evolution of some education portals, as they now offer full courses, with the possibility of interacting with other students all over the world, and having a teacher, an expert in the area of knowledge, as facilitator of the course. As I  said earlier, teachers in MOOCs do not have the  same role that teachers have in class. No teacher is able to follow the conversations and homework of thousands of students at the same time! Teachers in MOOCs become facilitators, they provide questions to the group, high quality resources and sometimes they check the social networking tools to provide general questions. Some new issues in MOOCs are how to certify the  learning made by those thousands of students. Usually, the evaluation is based on on-line tests, peer-to-peer assessment or answers to questions in a forum, but still there is no consensus as to whether it would serve as university credits or as merits for a  job interview. Many MOOCs offer on-line badges that certify the  work done by the  student, without the signature of the teacher, and recently some institutions offer some signature and even, if the course is not free, some university credits. Another issue in MOOCs is the high attrition rate (Daniel, 2012). Many students just enrol because they want to read some material, but they do not intend to follow the course or complete the tasks requested. The problem is that in many MOOCs if you do not pass one lesson, the materials of the next lesson may be blocked, so the student just drops out. In other cases, students want to pass the  course, but they need to learn how to self-organize their time, to meet the deadlines, and even with the help of the social network and the computer platform which usually highlights the deadlines and events, they do not master the skill to complete all the tasks required.

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 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources

Figure 2.14 shows a MOOC in Coursera, one of the repositories of MOOCs available on-line7. As can be seen, it also provides resources, but they are not organized as in education portals, but as courses. In this particular case, the course is about the history of humankind.

Figure 2.14: Sample MOOC

2.3.2 Features The main features of a MOOC are the following: 1. The course must be created by an expert or a  group of experts in the  area of knowledge. 2. The knowledge must be organized in lessons (with multimedia material, usually learning goals are accomplished with short videos) and tasks to do such as: a. On-line tests, with feedback so that students can learn from their mistakes.

7  See https://www.coursera.org/course/humankind (if you cannot find it, because it has changed, any other course there will be similar and would serve as an illustrative sample of MOOC for this chapter)

MOOCs 

 27

b. Answer questions from a video, or discuss the topic in an online forum. c. Peer-to-peer assessment, such as read other students’ work and comment on it. 3. It must be self-contained, i.e. without dependencies on external links. 4. It must have some social network tools to facilitate collaboration among students and with the teachers. So, let’s pick the sample MOOC shown in Figure 2.14, and find the features indicated: 1. Who is the expert behind this MOOC? Well, it we click on his name, we can read his biography, and discover that he has written several books on the topic, and that he is a member of staff at a university. 2. OK, so let’s check the  organization of the  course, we can read in the  webpage that the  course syllabus includes 17 lessons organized into four parts. Each lesson is about 60-120 minutes long, divided into 3-6 short segments. It is also indicated that students can watch each lecture in one session, or break it up into several segments. No readings are necessary, it seems than the tasks are watching the videos and reading the materials for about 2-4 hours per week. 3. The course is self-contained, if we click on “Enroll” when the date of the beginning of the course approaches we will be told by mail or social network, and we will be able to start the course for free. There is also a new possibility. That is, to enroll with a signature track, in which, if you pay the amount indicated, you will receive a certificate as shown in Figure 2.15

Figure 2.15: Sample certificate after passing a MOOC

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Finally, according to the  fourth feature, the education portal should provide social network tools to foster collaboration among students. If we go back to Coursera, we can see how all MOOCs have links to Twitter8, Google Plus9 and Facebook10.

2.3.3 Some Repositories of MOOCs OK, so how can you take full advantage of one of these MOOCs? My advice is to find a  repository of MOOCs such as Coursera11 (we will provide a  step-by-step guide in Section 2.3.4). Other MOOC repositories are Edx12 and Udacity13. In Spanish, there are also two important MOOC repositories: MiriadaX14 and Unedcoma15. Once you are in the  repository, you will see hundreds of MOOCs that you can study, but be patient. If you enrol in all of them, you will not be able to take full advantage of them, since you will not have time! So, my advice is similar to that provided by Koutropoulos & Hogue (2012): 1) Before the MOOC starts, ask yourself “Is this the right MOOC for me?” You should avoid enrolling in a  MOOC just because you like the  title, or you think that it might be interesting. It usually leads to drop out. It is much better to read the description of the course in full, watch the video that teachers usually provide as introduction, and to explore carefully the contents and tasks required, and the time that is needed to complete them. 2) During the MOOC, what to do? Once you have enrolled in a  MOOC that is of interest, appropriate for your current level of knowledge and suits the free time you have, you have to remember what I said at the beginning of the book: the MOOC is useful for levels one and two of Bloom’s taxonomy because you will be offered a lot of education resources that you can read, learn and understand. However, MOOCs can also serve the higher levels, if you get more involved. So, you can just watch the  videos, and listen to the  explanations, that way you can accomplish goals in levels 1 and 2, and it is fairly easy to do that in a  MOOC. Nevertheless, if you really want to take full advantage of the  potential

8  https://twitter.com/ 9  https://plus.google.com/up/search 10  https://www.facebook.com/ 11  https://www.coursera.org 12  https://www.edx.org/ 13  https://www.udacity.com/ 14  https://www.miriadax.net/ 15  https://unedcoma.es/

MOOCs 

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of a  MOOC, you can complete the  tasks, share your knowledge with colleagues in some social network and thus, accomplish learning goals in higher levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, too. 3) After the MOOC, stay connected! Once the  MOOC finishes, it does not mean that you should disconnect from all the social network experiences. You have met other students with shared interests, so you can stay connected to them and be updated. I would also advise you not to try to read everything written in a MOOC, it could end in cognitive overload. It is very important that you filter the information and contributions according to your doubts and main points of interest. That way, you can really benefit from all these courses waiting for you and your students! 2.3.4 Using a MOOC in Coursera Step-by-step So, let’s practise interacting with a MOOC in Coursera, step-by-step. First, open your browser and type the coursera.org webpage address. Given that my goal in this book is to teach you about how to use computer resources for education, in this case for level 1 and 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy, let’s say our goal is to learn about the foundations of teaching for learning. First step: Enrol in the course “Foundations of Teaching for Learning”, go to https://www.coursera.org/course/teach1 (it is possible that this course has closed when you are reading this section. Do not worry, you can enroll in any other course, the steps are the same). To do that, sign in, and click on “Enroll for free” (our goal is not get a certificate this time, just to learn). Figure 2.16 shows you how the platform has recognized me at the right upper corner, and where to click to enroll for free. Second step: Go to class. Given that the course is already started, we can go to our first class. You can do that by clicking on the “Go to class” button as shown in Figure 2.17. If you would like to earn a certificate, you can also pay for it by clicking on “Learn more”. Third step: Agree to the  honour code. This is very important in general in the Internet (netiquette), but in particular in MOOCs. You should be the one answering the  tests, and taking the  course, and the  fact that other students cannot see your face does not mean that you are allowed to misbehave. If you consider something inappropriate in a  face-to-face class, if you would not say something face-to-face, it should not be allowed on-line. So, let’s agree to the  honour code by clicking on the button as shown in Figure 2.18. Fourth step: Read the  welcome webpage. As in face-to-face class, when in the first day, the teacher tells you what it is expected of you in the course, and how the dynamic of the class is, in MOOC the welcome page gives you this information, as shown in Figure  2.19. I  also advise you to watch any intro video, and explore the resources a little to become familiar with the MOOC and its possibilities.

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Figure 2.16: First step to enrol for free in the course

Figure 2.17: Second step to go to class

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Figure 2.18: Third step to agree to the honour code

Figure 2.19: Fourth step to read the welcome webpage

Fifth step: Enjoy the  course. Now you can read lesson 1, do the  quizzes, collaborate with other students in the forum. The course has started and you can fully take part. Level 1 of Bloom is achieved when you learn something about the topic, and level 2 when you understand it, something you can prove when you are able to explain it in other words to your colleagues in a social network, for instance! Figure 2.20 shows you one of the  videos in Lecture 2. See what I  am learning about the  curriculum? While I see this slide, I listen to the teacher, and I can even join a meetup group16 with other students to talk about it.

16  A meetup group can be defined as people with similar interests who plan events together and facilitate offline gatherings of the members in several locations.

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Figure 2.20: Fifth step to enjoy the MOOC: read, listen and share knowledge

2.4 Google Resources for Education Besides education portals and MOOCs, there are other interesting resources to accomplish levels 1 and 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy on the  Internet. For instance, the resources provided by Google in the pack “Google Apps for Education”. Figure 2.21 shows an image of the available Google Apps for Education.

Figure 2.21: Google Apps for education



Google Resources for Education 

 33

There are five apps, namely: –– Gmail: to send and receive mails (up to 25Gb mail storage free). –– Google Calendar: to organize your agenda. –– Google Drive (before Docs): to create and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. –– Google Video: to share video (up to 10Gb free). –– Google Sites: to create websites (up to 100Gb free). They are all provided free. You access them on-line, they are installed in Google computers, and the only requirement, if you’d like to keep the name of your school or university (i.e. you do not change your account from name.surname@university. es to [email protected]), is to provide a domain (ask the IT coordinator in your center). Nevertheless, this is the corporate solution, which can be downloaded from http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en-GB/edu/ just by clicking on the  button “Get Apps today” as shown in Figure 2.22. This is the webpage in English, but you can choose any other language by clicking on the pull-down menu on the left of “Sign in”.

Figure 2.22: How to download Google Apps for education

Many universities and schools use Google Apps for Education. For example, it is used at the University of Westminster, Wesleyan University, GeorgeTown University, Unochapecó University, The University of Michigan, Monash University, Northwestern University, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, University of Benin, etc. You can read some testimonies on-line17. Nevertheless, a particular institution may not want to use these resources. Does that mean you cannot use them? No, it does not since you can set up an individual Gmail account, and with that account you get access to the rest of the suite. Let’s see, step by step, how you can do that, and how it can help you as a teacher.

17  http://www.google.com/intx/es/enterprise/apps/education/customers.html

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2.4.1 Gmail to Communicate With Students First step: to create a Google account, you must fill in the form available on-line18 as shown in Figure 2.23. Google will check that your username is not already taken. If so, you will be offered alternatives. Also, it will check that the form is correctly filled in, including your password (a strong password should have at least 8 characters with letters, upper and lower case, symbols and numbers mixed. Do not use common names that appear in a dictionary or family information such as your sister’s name, these are not safe passwords!), your mobile phone number and a  kaptcha (i.e. an image with letters that you must type to prove that you are not a robot). Remember to read the  Google terms, and if you agree with them, tick the  checkbox accepting the terms. If everything is correct, when you click on “Next” then you go to a page such as the one shown in Figure 2.24. Finally, to access your account from the webpage in Figure 2.24 you just need to click on the button “Continue to Gmail”, otherwise you are asked to solve the  problem until everything is correct and you can access your account.

Figure 2.23: How to create a new Google account for free 18  For English users, the link is https://accounts.google.com/SignUp?service=mail&continue=https %3A%2F%2Fmail.google.com%2Fmail%2F<mpl=default&lp=1&hl=en-GB



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Figure 2.24: Confirmation of the creation of the Google account

Second step: to log into your Google account. Just after creating the account, you can see your mailbox as shown in Figure 2.25. There are three welcome e-mails19 from the Gmail Team. I advise you to read them because they are useful to learn some tips for using Gmail. You can also follow a quick welcome tour by clicking on the “Next” button in the Welcome pop-up menu. Otherwise, you can click on the upper “X” of the Welcome pop-up, and come back to the Gmail main webpage.

Figure 2.25: A snapshot of Gmail the first time a new user logs into his/her account

Third step: try to sign out and sign in again. OK, but before sending e-mails, just check that you know how to log off and log in (if you know how to do that, you can skip this step). Remember when I told you in the education portals section, that upper right corners were very important for search engines! Yes, very good! In this case, it is also very important, because if you click on your new e-mail account (in our example, [email protected]), you find the button “Sign out”. You can see how to do that in Figure 2.26. It is very important that you sign out of your account every time you finish using it. Otherwise, for instance, just closing the webpage, does not guarantee that

19  E-mail is the short for electronic mail. It can also be written as email. In this text, I will always use the term e-mail but please notice, that it is the same.

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you have signed out, and other people may have access to your mailbox, and even send e-mails in your name. Trust me, you do not want that to happen! So, sign out every time you finish working with your account.

Figure 2.26: How to sign out from Gmail

So, now let’s sign in again, we have not finished exploring the possibilities of Gmail! To sign in you must go to the Gmail webpage (you can just type gmail.com in your browser), and then type your user and password as shown in Figure 2.27 and click on the “Sign in” button.

Figure 2.27: How to sign in your Gmail account

Fourth step: read your mail. OK, so we have our account, but how can that help a teacher accomplish levels 1 and 2 of the taxonomy? Well, you can share knowledge with your students by sending them some e-mails with a  link to an interesting webpage, for instance. To do that, you need to be able to send e-mails. Moreover, you need to be able to read e-mails. If you already know how to do that, you can skip this step. Otherwise, stick around, because there are three different input mailboxes that I want to present to you: the primary, social and promotions. If you click on the “+” tab right next to “promotions” you can even create your own tabs, if you want to



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organize your mail in other tabs. You can also focus on the “Primary” input box, it is your choice! Anyway, when you see the list of e-mails as shown in Figure 2.26, maybe they are some students’ questions. To read them, you just click on the “Subject”, i.e. the title of the e-mail. For instance, in Figure 2.26 for the first e-mail, you will click on “Welcome to Gmail”. As you do that, you will see that the webpage changes to show you the content of the e-mail (see Figure 2.28). You can print the e-mail by clicking on the “printer” icon, and you can even answer back by clicking on the “back arrow” (some e-mails indicate that you cannot directly answer them, but it does not usually happen with students).

Figure 2.28: Reading a mail in Gmail

Let’s play a little game! Find one difference between Figures 2.26 and 2.28….I am not going to tell you the answer….look at the snapshots….look harder! Have you noticed the  difference? If you did not, do not worry, I’ll tell you: please, focus on the left column in Figure 2.26 below the “Compose” button, and next to the  “Inbox” word, there is the  number 3, what do you think that this 3 number means? It means that you have 3 e-mails that you have not read. If you now look at Figure  2.28, we have already read one e-mail, so the  number has decreased to 2 e-mails, and when you read all your e-mail, there is no number, until you receive a new e-mail. Fifth step: compose e-mails. You just read that a student has a doubt regarding one of the topics taught today in class, what can you do? You could just make the student wait until the next face-to-face class, or you can answer his or her e-mail. Do you know already one way to do that? You may recall that I have just told you that when you are reading e-mails, as shown in Figure 2.28, if you click on the back arrow then you can

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answer them. So, let’s click on the  back arrow to see what happens. Again, if you already know how to compose mails, you can skip this step. Otherwise, please have a look at Figure 2.29, there is now a big text area, in which you can write your answer, and click on “Send” when it is ready. You can also discard the message by clicking on the basket. Next to the basket, there is a little triangle, in case you want to choose another option, such as print the answer, check its spelling or change the composition interface. One interesting feature of Gmail is that if the student answers back, Gmail will join all the messages together as a conversation by default, so that you can read all of them in sequence.

Figure 2.29: Answer back a mail in Gmail

Ah…but maybe you just want to remind your students to bring their calculators for tomorrow’s class. You could phone them, but it would take you a long time…why don’t you send them an e-mail? In this case, you are going to use the “Compose” button that you can see in Figure  2.29 on the  upper left corner. So, let’s click on the  “Compose” button, and write our first e-mail to the  class as shown in Figure  2.30. When clicking on the  “To”, we must write the  e-mail addresses of the  students we want to e-mail. If the  e-mail is for a  small group of students, we can write several e-mail addresses separated by commas, than we can choose from the contact list (each time a student writes to us, his or her address is saved in the contact list). If you do not want the addresses to be shown, then click on “BCC”. Also, if you want to create a group, you can select all the e-mail addresses and give them a name.



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Figure 2.30: Compose a mail in Gmail

The next line is for the  “Subject”, i.e. the title of the  e-mail, in this case “Bring your calculators for tomorrow Math class”. It must be short and direct. It should tell the person who receives the  e-mail the  general idea of the  e-mail. Finally, the third text area is for the  message. It usually starts with some greeting, and several paragraphs with the information you want to send. The information is not necessarily limited to plain text information. If you click on underlined “A” at the bottom of the composition page, you can change the format (italics, bold, etc.), font color, background color, etc. providing additional style features to the mail. Moreover, if you click on the “clip” icon, you can attach some files, from your computer or Google Drive (we will see more about that later in this Section). I would also like you to pay attention to the “Saved” word on the lower right corner. It is important because when you are writing an e-mail, it is being saved as a draft. It means you can sign out of Gmail, and by clicking on the “Draft” option of the left menu, you can resume editing the mail later. As before, by clicking on the basket you can…..yes, discard the message! And, the little triangle gives you more options such as printing the e-mail or checking the spelling.

2.4.2 Google Drive to Create and Share New Resources On-line Let’s look again to Figure 2.25, because once we created our Gmail account, we were not only given the  option of sending mails (there are many tools to read and send e-mails on the Internet), but look at the upper menu in black. Next to the “Gmail” word that appears in white because it is the app that we are currently using, there is “Drive”. Google Drive is the Google app to create and share resources on-line. You can

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create documents, spreadsheets, presentations and even forms on-line. It is a really useful and powerful tool for any teacher, so please read carefully this section and try every step if you have not already used Google Drive. Figure 2.31 shows a snapshot of the welcome page of Google Drive. As you can see, now the word in white in the upper black menu is Drive because it is the app that we are currently using. You can also download a version for your PC, or just use it on-line.

Figure 2.31: Snapshot of the welcome page of Google Drive

OK, let’s create our first education resource in Google Drive: a document. To do that, first of all, it is necessary to click on the “Create” button, and choose from the list the option “Document”. Once you click, you will see a page similar to the one shown in Figure 2.32.

Figure 2.32: Creating a document in Google Drive

It seems like a Word processor, because it is a Word processor, with one important difference, when you save a document here, you are saving it on-line. This means you can access this document from any computer just by signing in with your account. Moreover, you can share this document, and even edit it collaboratively (each person has a color). It is really useful to work in groups, without fear of losing some previous version because Google Drive saves a history of changes. The only disadvantage my students have found when using Google Drive to create documents in groups is that sometimes when you download the  final document, some format options are lost, and you need to edit it again in a local Word processor, but the content remains. OK, so let’s learn how to use this on-line Word processor that Google Drive offers to us. The first step is to know how to write, this one is easy: you click with the mouse on the white text area and you can start typing! What happens if you want



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to change the format? You click on the option you want to change. For instance, the font type, it is by default Arial, but if you click on “Arial” you can choose another font, just by clicking on its name. Similarly, if you want to change the font size, you just need to click on the number. By default, it is 11. For other options, like bold or italics, you just click on the icon to activate it, and click again to turn it off. If you want just to put a word in bold, you just select this word. Otherwise, everything you start writing will be in bold, if you did not select anything and you clicked on the icon to select bold. To learn more about Word processors, you can read books such as Yilmaz (2013) or Holzner & Holzner (2009). Is the document being saved? Look right next to the menu, after the word “Help” when you make some changes, Google automatically saves them and shows a sentence like “All changes saved in Drive”. You can also change the title of the document so that it is no longer “Untitled document”, just by clicking on the title. Let’s change it to “My first document in Google Drive”. Let’s insert a table by clicking “Table” on the menu bar, and choosing the  number of columns and rows. Let’s insert an image too, by clicking “Insert” on the menu bar → “Image” and upload a file from the desktop (take care that you have the rights to upload that image!). See Figure 2.33 with the changes.

Figure 2.33: Sample document in Google Drive with a table and an image

As you can see in Figure 2.33, the “File” menu is very powerful in this app. You can download the document to your computer with the option “Download as” PDF,. docx, webpage, etc. You can publish the  document on the  web, see the  revision history, rename it, print it, and even share it. Let’s focus on the sharing option. Until now, we have been the  only editors of the  document, but one of the  advantages that the  document is on-line is that we can work collaboratively with other people. So, let’s click on “Share…”. A page like the one shown in Figure 2.34 appears, asking you whether you would like to share the document with some collaborators in a social network (Facebook, Twitter,…) or you would like to share the document with some

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collaborators by inviting them via mail. Anyway, Google Drive gives you the link that they need to access the document on-line, and it tells you that you are the owner, and the rest of the collaborators will have the rights that you give them (e.g. access to view or edit your document). When you have finished changing the options, you just need to click on the buttons “Done” and “Share to mail”.

Figure 2.34: Sharing settings in Google Drive



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For instance, I sent an e-mail to my collaborator Iván with the link to the document, so that he helps me with the document. I also chose that “anyone with the link” can view the document, and later I changed “can view” to “can edit” so that Iván cannot only view the document but edit it. When he reads the e-mail (see Figure 2.35), he has the link to view and edit the document.

Figure 2.35: Mail with the link to invite a collaborator to work with me in Google Drive

We can also talk by Google Talk, as I have placed him in the list of contacts to chat (in Gmail on the left lower corner). So, we can see when we are connected with a green circle. If I want to chat, I just need to click on the name, and a page as the one shown in Figure 2.36 appears. If you want to write something, you just need to type in the text area below and press the  “Intro” key. The message will automatically appear on the dialogue. If the other person has an “orange” circle, you will not get an answer, because it means that s/he is not connected. Nevertheless, your message has been sent, and when s/he connects to the chat, s/he will be able to see it and answer. On the  other hand, if the  other person has a  green circle, s/he can answer you back immediately. Iván was connected, so he could answer my message, and we talked about doing the report together (the one that I sent the link to by mail, I also copied the mail in the chat dialogue) in Google Docs (you will see that sometimes people still use the name Google Docs, because it was its name before it was called Google Drive).

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Figure 2.36: Sample chat between students using Google Drive

Now, it’s Ivan (his cursor is pink) the one that is writing on the document as can be seen in Figure 2.37, and I can see immediately the changes made, as they are being saved. By clicking on the  “See revision history”, I  can also restore any previous version, just by clicking on its name and next “Restore this revision”. That way, you should not be afraid of losing any information (something that can be really scary when you are working collaboratively!).

Figure 2.37: Collaborative edition of a document in Google Drive



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If we have finished working with the document for today, we can close the browser tab of the document, and go back to the main page of Google Drive as shown in Figure 2.38. You can see how the document is already saved in the list of documents uploaded on the  Internet. This is an example of a  document you have created from scratch, but sometimes, you may want to upload something you have in your computer, for instance, a test, to share with other teachers to review it before printing, so that all teachers of the course have the same test. How can you upload it? Well, you can see in Figure 2.38 the button with the arrow in red, just right next to “Create”, it means that you can upload a new file or folder to Google Drive (and you and the people you invite will have access from any device connected to the Internet). The next document will appear in the list just above our previous document, and you can access either of them, just by clicking on their name. It is time you practised that! Have you finished? Are you sure? Can you tell me what happens if you click with the right button on one of the documents in the list? Yes, a pull-down menu appears with many possibilities! For instance, you can remove the document from Google Drive, download it, make a copy, etc.

Figure 2.38: List of documents uploaded in Google Drive

OK, so you have already learnt how to create, share and upload documents in Google Drive. This is very good, but sometimes you do not want to work with documents, but you want to create a presentation, spreadsheet or a form. So, let’s practise with them! Let’s start with a presentation. By now, you should know, which button should I click on from Figure 2.38? I’ll wait for your answer…I am not telling you….well, I will tell you, oh…wait! You remember! Very well, it is the “Create button” (it is always the Create button in Google Drive). It was easy! Wasn’t it? And now, you just click on “Presentation”. See Figure 2.38, it looks like a program to create presentations, well it is! The first step, as you can see in Figure  2.39 is to choose a  theme. This will be the background of your presentation. A little advice here: if you like the font in a light color, the background should be dark to contrast. Otherwise, if you like the font in a dark color, the background should have a light color! This time, just for the sake of the sample, let’s choose something clear to write in black. To do that, you just click on the theme you like, and click the “OK” button.

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Figure 2.39: Sample new presentation in Google Drive

As you can see, please do the steps with me, with your computer or any device, remember this book is not a  novel, you are not going to learn just by reading! So, I assume you already have your presentation in front of you with an untitled name. That’s not right. Let’s change the name to “My first presentation in Google Drive”. This time I am not going to tell you the answer, so if you do not remember how to do that, I would just give you a clue, it is exactly the same as what we did to change the name of the sample document. It is some pages back, read it if you do not remember, and do not continue until you change the name of the document, you do not want to have thousands of untitled documents in your Google Drive. You did it! I  knew you could! Perfect! Let’s continue then! We can modify the title of the slide, just by clicking on “Click to add a title”. What about inserting a new slide? See the “+” red icon, click there! You have it! Now you have two slides. You can have as many slides as you need, just by clicking on the “+” icon. To edit a  slide is pretty simple. You can follow the  same advice I  gave you for Google Documents, to change the font type, size, bold, etc. You can also insert tables and figures as we did, and invite some collaborators as we did. This is the  amazing thing about using apps from the  same company, once you’ve learnt how to use one, it is easyto learn how to use another. Conceptually, it is not the same to write a report and do a presentation, but from the technical point of view, the process is similar. Figure 2.40 shows you how I have edited the sample presentation, adding an image. Now I  want you to focus on the  “Present button”. This is new, and very useful! Google Drive allows you to save, edit, share and do presentations! You can present them just by clicking on the button, and the slides will appear in full screen size, one by one. You can use this feature to rehearse your presentation too, and even add notes (they will not appear in presentation mode). If you want to learn more about creating good presentations, I  recommend the  book written by Weinschenk (2012) who gives really good advice about how



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Figure 2.40: Sample new presentation in Google Drive

people think, do not forget that our students are people too! And, from a technical point of view, I  recommend the  books written by Lamont (2013), and Holzner & Holzner (2012). Let’s continue with the creation of a spreadsheet. I must confess to you that I  love spreadsheets. Why? I  love spreadsheets because they have saved me hours calculating the final scores for my students. I just love to add a formula and then automatically, almost by magic, all the  students have a  score calculated without mistake. There are many more benefits to be gained by using spreadsheets, but I really want you to focus on this aspect, because I have seen, not only in my case, but for other teachers too, how useful it is. I am not going to tell you the first step, because I  already told you twice. How can you create something new in Google Drive? Let’s go back to the … button in Figure 2.38, now you should have something like Figure 2.41

Figure 2.41: Updated list of documents in Google Drive

Have you noticed how each type of document is associated with a  different color and icon in the  list? It is useful to focus just on documents (blue), presentations (yellow), and other documents (green). So, I assume you already clicked on the red “Create” button, and chose “Spreadsheet”. Well done! You are now in a page similar to the image shown in Figure 2.42.

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Figure 2.42: Updated list of documents in Google Drive

As you can see, it looks like any other program to create spreadsheets. You can change the name of the spreadsheet as we already know, and this time, we are going to work with cells. You can move among cells with the arrow keys in the keyboard, with the “Tab” key, or by just clicking on the cell you want to go. You always know which cell you are in because of the letter (for columns) and the number (for rows). In Figure 2.42, which cell was I in? Yes, you did it. I was in A1, very good! You can also copy information from other spreadsheets, and paste into the cells. I just copied the scores for students A to G in practical work 1 to 4. Now, I would like to know how to calculate their final score from those scores. The formula is: the final score is the average of the four practical works, so: 0,25 * P1 + 0,25 * P2 + 0,25 * P3 + 0,25 * P4. How can you insert this formula in your spreadsheet? You go to the cell in which you want the result to appear. In our first case, the cell is F2. Next, you type the “=” sign. This is very important because that way the program knows you are not typing numbers or text, but a formula. Next, you type the formula, in our case, 0,25 * and here comes the most important part. Remember that I told you how the cells were indicated with the column and row, so how can you tell where the first score is? It is in B2. You can either type B2, or just click on the cell and you can see that you are doing it right because the cell appears with a background color. You can see that in Figure 2.43.

Figure 2.43: Calculating a formula in a spread sheet in Google Drive



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When you type the last “Enter”, you can see the result in the cell, and the formula in the “Fx” line. If you want to modify the formula, you need to change it in the “Fx” line. Moreover, if you click on the  F2 cell, can you see that the  blue border has in the right lower upper corner a little box? It is very important because if you click on it, it changes to a big plus sign and you can, just by keeping the left button of the mouse pressed; go down as many rows as you want, so that when you do not press the left button of the mouse any longer, all the results are calculated! Have you tried it? It is wonderful, this time there were 8 students, but sometimes there are 400! There are many books about working with spreadsheets in Google Drive, but given that I already told you some references that are very complete, please just read the chapter on spreadsheets in Lamont (2013), and Holzner & Holzner (2012). Let’s finish for now with a last exercise, a very useful exercise, too, to create a form in Google Drive! But, first of all, what is a form? It is like a paper and pencil form in which you ask people to fill in data, but on-line. Can you imagine the possibilities that this offers to you? You can create surveys to ask about the previous knowledge of your students before attending your course, you can do mock tests so that your students can practise, and the best of all, Google Drive will save the data for you, the people you want to invite, and all of this from any device connected to Internet. Are you motivated to learn how to create a form? I am to teach you! Please, keep reading and keep your computer on! When you click on “Create” -> Form, you go to a page similar to the one shown in Figure 2.44. As you can see in Figure 2.44, creating and using forms involves four steps: the creation of the  form, sharing so that other people can work with you on the  form, sending the invitation, and, finally analysing the results in the spreadsheet that Google Drive creates for each form created and saves in the list of documents on Google Drive (see Figure 2.41).

Figure 2.44: Creating a form in Google Drive

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Let’s start with the first step and create a form! Figure 2.45 shows the main page to choose the title and theme (like the background of the presentation) for the form. To choose one of them, you just need to click on it, and then click on the “OK” button.

Figure 2.45: Choosing a theme and a title for a form in Google Drive

You can change the chosen theme later by clicking on “Theme”, and you can even have a preview of how people will see the form on-line by clicking on the “View live form” button (both of these are in the same row of the format menu in documents or presentations in Google Drive). How long have you been editing the form? 15 seconds, 1 minute? And, see what you have already created in Figure  2.46 after clicking on the “View live form” button.

Figure 2.46: Preview of the form in Google Drive



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I can guarantee you, as a Computer Programmer, without Google Drive, creating a form is not so simple. So, let’s take advantage of this powerful tool. Let’s continue editing the form. To do that, see the black button on the upper right corner, just click on the  “Edit this form”. To modify something is really intuitive, because what you need to keep in mind is to click on what you need to change! For instance, if I want to modify the  form description, I  click on it, and I  write my own description. Let’s change it! By default, Google Drive provides you with a  sample question, if you pass the  mouse pointer over the  question, you will see that it has a  shadow, and three options appear: a pen, two papers and a basket. If you pass the mouse over the pen, you can read “Edit”, if you click you can change the question. Sometimes, you want to create a question very similar to some previous question, you can duplicate it by clicking on the  two papers icon. Moreover, if you want to remove a  question, you just need to click on the basket icon. Let’s create our first multiple-choice question, something like: Do you enjoy learning Maths? a) Yes b) Sometimes c) No As you see, these are forms, so there is no correct answer. If you want to use the form as a  mock test, remember that the  test will not be automatically evaluated. There are learning platforms to create tests on-line for free like Moodle20, Edmodo21 or Testmoz22. Figure 2.47 shows the page to create a question in the form. If you click on “Question type”, you can explore many other possibilities for questions. Anytime, you can remove an answer by clicking on the cross at the right. To add a new answer, you just type in a new text area, and before clicking on “Done” remember that if you want the students to have to answer the questions, the option “Required question” must be ticked. You can add many more questions, by clicking on the  “Add item” button. Moreover, you can choose, for each question, whether you would like the users of the form to see the results, or whether they can edit their answer after submitting. If you do not tick these options, by default they are not selected. It is now your turn to explore the  possibilities of Google Forms, there are many! If you would like more information, a good book is Darbyshire (2010). Well, you will also find useful information in Lamont (2013), and Holzner & Holzner (2012). Finally, when you click the “Send form” blue button at the end of the form, it gives you the link that you have to send to all of the people you want to have access to the form.

20  https://moodle.org/ 21  https://www.edmodo.com/ 22  https://testmoz.com/

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Figure 2.47: How to set up a question in a form in Google Drive

OK, but before sending the  link, have you checked the  spreadsheet associated to the form? It is always a good idea to test the form yourself first. You can click on the “Choose response destination” button, and type a name for the spreadsheet that will be saved in Google Drive. The name by default is the name of the form followed by “(Responses)”. You can see that in Figure 2.48. When you click on the “Create” button, Google Drive will set up the spreadsheet, and now you are ready to try the link to the form (the one that you see when you go to the live form23). If you type some answers in the form, you can see how they are saved in the  spreadsheet. Try that! By default, the form is “Accepting answers”, as you can see in the “Responses” menu. Initially, there is a 0 right next to “Responses”. It is because nobody has uploaded any answers. For each user that fills in the form, a row is created in the associated spreadsheet and the number next to “Responses” is increased by one. So, you can now check how the responses are being saved until the date on which you do not want to accept more responses. To stop accepting new

23  My simple form is on-line at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1a2Y5aPq8t1gDAfMm3FpnOEsajf4 IZgto_EBWvhcBmYA/viewform



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answers, you just need to go to the “Responses” menu and tick the option “Accepting answers” off. See Figure 2.49 for a view of the spreadsheet with the answers. You can even see some statistics, by clicking on “Responses” → Summary of responses.

Figure 2.48: How to choose a response destination for your form in Google Drive

Figure 2.49: Answers saved in Google Drive for the form

2.4.3 Google Calendar to Organize Your Class Events If we go back to Figure  2.31, we can see how in the  upper menu, next to “Drive” there was the word “Calendar”. Let’s learn more about how using the Calendar can be helpful for teachers. If we click on “Calendar” we go to a page similar to the one shown in Figure 2.50.

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Figure 2.50: A snapshot of Google Calendar

As you can see, it is an electronic agenda. It allows you to organise your schedule and events in the school or elsewhere (you can assign a color to each event to differentiate them). You can even synchronize the information in the agenda to your mobile phone so that it warns you when some deadline is approaching. Google Calendar do not charge you for sending the message to your mobile phone, but your mobile service provider might do, so please check before configuring the  alerts. Moreover, a little piece of advice from the experience, do not set up too many alarms. When you have too many alarms you start ignoring them all! Just focus on the real important meetings and events that you cannot afford to miss. OK, but how can I add an event? This question has a simple answer! You just click on the day and time in which the event is, and a menu similar to the one shown in Figure 2.51 appears. The basic information that Google Calendar needs about the event is the date, time, and a small description. You can type that description in the “What” field. For instance, you can type “understanding test”. Once you click on “Create event”, it is done. You can undo it by clicking on the upper yellow menu “Undo”. You can also edit the event, just by clicking on it. Figure 2.52 shows the possibilities. As you can see in Figure 2.52, you can modify the title of the event, time, date, description, color, reminders and privacy. The general method to change anything is just to click on it. For instance, if you want to write a description, you just go to the text area and you can start typing. In addition, if you want to change the color, you just need to click on the  color and it is changed. Similarly, given that you can share the calendar (as you could share any other Google resource such as a document or a  presentation), you can show other people that you are busy at that time, and choose whether an event is public and everyone can see it, or make it private so that other people cannot see it. You can also discard any change by clicking on “Discard changes”, and even delete the event by clicking on the “Delete” button. Google are working now on improving this app by allowing you to add attachments to the events. I have never added an attachment to the event. For me, it is just useful that it reminds me on-line, say 10 minutes before an event and I can have a look at my



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shared calendar with the rest of my colleagues, but adding attachments could be an interesting feature for the future24.

Figure 2.51: Creating an event in Google Calendar

Figure 2.52: Editing an event in Google Calendar

24  New lab features that Google people are exploring: https://support.google.com/calendar/ answer/154174?hl=en-GB

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2.4.4 Google Video to Find Videos and Google Book to Find Books Let’s review, we have been exploring in this chapter: options to find resources for level 1 and 2 in Blooms’ taxonomy, i.e. to learn and understand new knowledge, and we have found education portals, MOOCs and many Google Apps for education to create materials such as documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and forms. Is it possible to search for resources in Google? Yes, of course, it is! We can use Google Video to find videos, and Google Books to find books. Let’s look at these two possibilities. If we go back to Figure 2.31, we can see how in the upper menu, next to “Calendar” there was the word “More”. If we click on “More”, we can see that one of the options is “Videos”. Have you seen it? Good! We are just about to click on it, and we should go then to a page similar to the one shown in Figure 2.53.

Figure 2.53: Using Google Videos for education

Pretty simple page! That is a really wonderful thing about Google; powerful applications with simple interfaces. Do you know the difference between the “Google Search” and “I’m Feeling Lucky”? If you try writing something, and click on “I’m Feeling Lucky” you see that you go directly to a page. It is the first page in the results of the search, and if you are lucky it contains the answer to your question! Otherwise, if you click on “Google Search” you go to the results page with all the links to the videos that match the keywords typed in the text area. OK, so let’s find a video about the Second World War. Let’s type in the text area “Second World War”, click on “Google Search” and see what happens! Figure 2.54 shows the results page. I have just clicked on the first link. This is why it is in a different color. I have seen that it gathers several interesting videos that I  could play in class to discuss them with my students, so that they learn something more about what happened, and they can accomplish my learning goals in levels 1 and 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy. You can also see that there are many links to YouTube, which is a Google resource too, and as I’ve said before in this book, a really useful tool for the teacher along with the other possibilities we explored in the exercises of Chapter 1. What happens if I want my students to read more about the topic? Well, it is also possible to search for books in Google. Let’s go back to the page in Figure 2.31, and click on “More” → “Books”. If we do that, we see a page similar to the one shown in



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Figure 2.55. As you can see, Google remembers the keyword I used for the videos, and now it shows a list of potentially interesting books on the same topic.

Figure 2.54: Sample results page of Google Videos

Figure 2.55: Sample results page of Google Books

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Moreover, if you click on some of the links, you will see that Google has scanned some pages of the books, so you can start reading them on-line. That way, you can choose whether this is the book that you want to buy (in paper or download the full e-book) or if you would prefer to keep exploring other possibilities. I would like you to explore all these possibilities. Even more, why don’t you try to click on the  upper menu on the  “Images” word? What has happened? Please, remember this book is not a novel, turn your computer on, and try it! Perfect! You did it! Yes, you can also search images on the topic!

2.4.5 Google Sites to Create Your Own Website and Google Blogger for Blogs We will be talking about Google possibilities more in this book, as you can imagine they are not limited to levels 1 and 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy. However, for now, we will see our last two Google Apps for this chapter. They are a little more advanced because they allow you to create your own website (Google Sites) and your own blog (Google Blogger). I will help you finding these apps and using them! To log in to Google Sites, you need to type https://sites.google.com/ in your browser. If you do that, you go to the webpage shown in Figure 2.56.

Figure 2.56: Main page of Google Sites

To create a  site, you just need to click on the  “Create” red button on the  left. The first configuration options are shown in Figure 2.57. As you can see, you can select a template (the background of the site, same as the theme for presentations and forms in Google Drive), just by clicking on the chosen one (I will choose “Classroom site”).



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Type a name for the site, and the link to your webpage will be https://sites.google. com/site/ and the name you provide (well, if it has not already been used by another user, if so, try a different name, or combine it with some numbers like the year or your number of students. I am going to call it “salymer2013”!).

Figure 2.57: Creating a site in Google Sites

Finally, to prove that you are not a robot, do not forget to type the letters and numbers you see in the kaptcha (well, if you cannot see the kaptcha very well, do not worry if you make a mistake, Google Sites shows you an easier kaptcha) before clicking on the “Create” red button (at the top) or “Cancel” if you no longer want to continue creating the webpage. You can see in Figure 2.58 what you have been able to do in 5 seconds! Congratulations! As you can see, you can now edit everything in the  site. When you click on the “Pencil” button on the right upper corner, you will go to the edition page. In this page, you can select what you want to remove, modify or insert images, links, tables, gadgets and any Google resource (calendar, video from Youtube, etc.) as shown in Figure 2.59. You can read more about how to change the template, and edit it, on the help pages published at: https://sites.google.com/site/sitetemplateinfo/tips/customizeyour-site-sidebar and also at this site: https://sites.google.com/site/sitetemplateinfo/ tips. When you finish your changes, you have to click on the  “Save” button. As always, you can share the  link, by clicking on the  “Share” button, with your contacts in social networks, or just by sending the  link (in our sample case,

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Figure 2.58: Sample site created from a template in Google Sites

Figure 2.59: Edition possibilities in Google Sites

https://sites.google.com/site/salymer2013 ) by mail. It is already on-line, so anyone with the  link can look at the  website! If you want to learn more, you can read the interesting book written by Teeter & Barksdale (2009). Let’s now go back to Figure 2.31. We have explored the options “Mail”, “Images”, “Drive”, “Calendar”, and we have already clicked on “More” for “Videos” and “Books”, can you see now the “Blogger option”? Yes, it is there below the “More” option. If you click on “Blogger” you will see a page similar to the one shown in Figure 2.60. If we sign in, the first question will be about our profile. We can use our Google+ (the social network part of Google) profile, or if we do not have a profile, we can create a Google Blogger profile, just by typing your name and choosing whether you would like to receive news about the blog. Once the profile is complete, we click on the orange “Continue” button. Google Blogger gives us the option to explore some existing blogs to have an idea of what a blog looks like. For example, Figure 2.61 shows a sample blog25 created with Blogger (there are many other tools!).

25  http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com.es/



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Figure 2.60: Main page of Google Blogger

Figure 2.61: Sample blog for education (edublog)

As you can see, it is like a webpage, with the information ordered chronologically. It shows the  opinion of the  main writer of the  blog (in this case, Vicki Davis) and the  opinions of other people, some from social networks, others just readers of the blog who like to comment on the posts made by Vicki. Let’s now create our first blog. If you already know how to do that, you can skip this part, and go to Section 2.5. Otherwise, keep reading and have your computer on! Figure 2.62 shows the first step, which is to choose a name and pick a template for the blog (pretty similar to the webpage, isn’t it?).

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Figure 2.62: First step to create an edublog with Google Blogger

Once you click on the “Create blog!” orange button, you have it! You just need to click on “Start posting” or the pencil icon to start writing your first post in your blog. Let’s write something like “This is our first post. I hope you enjoy this blog in which I will share with you information about the  use of technology for education”. Figure  2.63 shows the processing options for the post. As you may recall from Google Drive when creating a document, you can edit the font, format, size, insert an image, etc. (as I said earlier this is the good thing about using tools from the same company, they are all alike!). When you finish, you just need to click on the “Publish” button in the upper right corner.

Figure 2.63: Second step to create an edublog with Google Blogger: to post something

At any time, you can see how your blog looks by clicking on the “View blog” button (at the top just next to the Blogger icon, which you can click to go back to the home page as usual). Figure 2.64 shows how your blog looks, according to the template and post provided.

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Figure 2.64: Third step to create an edublog with Google Blogger: to view your blog

Well, it is pretty awesome! It looks really nice and it was not so difficult, was it? Now, you can share the link to your blog, wait for some comments, and write more posts. It is your blog and it is already on-line. You can see a sample blog at http:// itforeducation2013versitasbook.blogspot.com.es/, and even create your own blog.

2.5 Dropbox Google Drive is useful for saving files, so that you, and the people that you invite, can access them from any device connected to the Internet. Dropbox is similar to Google Drive. You may be wondering why I would like to show you Dropbox. Well, because it is really popular. Your students may use Dropbox instead of Google Drive, and it is good to know about Dropbox, too. The good thing is that once you know how to use Google Drive, Dropbox26 is really easy. The concept is similar, to have documents on-line that you can use and share from any device connected to the Internet. You are given a limited amount of space, and you can get more free space if you invite people to use Dropbox. It is a web application, but you can download the desktop program so that you can have it as a folder in your hard disk. The difference is that everything you save in this folder will also be saved on-line, so you can access it from any device connected to the Internet.

26  https://www.dropbox.com/

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If you do not have a Dropbox account, then as usual, first of all, you need to get one. It is free and it is just necessary to fill in the form. You can download the desktop application to your computer, and check how it synchronizes with the web information with a  little blue circle. Whenever, the information in your computer is the  same as the information on-line then you can see a little green check. Do not close your computer until there is the green check, and thus, Dropbox has finished uploading everything you save in the folder so that it is available in another device connected to Dropbox. Sometimes it can take a while to upload everything if you have saved many files or have very big files. So, always look for the green check! Let’s see a  sample use of Dropbox step-by-step. Imagine that I  have a  report, and now I want to create a folder in Dropbox to share it with my 2 friends, Eva and Tom, who are working with me on a  common project. I  have already registered in Dropbox, and downloaded the Desktop application. So, in my computer I can see next to the time, on the lower right corner, the Dropbox icon with the green tick, as you can also see in Figure 2.65.

Figure 2.65: Dropbox installed in your computer and correctly synchronized (green tick!)

First step. To create a  folder in Dropbox. You can click on the  icon, or directly in the  folder called “Dropbox” created in your computer when installing the  Dropbox application. As you can see, it seems to be a normal folder, like the rest of the folders in your computer, except for the green ticks. So, you can create a folder using the “New” -> “Folder” option of the menu that appears when you click with the right button of the mouse, and you can give it the name “projectTomAna”, as shown in Figure 2.66.

Figure 2.66: Dropbox sample folder “projectTomAna” (in the computer)

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Do you want to see how the folder is also created on-line? You can go to dropbox.com and log in with your user and account password. As you can see the folder appears initially as “folder” and it is empty. See Figure 2.67.

Figure 2.67: Dropbox sample folder “projectTomAna” (on-line)

Second step (optional). To share a folder in Dropbox. This step is optional, because you can create the folder and start using it like any other folder, with the advantage that you can access everything you save inside on-line. However, it is common that you would want to share the content with some other people in your team. In this case, we are working with Tom and Ana, so let’s share the folder with them. The easiest procedure is to click with the right button on the folder, as shown in Figure 4.18, and then click on “Invite to folder” as shown in Figure 2.68. Next, you import the contacts or write the e-mails to the people you want to invite and a short description (they will get a mail giving them more information about the request). See Figure 2.69 for an illustration of how you add contacts. When you click on the shared button, then you can see a message indicating that the folder has been shared. So, now whatever file they save in the folder, you can work on it, and vice versa. Take care with deleting files, because you can delete them on all the devices connected to the Internet sharing this folder!

Figure 2.68: Inviting other people to use a folder in Dropbox (I)

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Figure 2.69: Inviting other people to use a folder in Dropbox (II)

Third step (optional). To make a link publicly available to everyone. Again, you may want just to limit the  files to your team group, and then when you finish, to make the final document public, or not. If you want your document to be seen by anyone, you have to save the file in the “Public” folder that is created by default in Dropbox. When you do that, you are given a link which allows everyone on the Internet access to the file. To get the link, you have to click on the file, and with the right button select the option “Copy public link” as shown in Figure 2.70.

Figure 2.70: Public links in the public folder of Dropbox for everyone

If you do not want to share the file any longer, you can delete it, just by clicking on the file. Moreover, you can upload more files to the web by clicking on the link with the blue arrow, and then creating new folders by clicking on the folder with the green plus. That way, teachers, students, and everyone else can keep working from any device with their Dropbox account. Please, explore the  many possibilities of this wonderful tool, encourage your students to use it, do not forget to log out when you have finished using it, and enjoy it!



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2.6 Exercises Let’s do several exercises to practise the content of this chapter. Remember that all exercises are solved at the end of the chapter, but do not read the solutions until you have tried to solve the exercises on your own first! It is also possible that you may find other answers to these questions; in that case, you can let us know about them on the book website. 1. Search on the Internet for five education portals. 2. Provide five reasons why a teacher could benefit from using an education portal. 3. Provide five reasons why a student could benefit from using an education portal. 4. Discuss some advantages and disadvantages of using education portals. 5. Join a MOOC, and describe your experience in the book forum. What have you found most useful? Have you found anything difficult? 6. Provide ten reasons why a teacher could use Google Apps for Education. 7. Fill in the blank spaces in the following sentences with the name of a Google App: a) I can read and compose mails with … b) I can organize the agenda of events in my class with … c) I can create a shared presentation on-line with … d) I can find a video on-line with… e) I can create my own website with… f) I can create my own blog with ….. 8. Upload a document downloaded from a MOOC to a folder that you have created in Dropbox. 9. Which of the following statements are true and which are false? a) You can upload a folder to Dropbox. b) You need to download the Dropbox desktop application to access your files in Dropbox. c) There are a maximum number of files that you can save in Dropbox. d) It is possible to create an Access link to a Dropbox folder in your desktop.

2.7 Solved Exercises 1) Discuss in the forum the education portals you found. I am just going to give you a link where you can find many education portals: http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic21. htm 2) My five reasons would be the following (remember this is a subjective question so you could have different reasons, and it would be really nice if you shared them with your colleagues in the book forum): 1. To get high quality education resources organized into levels and topics. 2. To access free services such as search engines or newsletters.

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3. To read about the experiences of other teachers. 4. To collaborate with other teachers and students. 5. To get some IT, legal or any other type of counseling. 3) My five reasons would be the following (remember this is also a subjective question so you could have different reasons, and it would be really nice if you shared them with your colleagues in the book forum): 1. To provide your students with more resources to learn about the topic under study. 2. To learn in an interactive way on-line. 3. To get advice from your peers. 4. To collaborate with other teachers and students. 5. To enjoy learning with fun activities on-line. 4) Again, this is subjective, I will just give you some advantages and disadvantages I see in using education portals, but you may have others, and what could you do with them? Yes, that would be great! Thanks! You could publish them on the book website to share them with other readers! Some advantages of using education portals are the following: 1. To provide information to teachers, students and parents. 2. To offer a free content search engine. 3. To provide free high-quality didactic resources. 4. To contribute to teacher training. 5. To provide counseling. 6. To open collaboration channels. 7. To allow new time and place flexibility for learning, something that only the Internet can provide. Some disadvantages of using education portals are the following: 1. To waste time just looking at hundreds of education portals several times per day. 2. To replace some face-to-face learning because it is already on-line. It is not the same! 3. To have some technological problems because of broken links or the  lack of usability. 4. To lose information without further notice because the  education portal disappears. 5) I joined MiriadaX, the platform for Spanish MOOCs. I created a MOOC there, and I joined other MOOCs. In particular, there was a MOOC about Emotional Intelligence that I found really interesting. I followed the steps provided in the chapter. I avoided enrolling in too many MOOCs, I knew I did not have the time to successfully complete



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all of them. So, I focused on the Emotional Intelligence MOOC. Every Friday morning, I logged into the MOOC, I saw the materials, and I did the quizzes. What did I find the most difficult? To be sincere, it was difficult for me to keep updated with all the posts in the forum. I decided to read just some of them, and I filtered all the information according to my needs. All in all, I think it was my best choice because reading all this information was impossible, and I would have not enjoyed the MOOC so much. How was your experience? Please, share it on the book website. You do not need to write much, perhaps one paragraph like the one I have just written. 6) According to Google, but you may have other reasons, the ten top reasons for using Google Apps for education are the following: 1. Students will love you for it 2. Free up your IT 3. Easy to deploy 4. Save money 5. You’re not alone 6. Google protects your privacy 7. Security as powerful as... well, Google 8. Innovation in real-time 9. Collaborate globally 10. We’ve got your back 7) The complete sentences would be the following: a. I can read and compose mails with Gmail. b. I can organize the agenda of events in my class with Google Calendar. c. I can create a shared presentation on-line with Google Drive. d. I can find a video on-line with Google Video. e. I can create my own website with Google Sites. f. I can create my own blog with Google Blogger. 8) To upload a document to Dropbox is pretty simple. If you are using the computer on which you downloaded Dropbox, you just need to save it in your Dropbox folder. Otherwise, you can log in with your username and password and upload it by clicking on the icon with the up arrow. Remember that you need to see the green tick in your Dropbox folder to make sure that the  file has been correctly uploaded. In the  case of the web application, there is no problem because the progress bar lets you know when the upload is finished. 9) True or false? a) You can upload a folder to Dropbox. → True, you can copy the folder into your Dropbox folder.

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b) You need to download the Dropbox desktop application to access your files in Dropbox. → False, you can access your files on-line from any computer, even if that computer does not have Dropbox installed. c) There are a maximum number of files that you can save in Dropbox. → True, but not because Dropbox counts how many files you upload, but because there is a maximum amount of space that you have on-line, you can check the % of your Dropbox account that is still free in your folder. You can get more space by inviting friends to Dropbox! d) It is possible to create an access link to a  Dropbox folder on your desktop. → True, the Dropbox folder in your computer is like any other folder, with the difference that anything you save inside is also uploaded to the Internet so that you can access those files from any computer connected to the Internet.

2.8 References Last visit to all links on August 14th, 2013 Bedriñana-Ascarza, A. (2005), Técnicas e indicadores para la evaluación de portales educativos en Internet, Gestión en el Tercer Milenio, Research Journal UNMSM 7(14). Daniel, J. (2012). Making sense of MOOCs: Musings in a maze of myth, paradox and possibility. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 3. Available on-line at http://www-jime. open.ac.uk/jime/article/viewArticle/2012-18/html Darbyshire, P. (2010). Getting StartED with Google Apps. Apress. Holzner, S.; & Holzner, N. (2009). Google Docs 4 Everyone, Pearson Education. Koutropoulos, A.; & Hogue, R. J. (2012). How to Succeed in a MOOC-Massive Online Open Course. Newsletter, CEdMAEurope. Available on-line at http://www.cedma-europe.org/newsletter%20 articles/eLearning%20Guild/How%20to%20Succeed%20in%20a%20MOOC%20-%20 Massive%20Online%20Open%20Course%20(Oct%2012).pdf Lamont, I. (2013). Google Drive & Docs in 30 Minutes. I30 Media Corporation. McAuley, A.; Stewart, B.; Siemens, G., & Cormier, D. (2010). The MOOC model for digital practice. Technical Report. University of Prince Edward Island. Available on-line at https://oerknowledgecloud.org/sites/oerknowledgecloud.org/files/MOOC_Final_0.pdf Teeter, R.; & Barksdale, K. (2009). Google Sites and Chrome For Dummies. John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Weinschenk, S. (2012). 100 Things Every Presenter Needs to Know About People. New Riders. Yilmaz, M. (2013). An Essential Guide to Google Drive, Amazon Media (Kindle book). Other interesting links to keep reading (there are many more!) https://www.learntogether.org.uk/Pages/Welcome.aspx http://www.dhsekerala.gov.in/ http://www.thutong.doe.gov.za/ https://www.dias.ac.cy/en/Pages/intro.aspx http://www.ciconline.org/ http://eduscapes.com/



References  

http://www.epals.com/ http://www.elearningeuropa.info/en/articles http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic21.htm https://www.edx.org/ https://www.coursera.org https://www.udacity.com/ https://www.miriadax.net/ https://unedcoma.es/ http://edutraining.googleapps.com/Training-Home/module-1/module-1-chapter-1

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3 To Apply and Analyze Knowledge and Competences Using Formative Evaluation Tools 3.1 Introduction As explained in Section 1.2.1, the focus of the  third and fourth levels of Bloom’s taxonomy is on applying and analyzing knowledge. In this chapter, my goal is to teach you about several resources that you may find useful to achieve goals in these levels. See Figure 3.1 for a general overview of the chapter.

Figure 3.1: General overview of chapter 3 (tools for the levels 3 & 4 of Bloom’s taxonomy)

As in Chapter 2, the resources described in this chapter have been chosen because, from my experience, I have had the opportunity of checking that students are able to use them, and that they are tools that serve to accomplish the formulated pedagogical goal. Another reason is that they are free, and I can give you a step-by-step user guide. As you get familiar with these tools, I am sure you will be able to find others that are even more useful for your particular case. Moreover, you will be able to create your own resources. So, let’s start with the possibilities of Hot Potatoes in Section 3.2, and JClic in Section 3.3. The chapter ends, as always, with several solved exercises. Remember that this book is not a novel, and that you must practice what you read in order to take advantage of it!

© 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.



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3.2 Hot Potatoes 3.2.1 Introduction and installation Hot Potatoes is an authoring tool to generate several types of activity. It was developed by the University of Victoria in Canada27. It consists of several tools or predetermined schemas which serve to create several types of interactive multimedia exercises. The exercises can be published on a web server to be used on-line. These exercises can be completed by the students using any web browser on a device connected to the Internet. Therefore, students do not need to have anything extra installed on their computers. And, as a  teacher, what do I  need to have installed on my computer to create activities with Hot Potatoes? Nothing special! You just need to follow the  steps indicated by the installation wizard28. If your Operating System is Windows, you have the Hot Potatoes 6.3 installer, if it is Linux you have the Wine version, and if you have a MAC, you have the Java Hot Potatoes version (well, in general, this version will work on any computer with Java). In my case, given that my PC runs Windows, I click on the first link, see Figure 3.2, the Hot Potatoes 6.3 installer link.

Figure 3.2: Screenshot to download the Hot Potatoes program

27  http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ 28  http://hotpot.uvic.ca/index.php#downloads

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You can save the installation file, or just “Run” it. You can even choose the language for the  installation of Hot Potatoes (the program has been translated into several languages). When you click on the “Accept” button, the next page is a welcome page to the installation, so you can read it, and click on the “Accept” button to continue. Next, you will be presented with a license agreement. It is necessary to “Accept” it to continue with the installation. If you agree, you can click on the “Next” button to continue, or “Cancel” to abort the installation (that means, you can skip to the next tool in Section 3.3). Another information screen is shown, and when that has been read, click on the “Next” button. Quite easy, isn’t it? I hope you are doing the installation step by step with me. Remember this book is not a novel, and if you do not have the program installed in your computer, you are not going to be able to learn from the next sections. So, please keep reading the next page of the installation wizard. This is our first choice regarding where we want the  program to be saved in our computer. I  just accepted the default folder provided, but if you want to change it, you can click on the “Browse” button. When you finish, you just need to click on the “Next” button. The installation wizard also asks whether we would like a desktop icon. I would advise you to tick this option because it is kind of useful just to access Hot Potatoes by double clicking on the icon. Anyway, we continue by clicking on the “Next” button. Finally, when the installation wizard has gathered all the information required, the “Installation” page appears, and you just need to click on the “Install” button. When the  installation finishes, the wizard shows a  screen indicating that Hot Potatoes was installed on the computer. There is the option to launch the program immediately. You can tick the checkbox if you want to start working with Hot Potatoes, and press the “Finish” button. So, let’s see Hot Potatoes for the first time. Figure 3.3 shows a screenshot of the main screen of Hot Potatoes.

Figure 3.3: Screenshot of the main menu of Hot Potatoes



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As you can see, there are five potatoes. Each one corresponds to a program, and The Masher. The Masther is to join together all the  activities created by the  other five programs. In the following subsections, we are going to learn how to use them. But for now, I would like to focus on the differences between the programs, i.e. the type of activities that you can create with them: –– JCloze: fill-in-the blank activities –– JMatch: matching activities –– JQuiz: tests with different types of questions –– JCross: crosswords –– JMix: order words in a sentence

3.2.2 JCloze Let’s remember levels 3 and 4 of Bloom’s taxonomy. According to the hierarchical nature of the  taxonomy, the first two levels were focused on learning and understanding. For that, we learnt how to get information from education portals and MOOCs. Also, we learnt how to use Google Apps for education, for instance, to create our blog or to search for videos. Now, we are going to prepare more interactive activities for the  students. They already learnt and understood something, it is time to apply and analyze! How can our students do that? For instance, they can use JCloze. This program allows the teacher to create fill-in-theblank activities for their students. Let’s give a complete sample: a teacher found in an education portal a good piece of writing about spelling. Students read that and learn the information. They wrote about that in their blog. Now, the teacher wants the students to apply their knowledge, still in a simple approach, so the teacher uses JCloze to create several sentences in which some words have letters missing. The students must apply their knowledge about spelling in order to fill in the letters and pass the activity. They do that on-line individually or with other students. Are you ready to learn how to use JCloze? Are you interested? I hope so! If you are in the main screen of Hot Potatoes, the one shown in Figure 3.3, you just need to click on the  “JCloze” potato. Otherwise, first you need to open Hot Potatoes. It is like any other program, just click on the icon. The main screen of JCloze is shown in Figure 3.4. Please, be patient, it is sometimes slow, one click is enough. Occasionally, a few minutes will pass and you will still not see Figure 3.4. This means there’s a problem and you may need to restart your computer.

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Figure 3.4: Screenshot of the main page of JCloze

OK, so you are now ready to create your first activity in JCloze. Let’s go step by step: First step. To create a  folder in which you save everything you do with Hot Potatoes. Hot Potatoes is not good at keeping paths. For computers, paths are very important. If the computer does not know the path to a file, the computer is not able to locate it and the  activity fails. Therefore, my first and most important piece of advice, which I never stop telling my students, is to create a folder in which you save everything you are going to use for Hot Potatoes. You can have subfolders with the images, the files of the Hot Potatoes activities, the webpages created, but do not change anything! It is not safe that you rename the files, and if you just delete something, the activity that previously was working, it may stop working altogether. Moreover, if you want to use your Hot Potatoes activities on other computer, what can you do? Good! Yes, you copy the whole folder into your USB drive. And, yes, good answer too, you can compress the  folder and send it by mail. You never send just some files, you never delete files if you are not sure whether they are needed by some of the Hot Potatoes activities you want to use in class. This is really important, please read this step again, and always, always, create the  folder. Nearly 50% of my students failed because they missed this step. Hot Potatoes is not difficult, but you must follow the steps! Figure 3.5 shows you the folder I  have just created in my desktop for the  Hot Potatoes activities. I  have called it “HPActivities” with a subfolder “img” in which I am going to save all the images (I am an old-fashioned computer geek so I learnt some time ago, computers do not really like spaces between words, accents and strange symbols in names, so why do you need to give such long name to your folders? Keep that for when you are writing, and try to keep names simple and meaningful for you).



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Figure 3.5: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with the first JCloze file and the img subfolder

Second step. To save the file in your folder. I always advise my students to save the file at the very beginning. Otherwise, you may forget and lose your work. Initially, the file is untitled as you can see in Figure 3.4. Let’s give the file a name. It is very simple to do, because it is just the same as in any other computer program. You just go to the “File” menu option, and click on “Save”. JCloze will ask you for the name of the file and where you want to save it. Please, choose the folder you have just created and save it in the root. I am going to name it as “JCloze” (pretty original! Isn’t it? Well, you can give another name to the file if you want to, but please keep it simple!). So, now, you may have something like Figure 3.5. If not, please read again steps one and two, they are really important! Third step. To give a  title and some text to the  activity. You can give a  title to the  activity. For instance, spelling. To do that, you just need to type the  name for the title in the “Title” text area that you can see in Figure 3.4. And what about the big text area that is under the title? Well, this is the most important text area. In there, you need to write the text that you want your students to practice. First of all, you write it in full like the one shown in Figure 3.6. You can save the file any time just by clicking on the floppy disk icon on the menu, or “File” -> “Save”.

Figure 3.6: Sample title and text for the JCloze activity

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Fourth step. To create the  gaps. Now, you choose which letters are not going to appear in the final text. It could be words, in fact whatever you like. The procedure is simple: –– You select by clicking with the left button of the mouse the letter, word or sentence you want to hide from your student. –– You click on the  “Gap” button, and a  menu like the  one shown in Figure  3.7 appears. The computer learns what you have hidden (it is marked in highlighted red in the text), it assigns a number to the gap, and it asks you whether you would like to give some clue to the student. If you want to give some clue, for instance, “Apply the spelling rules we learnt a week ago in the Education Portal”, you just need to type it in the text area. Otherwise, no clue will be provided to the student. You can also provide some alternative correct answers, in case there is more than one correct solution. You can repeat this procedure as many times as you want. It is always the same, select what you want to hide, provide some clue or alternative correct answer, click “OK” and select another thing to hide, provide some clue or alternative correct answer, click “OK”…

Figure 3.7: Creating gaps for the JCloze activity



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Fifth step. To configure JCloze. Remember that I told you in Section 2.4 that it is nice to learn many tools from the same company because they have a similar interface. Well, this also applies to Hot Potatoes. I am going to show you a configuration menu that is very important, and is the same for all Hot Potatoes programs. This is great, isn’t it? Look at Figure 3.7, and let’s focus on the icon inside the red circle. Let’s click on it. You will now see a page similar to the one shown in Figure 3.8

Figure 3.8: Configuration options in Hot Potatoes

As you can see, there are several tabs in the top menu. By clicking on the tab, you can see all the configuration possibilities that the program Hot Potatoes offers. You can change the  “Title/Instructions” just by typing into the  text areas. Similarly, in the “Prompts/Feedback” you can change the feedback, which is really useful for your students. You can also change the colors in “Appearance”, and put a “Timer” with minutes and seconds. The feedback sentence is the one shown when the time is up. You can even link several Hot Potatoes activities with the “Button” option, but I will explain that to you a little later, when you’ve had more practice with the program. For now, I am going to leave all options at the default settings. Sixth step. To generate the webpage. We have just completed the activity, but we have not finished. Hot Potatoes activities always have 2 files associated with them. One file is the one created by the program, the one shown in Figure 3.5 for JCloze, for instance. This file is for the teachers so that they can edit the activity as many times as they want. The other file is the webpage for the students. Where is the webpage? You do not have it, because we have not generated it yet. It is now time to do that! How? One option is that you go to the “File” menu → “Create webpage” → “Standard format”, or another option is to click on the  spiderweb icon. Good thing: this is

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the  same for all Hot Potatoes activities! Either way, you are asked where you want to save the file (remember, in your folder!!) and if you want to view the exercise in your browser (only for your computer), upload the file to the Hot Potatoes Website (and publish the exercise for anyone on the Internet) or cancel (Nothing). We click on “View the exercise in my browser”. The result is shown in Figure 3.9, and again it will be the same for all Hot Potatoes activities!

Figure 3.9: Menu to generate the webpage in your computer or on the Internet

That’s it! You did it! Now you have an activity created by JCloze, as shown in Figure 3.10. You can check that it works by typing some letters and clicking on the “Check” button. The letters that are correct are shown. Otherwise, the feedback sentence is shown, indicating that there are still some mistakes. The score is reduced for each mistake. You can see that in Figure 3.10. Is this amazing or what? And, I can tell you another little thing: when you get practice, in a matter of minutes you will have very good fillin-the blank activities. Enjoy it!

Figure 3.10: Sample JCloze activity generated on-line



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Figure 3.11: Partially correct solved JCloze activity

Seventh step. To close JCloze. When you have finished editing the activity, you just need to click on “File” -> Exit. If you have forgotten to save something, the program will ask you to save. You can see that by closing JCloze, you are not closing Hot Potatoes. If you want to close Hot Potatoes, you need to return to Figure 3.3, and click on “File” -> “Exit”.

3.2.3 JMatch JMatch allows you to create matching activities for your students. Let’s give a complete example: a teacher found in Google Videos a  documentary about flags. Students watched it. Now, the teacher wants the  students to apply their knowledge, still in a simple approach, so the teacher uses JMatch to create a matching activity between the  flags and the  names of the  countries. The students must apply the  knowledge learnt about flags to pass the activity. They can do that on-line individually or with other students. Are you ready to learn how to use JMatch? Are you interested? I hope so! If you are in the main screen of Hot Potatoes, the one shown in Figure 3.3, you just need to click on the “JMatch” potato. Otherwise, first you need to open Hot Potatoes by clicking on its icon. The main screen of JMatch is shown in Figure 3.12. OK, so you are now ready to create your first activity in JMatch. Let’s go step by step: First step. To create a  folder in which you save everything you do with Hot Potatoes. If you have not created the  folder, please do it. It is very important. So, if you have been following all the steps, the folder should be like the one shown in Figure 3.13. For this activity, I have saved in the “img” subfolder the flags of United States, Spain, Hungary and The European Union from the  Media Library of the  Spanish Education Portal29.

29  http://recursostic.educacion.es/bancoimagenes/web/

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Figure 3.12: Screenshot of the main page of JMatch

Figure 3.13: Sample folder for the Hot Potatoes activities

Second step. To save the  file in your folder. Initially, the file is untitled as you can see in Figure 3.12. Let’s give the file a name. It is very simple to do, because it is the same as in any other computer program. You just go to the “File” menu option, and click on “Save”. JMatch will ask you for the name of the file and where you want to save it. Please, choose the folder you have just created and save it in the root. I am going to name it as “JMatch”. So, now, you may have something like Figure 3.14. If not, please read again steps one and two, they are really important!

Figure 3.14: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with JCloze and JMatch activities



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Third step. To give a title and some text to the activity. You can give a title to the activity. For instance, flags. To do that, you just need to type the name for the title in the “Title” text area that you can see in Figure 3.12. But…where is the text area? Well, JMatch is not for fill-in-the blank activities, so there are columns for the matching. You just write for each column on the left, the correct matching on the right. This is very important because the  computer learns that the  correct matching of something on the  left is what is on the right. In this case, we want to match images (flags) with words (names of countries). So, how can I insert an image? You click with the mouse on the point at which you want to insert the  image, and then you click on “Insert” -> “Picture” -> “From Local File”. You will also be asked about the size. It should not be really big, 100 x 100 is usually right, although you can practice with different numbers until you see the image clearly on different devices. Do not worry about the strange list of characters that Hot Potatoes insert in the text area, you did it correctly, it is just the computer language to indicate that there is an image there. Please, do not tick on “Fix”, that option is only useful when you do not want to randomize the rows in the columns, but usually it is much better to take advantage of this random possibility, so that every time the student does the activity, the options are in a different place! OK, let’s put all the flags on the left, and the name of the countries on the right. When you finish, you should have something like Figure 3.15. Remember that you can save at any time just by clicking on the floppy disk icon on the menu, or “File” -> “Save”.

Figure 3.15: Sample title and matching columns for the JMatch activity

Fourth step. To configure JMatch. It is the same as in JCloze. However, this time we are going to use the option to link the activities. So that when the student finishes the JMatch activity, s/he can continue with the JCloze activity. Do you remember in which tab I said this option was located? It was something like buttons…yes, it is in the  buttons tab. In particular, in the  “Navigation” part. You can click on “Browse” and instead of “nextpage” (which is nothing really), you choose “Jcloze.htm” (the webpage we generated in the last step of Section 3.2.2). You should have something similar to Figure 3.16. You can now click “OK”. We are not going to change the rest of the options.

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Fifth step. To generate the webpage. It is very similar to JCloze. The only difference is that Hot Potatoes allows you to create a drag and drop webpage. This is a much better option for matching activities. You do not need to program anything. You just click on “File” -> “Create Webpage” -> “Drag/Drop format”, and when the students interact with the  activity, they will be able to actually drag and drop the  elements from one column to the other.

Figure 3.16: Linking the JMatch activity to the JCloze activity in Hot Potatoes

Let’s click on “View the exercise in my browser”. Figure 3.17 shows you the webpage that has been generated. You can check that it works by moving the name of the countries next to the flag. If the matching is not correct, Hot Potatoes will discard it. It is now time for you to explore the activity a little more. Please, do not forget to click on the arrow, to see what happens. Now save and close JMatch (exactly the same as in JCloze), and enjoy it!

Figure 3.17: Sample JMatch drag-and-drop activity generated on-line



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3.2.2 JQuiz JQuiz allows the  teacher to create tests for their students. Let’s give a  complete example: a teacher finds a good piece of reading material in an education portal. The teacher wants the  students to answers some questions about the  piece to practice some reading and writing skills. Thus, s/he uses JQuiz to create several questions, which appear right next to the reading material. Are you ready to learn how to use JQuiz? Are you interested? I hope so! If you are in the main screen of Hot Potatoes, the one shown in Figure 3.3, you just need to click on the “JQuiz” potato. Otherwise, you need to open Hot Potatoes first. The main screen of JQuiz is shown in Figure 3.18.

Figure 3.18: Screenshot of the main page of JQuiz

OK, so you are now ready to create your first activity in JQuiz. Let’s go step by step: First step. To create a  folder in which you save everything you do with Hot Potatoes. If you have not created this folder yet, please do it! It is very important. Currently, if you have been following all the steps, the folder should be like the one shown in Figure 3.19.

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Figure 3.19: Sample Hot Potatoes folder with JCloze and JMatch activities

Second step. To save the file in your folder. Let’s give the file a name, as before, you just go to the  “File” menu option, and click on “Save”. JQuiz will ask you for the name of the file and where you want to save it. Please choose the folder you have just created and save it in the root. I am going to name it as “JQuiz”. So, now, you may have something like Figure 3.20.

Figure 3.20: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with JCloze, JMatch and JQuiz activities

Third step. To give a  title and complete the  activity. You can give a  title to the  activity. For instance, reading. To do that, you just need to type the  name for the title in the “Title” text area that you can see in Figure 3.18. But…where is the text area for the  reading material? Well, JQuiz differentiates between the  reading and the  questions. The reading is optional. This is why it does not directly appear on screen. If you want to add reading text, you need to click on the “Book” icon. You will see a page similar to the one shown in Figure 3.21. Please, tick on “Including a reading text”!



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Figure 3.21: Sample reading for the JQuiz test

After you click the “OK” button, the screen disappears, and again you do not see any change in the main screen shown in Figure 3.18. Do not worry, it has been correctly saved, and you can check it, just by clicking again on the book. So, let’s create our first set of questions. As you can see in Figure 3.18, right next to Q1, there is pull-down menu with four possible question types: –– Multiple-choice: there are several options, and only one is correct. –– Short-answer: you have to answer with one or more sentences that you need to type. –– Hybrid: initially the question is of the short-answer type, but if the student fails to answer correctly twice, the next time the question changes to a multiple-choice selection. –– Multi-select: there are several options, and more than one can be correct. Let’s create one sample question for each type. Figure  3.22 shows a  sample for a multiple-choice question. Please, note that the question is above, and the answers are below. Each row is for one possible answer. You could provide some feedback in the column next to the answer to give a clue to the student. Finally, do not forget to indicate the correct answers by ticking on the “Accept as correct” checkbox. In our case, it is Mary, so the row C checkbox should be ticked.

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Figure 3.22: Sample multiple-choice question for the JQuiz test

Let’s continue with the short-answer type. Remember that you can save your work at any time by clicking on the floppy disk icon, or “File” -> “Save”. To advance to a new question, you must click on the up triangle next to “Q1”. It will change to “Q2”. Do not worry that everything is now blank. Q1 is still there, if you just go back with the down triangle. Do not forget to change the type of question in the pull-down menu to “short answer”. Figure 3.23 shows a sample short answer question in JQuiz. The advantage of this type of question is that they are harder for the students. They need to think on their own, not only pick from a given list. However, the problem with freetext answer questions is that the student may answer correctly, but with an answer that is different to the sample answers provided. This is why I have written several possible correct answers. You will see more about that in Chapter 5. OK, let’s now create a hybrid question. We advance to Q3, and choose “Hybrid” in the  pull-down menu. Figure  3.24 shows a sample hybrid question in JQuiz. Originally, the question would be: “What vegetables does Mary eat every day?”. If the student knows the answer, this question would be the same as in the short-answer, the computer expects: “tomatoes, lettuce and a cucumber”. On the other hand, if the student fails twice to answer correctly, the question will appear as a  multiple-choice, giving the  A,B,C options as shown in Figure 3.24. That way, it should be easier for the student to recognize the correct answer and pass the question.



Figure 3.23: Sample short answer question for the JQuiz test

Figure 3.24: Sample hybrid question for the JQuiz test

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Figure 3.25 shows a sample multi-select question. It is very similar to a multiplechoice question. The difference lies in the right column. Look at “Should be selected”. In this case, there is not only one correct answer, but several answers can be correct. Therefore, you can click on the checkbox next to “Should be selected” for each correct answer.

Figure 3.25: Sample multi-select question for the JQuiz test

Fourth step. To configure JQuiz. It is the same as in the other Hot Potatoes programs as I  already told you. However, this time we are going to use the  option of adding a timer. Usually, students are given a limited time to complete tests. To do that, you just go to the  “Timer” option and click on the  checkbox “Set a  time limit for this exercise”. It could be 5 minutes, or the time that you consider appropriate. Fifth step. To generate the webpage. Finally, once all the questions for the test have been created, it is time to generate the webpage for the quiz. It is the same procedure as in JCloze or JMatch. You have to click on “File” -> “Create webpage” → “Standard format”. Figure  3.26 shows the  quiz generated. The reading is on the  left, and it has been set up so that all four questions are shown. However, it is also possible, by clicking on the  upper right corner “Show questions one by one”, to have only question shown at a time. It is now time for you to explore the activity a little more. Please, do not forget to save all changes, and close JQuiz (exactly the same as in other Hot Potatoes programs), and enjoy it!



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Figure 3.26: Sample generated JQuiz test in Hot Potatoes with time

3.2.3 JCross JCross allows the teacher to create crosswords for their students. Let’s give a complete example: the teacher has a list of vertebrate animals, and s/he wants the students to learn their names and some of their features (e.g. that a frog is a vertebrate animal and is an amphibian). Students read the list of animals and their features. It is now time to practice. Thus, the teacher uses JCross to create a crossword with the list of animals and then the students must apply the knowledge about them to identify the animals and pass the activity. They do that on-line individually or with other students. Are you ready to learn how to use JCross? Are you interested? I hope so! If you are in the main screen of Hot Potatoes, the one shown in Figure 3.3, you just need to click on the “JCross” potato. Otherwise, you need to open Hot Potatoes first. The main screen of JCross is shown in Figure 3.27. OK, so you are now ready to create your first activity in JCross. Let’s go step by step: First step. To create a  folder in which you save everything you do with Hot Potatoes. If you have not created this folder yet, please do it! It is very important. Currently, if you have been following all the steps, the folder should be like the one shown in Figure 3.28. Second step. To save the file in your folder. Let’s give the file a name by clicking on the “Save” option of the “File” menu. JCross will ask you for the name of the file and where you want to save it. Please, choose the folder you have just created and save it in the root. I am going to name it as “JCross”. So, now, you may have something like Figure 3.29.

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Figure 3.27: Screenshot of the main page of JCross

Figure 3.28: Screenshot of the sample Hot Potatoes folder

Figure 3.29: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with the JCross activity



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Third step. To give a  title and the  words for the  activity. You can give a  title to the activity. For instance, “Vertebrates”. To do that, you just need to type the name for the title in the “Title” text area that you can see in Figure 3.27. And what about the table of cells right next to the title? Well, this is where the words for the crossword need to be typed. You can write the words, just typing in the letters, either horizontally, vertically or in a diagonal line. You can save at any time just by clicking on the floppy disk icon on the menu, or “File” -> “Save”. For each word that you type, you must add a clue by clicking on “Add clue”. In our example, you can write there the features of the animals. See Figures 3.30 and 3.31 for the sample crossword I have created with the animals frog, crocodile and gorilla, and the clues I have associated with each word.

Figure 3.30: Sample crossword created in JCross

Figure 3.31: Clues for the sample crossword

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Fourth step. To configure JCloze. It is the same as in the rest of the Hot Potatoes programs. In this case, I am just going to change the background color to green. To do that, it is necessary to click on the “Appearance” tag, and click on the green color in the “Page background color” option. Fifth step. To generate the  webpage. It is now time to generate the  webpage for the quiz. It is the same procedure that you used in the other Hot Potatoes programs. You click on “File” -> “Create webpage” → “Standard format”. Figure  3.32 shows the crossword generated. You click on the number of the word to get the clue, and type the letters of the animal that you think corresponds to that clue. When you think that it is all correct, you can check your answers, and see whether it is OK or, you can keep exploring the activity a little more. Please, do not forget to save all changes, close JCross (exactly the same as the other Hot Potatoes programs) when you finish, and enjoy it!

Figure 3.32: Sample generated Jcross crossword

3.2.2 JMix JMix allows the  teacher to create word ordering activities for their students. Let’s give a  complete example: an English teacher wants to practice conditionals with their students. Students were taught the  theory about conditionals in class. Now, the teacher wants the  students to apply their knowledge, still in a  simple way, so the teacher uses JMix to create a sentence in which the word order is correct (one JMix is one sentence). JMix scrambles the order of the words, so that students apply their knowledge about conditionals to correctly order the words in the sentence. They can do this activity on-line individually or with other students. Are you ready to learn how to use JMix? Are you interested? I hope so! If you are in the main screen of Hot Potatoes, the one shown in Figure 3.3, you just need to click on the “JMix” potato. Otherwise, you need to open Hot Potatoes first. The main screen of JMix is shown in Figure 3.33.



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Figure 3.33: Screenshot of the main page of JMix

OK, so you are now ready to create your first activity in JMix. Let’s go step by step: First step. To create a  folder in which you save everything you do with Hot Potatoes. If you have not created this folder yet, please do it! It is very important. Currently, if you have been following all the steps, the folder should be like the one shown in Figure 3.34.

Figure 3.34: Screenshot of the sample structure of the Hot Potatoes folder

Second step. To save the file in your folder. Let’s give the file a name like “JMix”, and save it in the  folder, so now you may have something like Figure  3.35. If not, please read again steps one and two.

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Figure 3.35: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with the JMix activity

Third step. To give a title and the words of the sentence for the activity. You can give a  title to the  activity. For instance, you can put the  title “Conditionals”. To do that, you just need to type the name for the title in the “Title” text area that you can see in Figure 3.33. And what about the “Main sentence” area that is under the title? Well, this is the most important text area. In there, you need to write, in correct order, one word per line, the sentence that you want your students to practice. If there are other possible valid word orders, you can write alternate sentences on the  right. Figure 3.36 shows the sample sentence “If I were rich, I would buy an airplane” to practice the second conditional.

Figure 3.36: Sample sentence for the JMix activity



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Fourth step. To configure JMix. All the configuration options seen previously are valid, and the same, for JMix. So, what can you do if you want your students to try again with a different sentence? You must create another JMix activity and link it to the  previous activity. How can you do that? Yes, you are right, with the  navigation button in the configuration. That way, you can create as many sentences as you like! Fifth step. To generate the  webpage. Just as we did in JMatch, drag and drop webpages are usually better. So, let’s go to “File” menu → “Create webpage” → “Drag/ drop format” and see how you have just generated the activity in Figure 3.37.

Figure 3.37: Sample generated JMix activity

That’s it! You did it! Now you just have to drag and drop the words from below, to create the  sentences and when you think it is correct, you click on “Check”. The computer will check whether the order is the same as the one provided to evaluate whether it is correct. Please, keep exploring the possibilities of JMix, do not forget to save everything in the folder, and close JMix when you stop working.

3.2.3 The Masher Currently, you should have five different exercises. In this case, they are different because they were just created as samples. However, in some cases, you can have several exercises for the same unit that you would like to build together. The Masher is the program that allows you to join all together the exercises in one unit. The main screen of The Masher is shown in Figure 3.38.

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Figure 3.38: Creating a unit with The Masher

Let’s create a unit with the five exercises just for practice. It is quite easy to do. As you can see in Figure 3.38, the project consists of Hot Potatoes files. Initially there are no files. You can add a new file (e.g. the JCloze activity) just by clicking on “Add files” and then choosing the JCloze file. You can also choose the standard or drag/drop format output, and edit the file at any time by clicking on it. To change the appearance, you can click on the  “Appearance” button, and finally when everything is ready, you just need to click on the “Build unit” button to have your unit webpage generated as shown in Figure 3.39.

Figure 3.39: Sample unit generated by The Masher

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3.3 JClic 3.3.1 Introduction and Installation JClic is a free software application that works on several operating systems. It allows you to create, evaluate and run educational activities. JClic has been coded in Java, so the first step needed for JClic to work is to have installed on your computer the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). JVM is in charge of running the activities created with JClic. The good news is, downloading JVM is free, and it is possible you may even already have it installed on your computer! So, first of all, let’s check whether you already have Java on your computer. To do that, we go to the Java webpage30, and click on the button “Verify the version of Java” as shown in Figure 3.40. More good news: if you have Java, perfect, you can continue with the JClic installation. However, if you see a message telling you that you do not have the Java Virtual Machine, or your version is not up to date, you just need to click on “Download now”, then choose “JRE”, select your operating system, and follow the step-by-step on-screen instructions.

Figure 3.40: Verify the Java Version

Once you’ve installed the  Java Virtual Machine, we can start the  installation of JClic. You can download JClic from the  JClic webpage link31. If you have Windows on your computer, you must choose the Windows installer as marked in Figure 3.41. The installation for Windows will be automatic. In case you have Mac or Linux, you must choose a  different distribution, see bottom of Figure  3.41. In those cases, the installation has to be manual.

30  http://java.com/en/download/installed.jsp 31  http://clic.xtec.cat/en/jclic/download.htm

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Figure 3.41: Downloading JClic

It is possible that you may get some security warnings about the JClic executable file. This is because it has been downloaded from the web and it may contain a virus. In this case, given that we know the program and the source, we permit the installation on our computer. On the other hand, if you are ever not sure about the program or the source, it is not advisable to install executable programs from the web on your computer. When we click on the  executable file (with. exe extension), the installation of JClic starts. The first step is to choose the  language in which the  installation will be done. Next, the wizard to assist with the  installation of JClic on your computer will be started in the  language chosen in the  previous step. A welcome page, and a screen with the license agreement of JClic, will then appear. You need to click on the “Accept” button to continue with the remaining steps of the installation. Next, you will be shown the components to install. JClic is not only one computer application, but it consists of four applications with different functionalities: –– JClic Player: Program to run the activities previously created. –– JClic Author: Program to create, modify and test new projects. This is a visual and intuitive tool. –– JClic Applet: Program to run in a web browser the activities created with JClic. –– JClic Reports: Program to manage the database in which will be saved the results achieved by the  students doing the  JClic activities. This program also allows the teacher to generate statistical reports.

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On the  next screen, the wizard will ask for the  path in which to save JClic. If you want to change the directory in which the program will be saved, you can click on the button “Browse” and choose a different folder. The default folder is usually OK. Once the folder for the installation has been chosen, you can press the “Install” button. Finally, a confirmation screen appears to acknowledge the successful installation of JClic. You can click on the button “End” to finish the installation. Once installed, we can launch any of the  JClic applications by pressing the  corresponding icon. The related icons in JClic will be available from our list of programs in Windows and from the  desktop if we have allowed the  installation program to create them in that path. If it does not work, it is likely that the installed version of Java is not updated, and in that case, it is necessary to update it from the Java webpage (as explained before). If you have Windows 7 or later, it is possible that JClic does not know how to find Java, even if you have successfully installed it. You can tell JClic by clicking on the “browse” button and locating the file in the correct path, as shown in Figure 3.42

Figure 3.42: Path to Java for JClic (only if JClic does not automatically locate it)

3.3.2 JClic Player JClic Player serves to play JClic activities. Figure  3.43 shows the  main screen of the JClic Player. As you can see, the icon for each JClic component is different, and this is the icon for JClic Player. JClic has an on-line library of activities that we can view and download32. We can search, as our first example JClic activity, for an activity for “Languages” (JClic can be used for any topic). Then let’s select English (JClic has been translated into many languages), and choose the “Level”, for example High School education (JClic can be used for children from kindergarten to High School), and then select, for instance, the “Past simple and present perfect” as shown in Figure 3.44.

32  http://clic.xtec.cat/en/act/index.htm

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Figure 3.43: Snapshot of the main screen of JClic Player

Figure 3.44: Activity search in the JClic library of activities

If you click on the activity, you can see a page similar to the one shown in Figure 3.45. You can read a  more detailed description of the  activity, and launch it on-line, or install it on your computer. I am going to install it, so that I can use it later with my students. Therefore, I click on “Install”, but please explore several activities, launch

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them on-line, and practice. The more you practice with the  already created JClic activities, the more proficient you’ll become at using JClic.

Figure 3.45: Sample information sheet of an activity in the JClic library

To install a JClic activity means to download a file with the. jnlp extension. When you double click on it, you are asked about allowing the  computer to install it. As you know the source of the file and that it is not going to put your computer in danger, you can accept it. You may also be asked about the library of projects, if you already have a library of projects you can choose that. Otherwise, you can tell the JClic activity installer to create a  new library of projects, and continue with the  installation. In a  matter of seconds, you will have your activity open in JClic Player as shown in Figure 3.46. Can you see the little yellow buttons at the bottom of Figure 3.46? These buttons are really important in JClic. They serve to go forward and backward. Unlike Hot Potatoes, in JClic you always create a unit of activities (a project in JClic terminology). JClic always works with projects. This is why there will usually be more than one activity. You can also see right next to the buttons, the area for the messages, and some counters. There are three counters: score, tries and time. You can choose whether you use all of them, some, or none. We will talk more about them later.

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Figure 3.46: Sample JClic activity in JClic Player (I)

The first screen is just a cover. It serves to give you the name of the activity and some context. If you click on the right yellow arrow (you cannot go backwards in the first activity!), you can start with the activities such as the one shown in Figure 3.47. It is an activity to order the sentence. Please, keep exploring the activity and see what JClic has to offer!

Figure 3.47: Sample JClic activity in JClic Player (II)

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3.3.3 JClic Author By now, if you have followed my advice of exploring already created JClic activities, you may have noticed that there are many types of activities that you can do with JClic. In particular, you can create up to seven basic types of activities with JClic Author: The matching exercises that have the goal that the user discovers the relationships between two sets of information. The memory games in which the  player has to discover pairs of the  same elements or related elements, which are hidden. The exploration, identification and information activities, which starts with a unique set of information. The jigsaws in which the students have to reorganize some information which is presented out of order. This information can have graphics, text, sound, or even combined graphical and sound aspects. The text answer exercises in which the student has to answer with written text. The text activities, which are exercises based on the  use of words, sentences, letters or paragraphs which should be completed, understood, corrected or ordered. The texts can also contain images and windows with active content. The word search games and crosswords are interactive versions of the  wellknown traditional paper and pencil hidden word games. Some of these types also have different modes, resulting in 16 different possible activities. I encourage you to explore all of them. We are now going to follow, stepby-step, one example JClic activity: a word search to identify vertebrates. In this case, the teacher wants the students to find, from the animals hidden in the soup of letters, three animals which are vertebrate. First step. To open JClic author and fill in the information about the project. As with any other computer program, we double-click on the icon. Please, notice here how the icon is different from JClic player. In this case, it is a set-square as you can see in Figure 3.47, which shows the main screen of JClic author. As I  mentioned before, everything in JClic is a  project. This different from Hot Potatoes. You can also have a folder in which you save all your resources and the JClic project. However, in this case, it is not so important, because JClic author makes sure that everything is saved together. In particular, the file that is created is a. jclic.zip file. As you can see, it is a compressed file. That is because everything is saved inside this file, so that no images are missing and to avoid broken links. That way, whenever you want to keep working with the project file, you just save this. jclic.zip and everything will be inside the file. Let’s create our first project in JClic. You just need to click on “File” → “New project…”. JClic will show the menu in Figure 3.48 to ask about the name of the file and where you want to save the  project. This screen is very important. Please, pay attention to the  “Browse” button, as you need to change the  default folder for

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the project. You can save it in any other folder that you may have created for your JClic projects. You would also need to type the  name of the  JClic projects several times. Don’t worry, this is normal in this program!

Figure 3.47: Creating a project in JClic Author (I)

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Figure 3.48: Creating a project in JClic Author (II)

When you click on the  “OK” button, the project has been created, and you can edit the  profile shown in Figure  3.47 with the  title and description of the  project by just typing in the text area provided. Whenever there is a “+” or “-“ button, it means that you cannot type directly on the text area, but given that there can be several rows of information, you can add a new row, by clicking on the “+” button, and delete one with the “-“ button. You can also choose a skin, i.e. the background color for the interface. Second step. To add all multimedia resources in the  Media Library. After completing the general information in the profile, and as you can see in Figure 3.47, it is now time to move to the  next tab. It is the  “Media Library” tab and it is very important because all multimedia resources to be used in the project must be in this media library. The general look of the Media Library is shown in Figure 3.49.

Figure 3.49: JClic Media Library

As you can see, I have circled the first icon on the left. Usually, it is a very important button. It serves to add a new resource to the library. It is very easy to use. You just click on it, and browse for the file that you would like to add from your computer. This time you do not need to worry about keeping a folder with everything inside as in Hot Potatoes. JClic is different. JClic saves a compressed file with everything together so that you never miss a file. So, it is possible that JClic will ask you to change the folder of a file if that file is in a different folder, so that everything is saved together.

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I advise you to use small/medium-size. JPG images. Regardless, it is very likely, that JClic will ask you to resize an image that is too big. Please, read carefully any message from JClic! They are not meaningless computer messages, but real questions to know how to proceed. Third step. To create the activities. You can modify the Media Library later, so don’t worry if you feel you may need an additional file in the future. By now, you will have the  files you need to start creating an activity. To do that, you need to advance to the next tab, “Activity”, which looks like the screen shown in Figure 3.50.

Figure 3.50: JClic screen to create activities

As you can see, the first button on the left is again circled. This is because it serves to add a new activity. You can choose from among sixteen different types of activity. JClic is indeed a very powerful tool to achieve pedagogical tools. The only limitation is that of the teacher’s imagination! As previously mentioned, I would like to show you how to create a word search. Please, explore all the other activities. There are many tutorials on-line to help you with any activity you may want to create, and there are forums where you can ask other teachers if you have questions. This sample activity also aims to help you! To choose an activity, you just need to click on it. In our case, we click “Word search”. You can give any name you want to the activity (I have chosen “word”), and click the “OK” button. That way, you will have a screen similar to the one shown in Figure 3.51.

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Figure 3.51: JClic screen to set up the options of the word search activity

You can type a  description in the  text area provided, change the  user interface, counters and buttons. You can see that next to each counter there is a  checkbox. For the time counter and tries counter, you can even establish a maximum time and number of tries, and use them as a countdown. The time counter is similar to the time counter in Hot Potatoes, but this time it is in seconds. The tries counter is the number of tries that you allow the student to pass the activity, and the score counter is to show the student what mark they’ve achieved. The help button can be very useful. It can be used to show a help message for a student who does not know how to complete the activity, or it can be set up to show the solution. You are the teacher, so you choose whether to give help or not, and how to provide that help. You can also set up the activity colors, but not in this tab. You need to click on the  “Window” tab just next to “Options”. You click on the  background color for the main window and the game window (i.e. the general window of JClic and the one inside in which the activity is located, see Figure 3.46 where the skin color was blue,

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the main window was red, and the  background color for the  activity was white). Figure 3.52 shows these options. The buttons that you need to click to change the color have been marked with a black circle.

Figure 3.52: JClic screen to set up the options of the word search activity

You can also type some messages to show at the  beginning, during, or at the  end of each activity. To do that, you just need to click on the tab next to “Window”, the “Messages” tab. Figure  3.53 shows a  screenshot of the  Messages window. For each message, the procedure is the  same, you click on the  checkbox so that it appears, and next you click on the text area to fill in the form with the message. If you want to use a background image or change the style (colors, fonts, etc.) or perhaps associate some active content (i.e. a sound, video, program, etc.), this is where you’ll find these options.

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Figure 3.53: JClic screen to set up the messages of the word search activity

Finally, for all activities in JClic, you need to go to the “Panel” tab. In this screen, you set up the panel of the activity. It changes depending on the activity. In this case, as you can see in Figure 3.54, given that it is a word search, there is a 3x3 table with a letter in each cell. You can make the table bigger, by changing the numbers. If you type the number, remember to press the  Enter key when you finish. You can also change the  size of the cells so that they are bigger. This is the same for all panels in JClic. The procedure for the word search is to set up the table. Next, you type the letters of the words that you want to appear on the word search. Do not worry about the rest of the  cells, JClic will automatically assign a  letter to the  cells in which you have written nothing. The important thing that you must remember is that each word you want the students to find must be saved as a hidden word. To save a hidden word, you just click on the “+” button below the “Hidden words” box. Each word that appears in this box is considered by JClic as one of the words that the student should find in the word search. It means that JClic will not consider that the student has finished the activity until all hidden words are found. For our example, we are going to type six words in the word search: frog, crocodile, gorilla, octopus, crab and spider. However, given that the  pedagogical goal is that the students are able to distinguish which animals are vertebrate, as hidden words only the  first three words are going to be saved. Figure  3.55 shows how the  panel should be set up for this activity, please try to do the activity yourself, it is the only way to learn!

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Figure 3.54: JClic screen to set up the panel of the word search activity (I)

Figure 3.55: JClic screen to set up the panel of the word search activity (II)

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To check that the activity is correct, you should always click the green (play) triangle next to the  “add a  new activity” icon. Please, always play before saving! The JClic Author program calls JClic Player to show you the activity, as shown in Figure 3.56

Figure 3.56: JClic sample word search activity

Fourth step. To set up the sequence of the activities in the project. Finally, after you have created as many activities as you want for your project, you can set up the sequence of activities in the project. All JClic projects are sequences of activities, even when it is only one activity as in this case. Figure 3.57 shows this screen for our example project. As you can see, the list of activities is on the left panel, and there are yellow arrows that you can click to change the order of the activities. For each activity, on the right you can see more options. For instance, you can give the  activity a  label, e.g. “start” if it is the  first activity or “end” if it is the  last activity. You can also provide another description for the  sequence. And, the most important feature here, you can disable the back or forward arrow. This is very useful for the first and last activities. You should not allow anyone to go backward in the first activity (i.e. you should disable the back arrow in the first activity) or to go forward in the last activity (i.e. you should disable the forward arrow in the last activity).

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You can also establish a delay between activities, so that after a certain number of seconds JClic Player moves from one activity to another. You can even create jumps between the activities. Do not forget to play the whole sequence of activities before closing the JClic project so that you can make sure that everything is working!

Figure 3.57: JClic screen to set up the sequence of activities in the project

Finally, remember that you can save the project, as with any other program by clicking on the “File” -> “Save” menu option, and close it with “File” -> “Exit”. Please, read any message that JClic may show. They are important! Usually, they are related to a file that has been deleted or a new activity that is not in a sequence. What do these mean? In the case of the file, check that the file is correct, otherwise you may have some problems with the multimedia resources, and in the case of the sequence you may allow JClic to add the new activity to the sequence (in this step, you can set up the sequence of activities as you want). To continue working with a  project another day, after you’ve saved and closed the project, you have to click on the “JClic Author” icon and select the “File” -> “Open file…” option of the  menu. You can also create a  Project Installer like the  one we saw at the beginning of Section 3.5. You do this by clicking on the JClic menu option “Tools” -> “Create project installer”. Please, keep exploring JClic, because this is just an introduction, JClic is a very powerful program with many possibilities, so enjoy it!



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3.4 Exercises Let’s do several exercises to practise the  content of this chapter. Remember that all exercises are solved at the end of the chapter, but do not read the solutions until you have first tried to solve the exercises on your own! It is also possible that you’ll find different answers to these questions. In that case, please tell us about them on the book’s website. 1) True or false? a) It is necessary to save all Hot Potatoes files in a folder for the activities to work. b) JCloze is used to create matching activities. c) JMatch is used to create matching activities. d) JQuiz is used to create tests. e) The Masher is used to create activities to order words in sentences. f) JMix is used to create activities to order words in sentences. 2) Fill in this table with the missing information (indicated with a question mark): Table 3.1: Exercise 2 TYPES Matching

DESCRIPTION Simple

?

Memory game Exploration activity ? Information screen Jigsaw ?

Text

Of interchange Of holes To complete text ?

To identify elements To order elements

Two sets of information with the same number of elements are presented. For each element in the source set, there is a corresponding element in the target set. Two sets of information are presented, but they can have a different number of elements and among them there can be different types of relationship: one to one, several to one, elements without association, etc. ? ? Just a set of information is shown and you have to click on the elements which meet a certain condition. ? Two panels are shown. In one of them the information is ordered, the other is empty. The goal is to build in the empty panel the same figure that is in the other panel by joining the pieces given, one by one. ? ? ? In a text, some words, letters and sentences are hidden or camouflaged, and the student must fill in the blanks. It can be done by writing in a gap, correcting a sentence with mistakes or choosing the answer from a list. ? ?

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TYPES

DESCRIPTION

?

A set of information is shown and, for each one of the elements, the corresponding text must be written. The panel of words must be completed from their definitions, which can be textual, graphical or sound. The program automatically shows the definition of the word when the mouse pointer passes over it. ?

?

Word search

3) Find a tool to create comics on-line to achieve pedagogical goals related to applying and analyzing. 4) Find another tool to create games on-line to achieve pedagogical goals related to applying and analyzing.

3.5 Solved Exercises 1) True or false? a) It is necessary to save all Hot Potatoes files in a folder for the activities to work. → T b) JCloze is used to create matching activities. → F c) JMatch is used to create matching activities. → T d) JQuiz is used to create tests. → T e) The Masher is used to create activities to order words in sentences. → F f) JMix is used to create activities to order words in sentences. → T 2) The complete table is as follows: Table 3.2: Solved exercise 2 TYPES Matching

DESCRIPTION Simple

Complex

Memory game

Two sets of information with the same number of elements are presented. For each element in the source set, there is a corresponding element in the target set. Two sets of information are presented, but they can have a different number of elements and among them there can be different types of relationship: one to one, several to one, elements without association, etc. This type of activity consists of discovering pairs of elements among a set of cells initially hidden. Pairs can be formed by two identical forms, or two related elements. In each try, two elements are discovered, which can be hidden again if a pair has not been discovered. The goal is to discover all the pairs.



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TYPES

DESCRIPTION

Exploration activity

An initial set of information is shown. When clicking on it, it is shown for each element, some information.

Identification activity

Just a set of information is shown and you have to click on the elements which meet a certain condition. A set of information is shown and, optionally, the user is offered the possibility of enabling the multimedia content of each element. These are usually introductory screens for a set of related activities in which their goal(s) and behaviour are explained. Two panels are shown. In one of them the information is ordered, the other is empty. The goal is to build in the empty panel the same figure that is in the other panel by joining the pieces given, one by one. There is only one panel with mixed information. In each try, the positions of two pieces are swapped, until eventually all of them are in their correct place. There is only one panel, in which a piece is removed and the rest are mixed. In each try, one piece can be moved to the hole, until all the pieces are in the original order. In a text, some parts (letters, words, punctuation signs, or sentences) are hidden and the student must complete them. In a text, some words, letters and sentences are hidden or camouflaged, and the student must fill in the blanks. It can be done by writing in a gap, correcting a sentence with mistakes or choosing the answer from a list. The student must choose, by using the mouse, certain words, letters, numbers, symbols or punctuation signs.

Information screen

Jigsaw

Double

Of interchange Of holes

Text

To complete text To fill-in-theblank

To identify elements

Written answer Crosswords

Word search

To order elements

When designing an activity, some words or paragraphs are selected in the text and they are mixed. The student has to order them. A set of information is shown and, for each one of the elements, the corresponding text must be written. The panel of words must be completed from their definitions, which can be textual, graphical or sound. The program automatically shows the definition of the word when the mouse pointer passes over it. The goal is to find the words hidden in a soup of letters.

3) There are many tools to create comics on-line. You can share your findings with other people via this book’s website. My choice is Pixton (http://www.pixton.com/). It has won several awards, and my students find it really easy to use (I do not even explain in class how to use it and, nevertheless, they are able to use it and create very good comics). You can find more information on their website. Please, try to create a comic on-line, and see how you could use it for your Psychology students to analyze certain behavior, or for your English students to create dialogues between the characters of the comic.

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4) As was the case for the third activity, this exercise doesn’t have only one correct solution. The most important thing here is that you find some tools that you like and consider easy to use and are useful for your students. Moreover, that you see how they can be used to achieve pedagogical goals while the students are have fun using them. My choice here would the ClassTools.net (http://www.classtools.net/). You do not need to install anything on your computer, or even register, and you can export the created game to a webpage. For instance, one of my favorite games in ClassTools. net (please, explore them because they are really interesting) is Fakebook. Figure 3.58 shows a screenshot.

Figure 3.58: Fakebook page in ClassTools.net

As you can see, it is like Facebook, a social network that new generations love (in general, many people of many different generations enjoy it, since I  have seen grandparents using Facebook, too), but it is completely fictional. It is very useful for



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History lessons, in which you can ask your students to create the Facebook profile of an important politician or scientific figure, e.g. Napoleón Bonaparte or Newton, by analyzing the information they’ve discovered about him or her on the Internet.

4 To Synthesize and Evaluate Using Assessment Tools 4.1 Introduction As explained in Section 1.2.1, the focus of the fifth and sixth levels of Bloom’s taxonomy is on synthesizing and evaluating new knowledge. In this chapter, my goal is to tell you about several resources that you may find useful to achieve goals in these levels. See Figure 4.1 for a general overview of the chapter.

Figure 4.1: General overview of chapter 4 (tools for the levels 5 & 6 of Bloom’s taxonomy)

The resources described in this chapter have been chosen because, from my experience, I have had the opportunity of checking that students are able to use them, and that they are tools that serve to accomplish the  formulated pedagogical goal. Another reason is that they are free, and I can show you how to use them step-by-step. As you get familiar with these tools, I am sure you will be able to find others that you can find that are even more useful for your particular case. Moreover, you will be able to create your own resources. So, let’s start with the possibilities of Delicious in Section 4.2, Webnotes in Section 4.3, Prezi in Section 4.4, and Animoto in Section 4.5. The chapter ends, as always, with several solved exercises. Remember that this book is not a novel, and that you must practice what you read in order to take advantage of it! © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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4.2 Delicious Delicious allows you to manage on-line bookmarks (i.e. webpages that you consider interesting and would like to use from any device connected to the Internet). Let’s think about this situation. You have just found an incredible webpage with thousands of resources. So, you click on your browser to save it as a bookmark. The next day, you go to your school, and you want to share this incredible webpage with your colleagues. What happens? Yes, no way of doing that! The webpage has been saved on your computer at home, so you need to remember it if you would like to access that webpage on the computer at school. Delicious gives you the possibility of saving the bookmarks so that you can access them from any computer connected to the Internet. Moreover, in Delicious, bookmarks are tagged so that they can be found in a more effective way. OK, but how does it relate with the 5th and 6th levels of Bloom’s taxonomy? Well, teachers are not the only ones who can find interesting webpages and save them as bookmarks. When we go to the upper levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, the idea is that students are responsible for their knowledge, they can become creators of new knowledge, and they should be able to evaluate and criticize the information gathered. Delicious is a  wonderful tool for your students to explore the  web of bookmarks saved by other people, and save their own bookmarks. Moreover, they can share their bookmarks with other students, and teachers too! Does it seem interesting? I hope so! Let’s start using Delicious33. To do that, the first step is to register and get an account. As you can see in Figure 4.2, the welcome page is pretty simple.

Figure 4.2: Welcome Delicious webpage

33  https://delicious.com/

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The two most important buttons are on the  upper right corner. There, you can sign in if you have an account, or create a  new one. If you just want to explore the webpage, you can scroll down a little, and start exploring links, but you cannot save them unless you have an account and you have signed in. It is also possible to use an already existing account from a social network, such as Facebook or Twitter, instead of creating a new account. That way, you just enter with one of your existing usernames and password. Otherwise, you click on the  “Create an account” button (you can see it on the upper right corner of Figure 4.2) and fill in a simple form similar to the one shown in Figure 4.3

Figure 4.3: Creating an account in Delicious (I)

You can also upload a photo, and do not forget to write the letters and numbers of the kaptcha before clicking on the “Create my account” or “Join Delicious” (the text could change) blue button at the  bottom. That’s it! Now you have your account in Delicious and you can start saving and sharing bookmarks. The webpage that I got was similar to the one shown in Figure 4.4.

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Figure 4.4: Creating an account in Delicious (II)

As you can see, initially there are no bookmarks, your account is empty! However, adding a link is really easy. Can you see on the upper right corner (yes, very important corner!) the “Add link” text? If you know the bookmark that you want to save, you just need to click on “Add link” and you save it. For instance, if I want to save coursera.org, the repository of MOOCs that I talked about in Section 2.3, then I get a page similar to the one shown in Figure 4.5

Figure 4.5: Saving a bookmark on-line in Delicious (I)

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As you may remember, I have told you that one good feature of the bookmarks in Delicious is that you can tag them (i.e. you can classify them by providing a label and / or additional information like a description or a photo). Where can you do that? Well, when you click on the “Save” button, the next page that you see is where you can provide more information (it is not necessary but it is usually useful!). Figure 4.6 shows you this page.

Figure 4.6: Saving a bookmark on-line in Delicious (II)

You can help yourself with the suggested tags, and the images provided by Delicious. By default, all bookmarks will be public (the idea is to share!). However, if you want the bookmark to be private, you can click on the “Make this link private” checkbox on the lower left corner. Now, you can click on the “Save” button to see how your first bookmark has been saved in your account. Figure 4.7 shows how the Delicious page changes now that there is a bookmark. Let’s look in a bit more detail at the bookmark you saved. As you can see, there is the  name that you provided at the  top (Coursera), on the  right the  image, and below a  number, a link and several tags. You can edit the  name, link and tags of the bookmark at any time just by clicking on the “pen” icon. On the other hand, you cannot edit the number of saves. Delicious counts how many people share the same bookmark. This “saves” counter is a good indicator of the popularity of the bookmark. Usually, bookmarks with many saves are interesting bookmarks!

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Figure 4.7: Sample bookmark saved in Delicious

What happens if the teacher wants their students to save five bookmarks regarding pregnancy? Students must search! They do not have the links, so they cannot directly type them as in the previous sample. They can search in Delicious or, on the Internet. To search in Delicious, you can use the search engine that is at the top of the page (see Figure 4.7) and type the keywords (as in Google). If you type “pregnancy” you will see a page similar to the one shown in Figure 4.8

Figure 4.8: Results webpage of a search in Delicious

The results are classified according to what bookmarks were found among the ones that you saved (currently, none because we have not saved anything about that topic yet), the ones that your friends (your network) saved (with the idea that your friends usually have similar interests to you), and the bookmarks collected by everyone on

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Delicious (here, you will always find bookmarks, although you must look at them carefully to make sure that they are what you are looking for). When you find an interesting link, you can save it just by clicking on the “+” button right next to it. If you want to see your bookmarks, you can click on the “Remember” text at the top, or you can click on your name. If you click on the bookmark, you can go to the webpage and if you find that you do not want to keep this bookmark any longer, you just need to click on the pen icon, as if you were going to edit it, but then you click on “Remove link” (to the left of the “Cancel”) and the blue button to “Save changes”. It is now time for you to explore Delicious, and to think how you can use it for your students to reach levels 5 and 6 in Bloom’s taxonomy (you can also use it just to show a video, levels 1 or 2 of Bloom, or a fun activity for levels 3 or 4). Do not forget to click on your username and “Sign out” before leaving the webpage (just closing it is not enough), and sign in every time that you want to use Delicious from any device connected to the Internet, and enjoy using it!

4.3 Webnotes If Delicious is very useful for sharing and saving bookmarks, Webnotes34 is the  equivalent for notes in webpages. I’ll explain that a  bit more. Sometimes, you do not need or want to save the whole webpage, because you are only interested in one or two paragraphs. Wouldn’t it be wonderful just to save those paragraphs, with the reference to the source webpage? It’s a dream for any researcher, and in general, for anyone (say student or teacher) who needs to gather information about a topic, maybe in order to produce a report or evaluate something from a critical point of view. Figure 4.9 shows the Webnotes main page with an example of a web page that has been annotated, so that you can see what I am talking about. Webnotes has three versions depending on the price. Oh…so do I have to pay to use Webnotes? Well, no. Remember that I  told you I  would only choose free tools, which I have seen that are easy to use? Webnotes has a lite35 free version that allows you to annotate webpages, organize and search notes, and share notes via email, twitter and permalink (i.e. a link that does not change, so that you can make sure that you can come back and the link will be working).

34  http://www.webnotes.net/ 35  A lite (light) version of commercial computer software is usually provided free, but it does not have full functionality, and/or it is supported by advertisements. Moreover, lite versions do not usually have tech support.

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Figure 4.9: Sample annotated webpage (in particular, the Webnotes webpage)

Does it seem interesting? I hope so! So, let’s start using Webnotes. To do that, given that it is an on-line application you do not need to install anything on your computer, but you need to create an account as usual. The good thing it is really simple. You click on Sign Up (where do you think it is? Yes, it is in the upper right corner! Well done!), and next, on the “Sign Up” orange button in the “Lite” column for the free version of the tool. It is possible that there is some kind of promotion, so that even if you click on the  Lite version, they upgraded your account to the  Pro version for a limited amount of time, but I would not get used to that if you are not willing to pay later, because it will not last. This is why I would just stick to what is available in the free version. See in Figure 4.10 how to sign up in the Lite version of Webnotes. When you click on the “Sign up” orange button, you need to complete the steps and fill in the form with the basic information to set up the account. It is very important that in the second step you drag the “Annotate” button to your browser toolbar if you want to access Webnotes directly by clicking on your browser’s toolbar button. After that, you can click on the  “Getting started” orange button to set up Webnotes in your browser. If your browser is Google Chrome, you can download the extension. Otherwise, you can just use the “Annotate” button that you dragged to your bookmarks toolbar. Webnotes will also offer a  tutorial about how to create and save annotations, annotate PDFs, organize notes, share annotated pages and generate reports. You should now have a page similar to the one shown in Figure 4.11. If not, check the previous steps. Let’s learn more about Webnotes with a step-by-step exercise!

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Figure 4.10: Webnotes sign up webpage

Figure 4.11: Webnotes Welcome page

Let’s imagine that I am a student, and my teacher has asked me to write a report about the Battle of Achelous. I go on-line to search for information, and among other pages, I find a Wikipedia webpage36. I want to get some information and create some notes. To do that, I use Webnotes! First step. To create and save annotations in a webpage and/or PDFs. When you are in your browser, if it is Google Chrome, and you have installed the extension, you just need to click on the red tack. Otherwise, you click on the Webnotes bookmarklet.

36  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Achelous_(917) (use it, if you want to do the activity with me, step by step)

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Anyway, you have a menu bar similar to the one shown in Figure 4.12. As you can see, you can use sticky notes (like post-its), a highlighter, and you can also create a folder so that all your annotations are saved. If you cannot find it, check that you dragged the  “Annotate” button when you signed up. You can read more information about how to access Webnotes at: http://www.webnotes.net/Register/Register3.aspx?tool=bookmarklet.

Figure 4.12: Webnotes menu bar

Let’s create a folder called “The Battle of Achelous” by clicking in Folder → “New Folder”. Then, create a sticky note with the text: “I have found the background part of this webpage very interesting, use that for Section 1.2 of the report!” by clicking on “Sticky note” and typing. Highlight the first sentence of the background, by clicking on the Highlighter and selecting the sentence (you can click on the note to delete it, and on the sentence and modify the background color). The annotations are shown in Figure 4.13.

Figure 4.13: Sample annotated webpage using Webnotes

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I may also have found an interesting PDF when searching the web. I would also like to annotate it. How can I do that? You need to upload it to your Webnotes account. You can do that by clicking on the “Upload PDF” button (see Figure 4.11). The process is automatic, although it may take some time to convert it to a format in which Webnotes can annotate the PDF. When the process is finished, you will see the message “PDF Uploaded Successfully”. Click on the  button “Open with Webnotes”. Now you can also add notes and highlight sentences and save all the annotations in your folder. I am going to write the  note “Reference for this PDF: History of the  Byzantine empire, A.A. Vasiliev, I  need to find the  year and editorial too!” (the procedure is the  same as if I  were adding a  note in a  webpage), and I  am going to highlight the main sentence talking about the battle. See Figure 4.14 for a look at the annotated PDF. Finally, I save these notes in the “Battle of Achelous” folder.

Figure 4.14: Sample annotated PDF using Webnotes

Second step. To organize your notes. OK, so now you have been collecting notes from different webpages and PDFs, and everything has been saved in the folder. Let’s have a look at how it has been saved and how the Webnotes organizer works. If you click on the “Webnotes” icon in the upper left corner, you go to the main page, as shown in Figure 4.15.

Figure 4.15: Organizer of Webnotes

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As you can see, each PDF or webpage annotated appears on the right (I have marked the PDF inside a red circle). Below, there is the date and the notes made from that source. If you click on the name (e.g. Battle of Achelous), you go back to the document just as you left it when you did the last annotation. You can also edit the annotations. For example, you can modify the  title provided by clicking with the  right button and choosing “Edit”. Additionally, you can hide annotations or even delete them if you no longer find them useful. Moreover, what can happen if you start saving many annotations? That can become a mess! So, you have the possibility of creating subfolders, so you always keep a structure that is meaningful for you. To create a new subfolder, use the “New” button on the left panel. Finally, you can also search through the annotations. Figure 4.16 shows a results page when searching for “Achelous” in our step-by-step exercise.

Figure 4.16: Results of a search in Webnotes

Third step (optional). To share your annotations. You can share the  annotations made in both PDFs or webpages. This is really easy! You just click on the “Share this page” link on the upper menu (on the right) that you can see in Figure 4.12 (to share the annotations of a webpage) and Figure 4.14 (to share the annotations of a PDF). The possibilities for sharing are many: email, permalink, twitter, RSS and you can even generate a report to share, just by clicking on the “Report” option. Fourth step. To generate a report. Finally, when you have finished saving all your annotations, it would be useful to have everything together in a report. It is possible to do that automatically with the “Report generator” in Webnotes. You click on “Report generator” (you can see it in Figure 4.16 between “Organizer” and “Upload PDF”) and you’ll have something similar to the page shown in Figure 4.17.

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Figure 4.17: Report generated by Webnotes

This is the default report. On the left menu, you can click on “Templates” to change the appearance of the report. You can also click on “Options” to add a brief summary whilst you have a lot of information about these annotations in your mind, or add the link so that you do not forget the source. Moreover, if we look above the report, you can see that you can also download it as PDF by clicking on “PDF”, or as a webpage by clicking on “HTML”, print it or email it (by clicking on the  “Print” option or “Email” option). OK, now you know the basics of Webnotes, I hope you have found it interesting. Please keep exploring the rest of the options in this tool and encourage your students to use it when researching. It can be really useful, and it saves time and paper! Do not forget to log out when you finish using your Webnotes account, and enjoy it!

4.4 Prezi OK, we have finished our report, and we have uploaded it to Dropbox. Usually, at higher levels, a project does not end when the report is submitted, it is necessary to give an oral exposition. How can students give a good oral presentation? Well, you may remember from Section 2.4, that Google Drive has the option of creating presentations on-line. It even has presentation software, and it is a good choice, but it is not the only one. So, again, I would like to show you another way to create presentations, which has gained a lot of popularity in the last decades. It is called “Prezi”37 and it allows you, in the free version of the tool, to create public presentations that are not based on the “slide” concept of traditional presentations, but on zooming in on the important concepts and their links. Imagine that you have all the  space in the  world, so you create a  diagram and organize your ideas in it.

37  http://prezi.com/

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You can show how the ideas are connected and talk more about particular parts by zooming in on certain aspects. In that case, it would be a good Prezi presentation. Are you interested in this other type of presentation? I  hope so, because it really reaches the highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy since the student does not only have to search the web, and produce a report, but also has to organize their ideas in a good diagrammatic representation. Let’s learn about Prezi. Figure  4.18 shows the  Prezi welcome webpage with the sign up / login options in the upper right corner.

Figure 4.18: Prezi welcome page

In the free version, you can create presentations on-line, although sometimes there are promotions in which, even with the free version, you can download the Windows desktop application for a limited amount of time. For now, let’s create our first Prezi presentation on-line step-by-step, first by clicking on the “New prezi” button that you can see in Figure 4.19. First step. Choose a template. As with other types of presentation, it is very important that it is something attractive to catch the  attention of your audience. So, look at the templates provided, and depending on your goal, choose the one that you think is most appropriate by clicking on it, and next on the “Use template” button. Anyway, you can change it later in the edition page by clicking on “Themes”.

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Figure 4.19: Prezi main page

Second step. Edit the  Prezi presentation. Once you have a  template, you go to the edition page as shown in Figure 4.20. Currently, it is empty, so it is now time to complete it. You can start by providing a title, for instance, if the presentation is for the “Battle of Achelous”, you can put that as title, something that attracts the attention and focuses on the topic. You can add frames and arrows, images, tables, etc. You can also share the presentations you create, either as a PDF or with a link.

Figure 4.20: Prezi edition page

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You can see the creation of a Prezi presentation as an iterative process, following three steps: write, play and focus. First of all, you need to write your ideas, don’t worry if they are not ordered. To write you double click at any place in the Prezi. When you see all your ideas in Prezi, it is usually easier to start creating connections in play mode. You can create hierarchies by making more important sentences bigger. Figure 4.21 shows the Prezi edition frame tool.

Figure 4.21: The edition frame tool

As you can see in the image, you can add new frames, and choose whether the frames will have text, images, or text and images. To edit the frame, you can click on “Zoom to Frame” and by clicking on the circle, you can empty the frame. Do not forget to save from time to time (clicking on the floppy disk), and do not worry if you make any mistake, in the upper left corner you can click on “Undo”. Let’s look also to the  upper menu on Figure  4.20, it will help you to modify the frames and themes, and to add new elements. It is very intuitive, just a matter of clicking and marking ideas. Circular frames are usually very helpful to focus main ideas. The zoom is very important in Prezi to create a path for the connection of ideas. However, this is not the end, this is just an iteration, you can write more, keep playing with the  elements in the  Prezi, and adapt the  focus and the  zoom until you have the  presentation ready. Moreover, make sure that there will be Internet connection when you want to present on-line, or that you have saved everything needed to show the presentation on a different computer (try it before the day of the presentation!).

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Third step. Show the  Prezi presentation. You can do that by clicking on the  blue button “Present”. Prezi can automatically advance the presentation from one frame to another, or you can click when you want to move in the Prezi (backward or forward). It is also possible to show the presentation in “Full Screen” format, and my advice is that you always rehearse the presentation, because sometimes if the Prezi goes too fast and has too many movements, some people could feel a little dizzy…, trust me, you do not want that! So, show your presentation first to a few people, to get their opinion, before considering that you have it finished. As always, explore the many options that Prezi offers to you and your students, and enjoy it!

4.5 Animoto To finish with the tools that I want to show you in this chapter, I want to share Animoto38 with you. It is very useful for creating videos. Sometimes, you may want to ask your students for more than a project and a presentation: a video shows voice, images in movement, sounds, because we shouldn’t forget we are in the multimedia era! I hope that you are interested in learning more about Animoto. I find it fascinating. Please, join me in a step-by-step exercise to create a video with Animoto. But, first things first, I suppose you already realized that you’ll need an account to use Animoto. The setup process is very easy; just fill in the form by clicking on the “Sign up” link at the upper right corner of the Animoto welcome page, as shown in Figure 4.22. Later, you will need your details to log in (it is just next to the “Sign up” button).

Figure 4.22: Animoto welcome webpage

38  http://animoto.com/

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First step. Choose a  style. When you have your account, you just need to click on the “Create video” button, and choose a style to determine the look and feel of your video. The easy thing here is the computer part, just to click on the style…the difficult part is to choose which one! There are many styles, and you can preview them before you choose. It is important to highlight that in the  preview version, the videos are limited to 50 seconds. However, you can create small videos and later connect them with a video editing tool such as Windows Movie Maker or VideoPad Editor (the first is free if you have Windows, and the second is always free!). It is always a better idea when generating multimedia material to create many small videos, instead of one very long one. Second step. Get your photos and videos. To create a  video you need resources, just as you did when creating an activity in JClic. You can upload them from your computer, or from an external source such as a social network. Either way, take care that you have all the rights to use the material! Similarly, you should upload some music as background for the video, and even voices if you want to add some dialogue. Third step. To edit the video. Figure 4.23 shows the editing menu of Animoto.

Figure 4.23: Animoto video editing page

As you can see it is pretty intuitive. You click on the element that you want to modify. For instance, if you want to change the music you click on the title of the song (in this case “Golden Days”). If you want to change an element (like the flower) you click on it, and on the left hand menu you can delete it, rotate it, duplicate it, and even give it more time in the spotlight, time so that people can enjoy the image longer in the video. You can also add more images, videos and texts by clicking on the “+” card. Later, you can modify the sequence by moving the cards into the order that you prefer. Moreover, you can preview the video at any time by clicking on the “Preview video” button on the left, and you can change the general settings on the “Settings” button in the  upper right corner. The preview will be in low resolution so that it takes less time to produce. As I mentioned, it’s not the same as creating a report or

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a presentation, multimedia material consumes many more computer resources. This is why the length of the video and its quality are so important. The longer, and higher quality, the video is, the more time your computer will need to generate it. Also, viewers will need to have a better internet connection to watch your video on-line if it is long and of high quality! Fourth step. To show and share the video. As you can see in Figure 4.24, Animoto also has a page to show your video on-line and it gives you a link to share with your friends by mail or using social networks such as Facebook. People can start commenting on your video, as soon as they have the link so make sure you have it finished before you share it, unless you want some ideas to continue your editing! You can also export the  video created to other platforms such as YouTube, SmugMug or Vimeo if you have account on those platforms, but it may require 20-30 minutes for the encoding. Please, keep exploring the  many possibilities that Animoto offers to you and your students, and enjoy it!

Figure 4.24: Animoto show video page

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4.6 Exercises Let’s do several exercises to practise the content of this chapter. Remember that all exercises are solved at the  end of the  chapter, but do not read the  solutions until you have tried to solve the exercises on your own first! It is also possible that you’ll find different answers to these questions; in that case, please tell us about them on the book’s website. 1. Use Delicious to find 5 webpages about the use of ITC for Education. Save them as bookmarks in your account and tag them, so that they can be useful for other people too. 2. Use Webnotes to annotate the 5 webpages saved in Delicious to generate a brief report. 3. Find a Prezi made by other people about the use of ITC in Education (make sure that the author has given permission to reuse the Prezi), and modify it so that it has a new frame with a new idea that you want to add. 4. Create an Animoto video with the  style “Confetti” to celebrate that you have finished the exercises of Chapter 4. So, the first frame in your video should show “Time to celebrate!”, and a second and last frame containing some image that you have, or find on the Internet (with permission to use), of celebration. Share the video on the book’s website so that other readers can watch it!

4.7 Solved Exercises 1) First of all, we need to log into Delicious. If you have followed the instructions in Section 4.3 you should already have a username and password. Don’t worry if you have forgotten the password. You can recover it when you click “Sign in”. At the bottom there is a message telling you that if you have forgotten it (it happens to many people!) Delicious will send you an email with the information to your registered mail account. Remember that if you do not already have a Delicious account, it is now an excellent time to click on the “Create an account” link to get one! When you see the  main page of Delicious, remember to use the  “search” engine at the top, you can use as key words: ITC, education. The results webpage may contain links to pages that are not related to the topic, discard them! Look at the  results provided to choose five good bookmarks (i.e. this is collective intelligence). You can see my bookmarks at https://delicious.com/perezmarin_7. Please, share on the  book’s website your own bookmarks, they may be really interesting! Do not forget to sign out when you have finished, by clicking on the “Sign out” option in the menu associated to your username (on the upper right corner).

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2) I confess, I want to make you practice sign out and log in. So, let’s log in again in Delicious, and click on the  webpages that you have saved, because it is now time to annotate them and generate a report in Webnotes. Remember to click on the red tack if you have downloaded the Google Chrome extension of Webnotes, or click on “Annotate” in the Webnotes menu to start highlighting and saving comments. I also advise you to create a folder “ICT for Education” to save all these annotations (you can do that by clicking on the “Folder” option of the menu → “Create a new folder”). You should have a report similar to the one shown in Figure 4.25.

Figure 4.25: Sample Webnotes “ITC for Education” report generated

Do not forget to download the PDF by clicking on the “PDF” icon and save it on your computer as you will need it for the next exercise! 3) If you go to the main page of Prezi, you can click on “Explore” and see presentations made by other people. I like the presentation made by Cali Pratt “Welcome back to School”. You can watch it at http://prezi.com/6wubchu75u9p/welcome-back-toschool/. Cali has marked it as “Public and reusable”. So, I am going to use it to add the idea that you can use ITC for Education. First of all, I make a copy, so that I do not modify the original Prezi presentation. To do that, I need to log in. As in the first exercise, if you have forgotten your password, do not worry because Prezi is also able to send you a  message with your user account information. Once you have made the copy, the presentation appears next to the one we created in Section 4.4. So, we can click on the new presentation to edit it, and add the new frame by clicking on the “Frames & Arrows” option at the top. You will have something similar to the page shown in Figure 4.26.



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Figure 4.26: Adding ideas in a Prezi presentation

4) OK, so first of all, remember your user account details to log into the  Animoto webpage. Next, you need to click on the “Create” button and choose the “Confetti” style → make a video of 30 seconds for free. Once you are in the editing page then you can add a text frame with the text “Time to celebrate!” and add a second frame with an image of celebration. I chose from the Animoto “Image library”, in the category “Birthday”, the image with the confetti, but you can choose any other image that you like. Once you have completed all these steps, you can preview your video by clicking on the “Preview video” button (on the left). Remember that working with videos is a  time consuming task, so be patient while the  video is processed. Once you have a link, please share it on the book’s website. As an example, I’ve shared mine: http://animoto.com/play/IvqwEqmYNvFIX6Ek01T40Q You can edit a  video after having processed it, by clicking on the  Animoto webpage, in your user account → “My videos”, and clicking on the little wheel under the video.

5 Future Trends (I): Pedagogical Conversational Agents 5.1 Introduction It can be said that natural language is the most natural way for humans to interact with computers, because humans interact using natural language with other humans. That way, the users are not limited to a set of keywords, or options from a menu, but they can enter sentences in natural language that are understood by the computer, which, in turn, generates more sentences in natural language (Kelley, 1984; Zhou, 2007). Natural Language Processing techniques (Mitkov, 2003; Indurkhya & Damerau, 2010) can be used to improve human-computer interaction. In particular, natural language interaction has been widely used to support database query, question answering, command and control, and other types of information systems (Zhou, 2007). In the  domain of education, natural language interfaces provide a  natural method for interacting with the  students (Crowley et al. 2005). In particular, using Pedagogical Conversational Agents (PCAs), that is, “lifelike autonomous characters that cohabit the  learning environment creating a  rich interface face-to-face with the student” (Johnson et al. 2000), has been gaining influence in the last decades, although it is still under research. Figure 5.1 shows a sample of Shamael, an agent that was developed in 2010 to encourage children to do their homework (Pérez-Marín & Pascual-Nieto, 2012).

Figure 5.1: Shamael

Lester et al. (1997) discovered the Persona effect, according to which, just the presence of an interactive agent in an educational computer environment has a  positive influence on the  students’ perception of the  learning experience. Moreover, Yee and Bailenson (2007) discovered the Proteus effect, according to which students are motivated to achieve the features of the agents to become more like them; and, Chase et al. (2009) discovered the  Protégé effect, according to which students can make greater efforts to teach their agents than to study on their own. © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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PCAs can assume several roles, depending on the pedagogical goal they pursue: they can be teachers, students, companions, tutors, coaches, etc. In this chapter, the focus is on the roles of teachers, students and companions as this offers a global view of the  possibilities that PCAs can offer to education. For instance, Figure  5.2 shows a sample dialogue that was generated between the agent Fisca (Pérez-Marín and Boza, 2013), taking the  role of teacher, and a  student called Iván when practising Physics. Figure  5.3 shows a  longer sample dialogue between Lingu and a  Primary Education student practising basic morphological and syntactical analysis (Gallo & Pérez-Marín, 2011). All these agents have been developed by my students at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.

Figure 5.2: Fisca

Figure 5.3: Lingu

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Section 5.2 presents more agents with some relevant pedagogical feature to study (i.e. Learning by Teaching, Learning by Doing, and Learning by Explaining paradigms). In addition, some are representatives of a certain domain or possibility, such as empathy, virtual worlds, 3D visualization, etc. The agents have been grouped according to the three main roles previously stated: teacher, student or companion. Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that there are many more agents, and surely many more still to come! So, please, continue reading to learn more about these agents. In Section 5.3 there’s an example agent, with a look at how to interact with it. Section 5.4 presents a taxonomy to help you identify which agent could be most useful for you, based on several criteria. Finally, solve the exercises in 5.5 to practise the content of this chapter.

5.2 Overview of PCAs 5.2.1 PCAs Taking the Role of Teachers Herman the Bug (Lester et al. 1997) is an agent in the shape of an insect, designed to teach Biology to children. Herman always starts the conversation, but it does not have any type of animation or affective possibilities. It was designed to be used with a computer in English and could be used with different combinations of gestures and verbal advice. Figure 5.4 shows a snapshot of one of the modes of the agent.

Figure 5.4: Herman the Bug (Lester et al. 1997)



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Steve (Rickel and Johnson, 1999) is an agent with human shape to teach navy training to adults in a 3D virtual world. Steve has a mixed-interaction dialogue modality, that is, it is possible both for Steve and the student to follow the turn of conversation. This agent can provide some basic emotional support with full body 3D animation. It has been designed to be used with a computer in English. Figure 5.5 shows a snapshot of Steve.

Figure 5.5: Steve (Rickel and Johnson, 1999)

Guilly (Nunes et al. 2002) is an agent with a worm shaped body with basic animation to teach children how to do the urban garbage selection. Guilly starts the conversation and guides it without allowing the student to change the turns. It has been designed to be used with a computer in English. Figure 5.6 shows a snapshot of Guilly. An interesting feature explored in Guilly is the  use of a  metaphor to represent student performance. In particular, there is a tree on the left of the screen to show how well the student is separating the garbage. The tree represents the whole environment, and the greener it is, the better the student is doing the job. Sam (Ryokai et al. 2003) is an agent with a  human child shape. It has been designed to be projected on a wall behind a castle. This is because Sam’s goal is to teach students to tell stories, and he uses the castle as the backdrop for the story. The conversation is always driven by Sam, and it is in English. The experiments carried out have shown that children interacting with Sam are able to improve their storytelling skill. Figure 5.7 shows a snapshot of Sam. Autotutor (Graesser et al. 2008) is an agent with human shape designed to teach qualitative domains to children and adults. Autotutor is able to follow a  mixeddialogue interaction, in which both the agent and the student can change the turn of

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the conversation. It has a human face able to talk, to show empathy with the student and to support 3D animation. Autotutor has been designed to be used with a computer in English. The experiments carried out with Autotutor show that students are able to increase their score in their final exam when using this agent to study. Figure 5.8 shows a snapshot of Autotutor.

Figure 5.6: Guilly (Nunes et al. 2002)

Figure 5.7: Sam (Ryokai et al. 2003)



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Figure 5.8: Autotutor (Graesser et al. 2008)

Baldi (Massaro et al. 2005) is an agent with a human face able to talk. It serves as a language training tutor for English children with some kind of hearing impairment or adults learning English as second language. The conversation is driven by the student who clicks on an object to be pronounced by Baldi. The agent has been designed to be used with a computer or a PDA. According to its authors, Baldi is able to achieve satisfactory results to accomplish his goal, provided that the conversation is driven by the student. Figure 5.9 shows a snapshot of Baldi.

Figure 5.9: Baldi (Massaro et al. 2005)

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Willow (Pérez-Marín, 2007) is an agent which can be represented by both human and animal shapes to teach conceptual domains to children and adults. The conversation is driven by the agent, which has been designed to be used on a computer in Spanish or in English. Figure 5.10 shows a snapshot of Willow. It will be explained in more detail in Section 5.3.

Figure 5.10: Willow

5.2.2 PCAs Taking the Role of Students Betty (Biswas et al. 2009; Segedy et al. 2013) is an agent with human shape. In particular, she is represented as a  little girl, who wants to learn about science. In this case, the agent is based on the Learning by teaching paradigm. Therefore, Betty waits until children teach her, and she answers the questions asked by the children to check whether she has understood the lessons. Therefore, the conversation is driven by the  students, and it is supported by the  use of a  concept map. Betty has been designed to be used with a  computer with graphics and sound animation in English. In the  case that the  information provided to Betty is incorrect, another supervisor agent called Mr. Davis is in charge of indicating that there is something wrong. Figure 5.11 shows a snapshot of Betty and Mr. Davis.



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Figure 5.11: Betty (Biswas et al. 2009)

Agents in Active Worlds (Holmes, 2007) are able to interact with the  students, waiting for their explanations, following the  Learning by explaining paradigm. According to the author, generating explanations encourages students to learn new content with deeper understanding and to monitor their own comprehension more effectively. The domain was river ecosystem concepts. The results of the experiment demonstrated that software agents have a  positive impact as learning helpers in a virtual world environment. Figure 5.12 shows a sample of Erin and Jeffh talking in Active Worlds. Mike’s teachable agent (Pareto et al. 2012) is able to learn from children in a collaborative and competitive way. Students play with Mike and other students in the Maths domain. According to Mike’s creators, students using Mike were able to significantly increase their Math comprehension scores and they felt more confident in explaining math. The collaborative and competitive activities are reported as able to foster student motivation when using the agent. Figure 5.13 shows a sample of Mike.

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Figure 5.12: Agents in Active Worlds (Holmes, 2007)

Figure 5.13: Mike’s teachable agent (Pareto et al., 2012)



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5.2.3 PCAs Taking the Role of Companions All agents presented here assume the role of companions following the Learning by Doing paradigm. That is, the agent is not designed to teach or to act as a student, but it serves to provide emotional support to motivate the students to keep studying and to carry out certain tasks in the environment. In these cases, the agent-student natural language conversation is usually less important, even replaced by gestures or static menu-based choices. On the  other hand, the 3D animated graphical environments are richer and more effort is usually placed on trying to empathize with the student’s feelings. The SBEL agents (Reategui et al. 2007) have human shapes to teach Brazilian Portuguese to children and adults. The conversation is driven by the agents who train the student to speak correctly in several different situations. The agents have been designed to be used with a computer. Figure 5.14 shows a snapshot of one of the SBEL agents.

Figure 5.14: SBEL agents (Reategui et al. 2007)

The Crystal Island agents (Robinson et al. 2009) have a  full animated body and interact with other agents and students in the  Crystal Island immersive learning environment. They aim to help students (children and adults) carry out certain tasks. There is a  mixed-initiative dialogue and the  agents have 3D graphics and sound animation. They have been designed to be used with a computer in English. One of the hypotheses of this research is that dealing with the student’s feelings will increase the  performance of the  student, instead of serving as a  distracting factor. The published results seem to validate that hypothesis. However, this is still being researched. Figure 5.15 shows a snapshot of the environment and the agents.

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Figure 5.15: Crystal Island agents (Robinson et al. 2009)

Jake and Jane (Arroyo et al. 2009) are two human-form agents intended to provide emotional support to Math students. Jake and Jane are exactly the same except for their gender, and they support mixed-initiative dialogue with 3D graphics, sound and the  taxonomy of emotions provided by Ekman (1999). The agents have been designed to be used with a  computer in English. Figure  5.16 shows a  snapshot of the environment and the agents.

Figure 5.16: Jake and Jane agents (Arroyo et al. 2009)



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As was the  case with the  Crystal Island agents, one of the  goals here is to try to empathize with the  student, for example by changing the  gender of the  agent. According to the authors, this may have an impact, particularly on the female students who, when interacting with the male agent, had better performance. However, that hypothesis is still being actively researched. MyPet (Chen et al. 2009) is an agent with an animated animal (dog or cat) form, it is used to motivate Chinese children to study. The conversation is driven by the agent. MyPet has been designed to be used with a computer or PDA in Chinese. Figure 5.17 shows a snapshot of MyPet.

Figure 5.17: MyPet (Chen et al. 2009)

One of the hypotheses of the researchers of MyPet is that if students believe that their failure is due to lack of effort, they will keep working, as it is possible to make a greater effort and pass the course. On the other hand, if students believe that their failure is due to lack of capacity, they will stop working. In order to test the hypothesis, MyPet shows an energy bar that represents the  effort made by each student to study as calculated by the agent. According to the authors, in the experiments that they have performed, they have found evidence to support their hypothesis. On the other hand, the authors have not found evidence of any learning improvement. This issue is still being investigated. Finally, the BILAT agents (Hays et al. 2009) are actors in a training game, whose goal is to improve the  negotiation skills of the  adult players. The agents support mixed-initiative dialogue, although it is not a natural language dialogue, but is based on menus with a  list of possible sentences to choose from. The BILAT agents have been designed to be used with a computer in English. Figure 5.18 shows a snapshot of the BILAT environment.

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Figure 5.18: BILAT agents

The BILAT environment is created in the  research line of Serious Games. That is, to provide the  student with a  full animated graphics visual environment so that they accomplish certain tasks as they are playing the  game. The researchers have reported evidence of an increase in the training skill of the students who have used the environment.

5.3 Let’s Practise With the Willow Agent Let’s practise with an agent. In this case, I have chosen Willow (Pérez-Marín, 2007), see Figure 5.10, because I can give you free access to the agent. Willow is integrated into a b-learning (Graham, 2005) web system able to support students when studying for their final exams. The whole system follows a metaphor dialog in which both the agent and the  student are represented by avatars associated with a  text bubble in which the sentences uttered by each of them appear when the turn changes. Moreover, Willow is able to adapt the dialogue to the level of difficulty to be managed by each student. Initially, all students are asked to fill in a  small form to give their personal information (name, age, sex), and they are then assigned to the  novice level. The questions in Willow are classified by the  instructors as easy, average or difficult. Instructors also determine the  percentage of questions at each level of difficulty that need to be passed in order to move up to a higher level of difficulty. Likewise for the percentage of questions that need to be failed to move down to a lower level of difficulty.



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When students answer a  question, they go to a  feedback page like the  one shown in Figure 5.19. The question is at the top, together with the student’s answer. The automatic evaluation is in the  middle, the self-assessment possibility below, and finally the  correct answers provided by the  instructor at the  bottom. After the  evaluation screen, the student can choose to go to a  new question, to change the  automatic assessment for a  different score (self-assessment), or just to read the correct answers provided for that question and close the application.

Figure 5.19: Sample feedback webpage of Willow

Moreover, when students fail a question, they do not go directly to the feedback page. Instead, they are encouraged to try to pass the question with the help of a clarification dialogue. The questions in the new dialogue are designed to guide the student towards the  correct answer. The first question in this clarification dialogue asks for more information (e.g. in the case where a student has left a blank in the answer space). This new answer is re-evaluated, and where it is found to be correct, the feedback page is shown. Otherwise, a second clarification question is formulated by asking the  student about a key concept related to the answer (e.g. in the case where the student does not know what to say, but maybe knows something about the related concept). The answer is evaluated again, and, if correct, the feedback is shown. Finally, if the student has not correctly answered the second clarification question, then a  third clarification question is formulated by asking the  student a  true/false

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question. From this last question, the next page is always the feedback page. Failed answers are marked to be asked again in the future. As soon as the students start answering questions in the system, Willow is able to keep track not only of the difficulty of the questions that each student is able to pass/fail, but also of the use of the key concepts of the course in a student’s answers. Further, it can generate and update a  conceptual model for each student. That is, a graph in which each node is a  concept and the  links represent the  relationships between the concepts. Each node is associated with a confidence-value on a scale from 0 (no confidence that the  student knows the  concept represented by the  node) up to 10 (complete confidence that the student knows the concept represented by the node) according to a set of internal metrics (Pérez-Marín, 2007). A color code schema is displayed to make a greater visual impact of this information, so that low confidence-values are mapped to red tones, high confidence-values are mapped to green tones, and average values are mapped to yellow-orange tones. Do it yourself! Write to [email protected] to ask for an account to log into Willow and interact with the  agent. Finally, check your conceptual model and the class conceptual model. Write your opinion and views on the book’s website, you can also check what other students have said! Now you have experienced using an agent as a student, it is time to use the agent as a  teacher. The information requested to create a  course in Willow should be completed in a template, as shown in Figure 5.20. The idea is to follow the structure of each course. The minimum is to create one lesson with one question and one answer. However, ideally each lesson should have 5 different questions, and each question 2-3 different answers to capture potentially correct answers written by the students.

Topic: Colors

Lesson 1. Yellow

Question 1. Name of things that are usually in yellow. Answer 1. The sun Answer 2. … … Answer n. … …

Question n. ….. Answer 1. … … Answer n. …

….

Lesson n. ….

Figure 5.20: Template to create a course in Willow



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It is possible to reuse previous materials (i.e. previous exams) because the template is written in plain text. As can be seen, for each question, the instructor needs to type the statement, and at least one correct answer. It is possible to type more than one correct answer, and Willow compares the  answer provided by the  student to each one of the answers provided by the instructor. This is a good option to foster lexical variability and to avoid limiting the answer to just one correct version. Moreover, it is possible to mark a  word, or a  set of words, as key concepts of the course. That way, Willow can keep track of the use of these words in the student answer to create the  conceptual model, which is shown to both the  instructor and the student as global feedback of how well the key concepts of the course are being understood at each point. At any time, teachers are allowed to modify the questions in each course for the agent. This may be necessary if the instructors discover that some questions are too difficult or too easy, or because they find out that they need to add or delete certain key concepts for the conceptual model. Willow is also able to provide guidance to the students. For instance, the agent can automatically send e-mails to students who have not logged into the computer system for a certain number of days (Santos et al. 2011). Do it yourself! Write some questions following the  template uploaded on the book’s website, then upload them and see how the questions appear in Willow.

5.4 Taxonomy: How to Choose Which PCA to Use Pérez-Marín (2011) proposed the  following taxonomy to classify the  main features of PCAs. This taxonomy can be used to choose the  agent that is most appropriate, depending on what is required for each course. It is also possible to use a different taxonomy, again it depends on the  goals you pursue. This taxonomy has ten main criteria: role and attitude, interaction modality, type of animation, affective possibilities, type of virtual character, adaptive-evolution possibilities, ubiquity, domain, language, and age of the target students. Regarding the  first criteria, Role and attitude, you have to choose if you want the agent to work as a teacher, student or companion. Some possibilities are: 1.1 Instructor/Lecturer/Tutor 1.1.1 Authoritarian 1.1.2 Coach 1.2 Student 1.2.1 Individual 1.2.2 Collaborative 1.3 Companion 1.3.1 Peer companion 1.3.2 Emotional assistant 1.3.3 Troublemaker

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Regarding the Interaction modality, it is possible that: 2.1 The agent starts the conversation 2.2 The student starts the conversation 2.3 Mixed (both the agent and the student can start and continue the conversation) The type of animation can be: 3.1 None 3.2 Graphics 3.3 Graphics and sound 3.4 3D graphics and sound 3.5 Virtual reality The affective possibilities can be: 4.1 None 4.2 Emotional support 4.3 Empathy The type of virtual character can be: 5.1 Human shape without animation 5.2 Human shape with animation 5.3 Without human shape 5.4 Human and non human shape without animation 5.5 Human and non human shape with animation The adaptive-evolution possibilities (i.e. the possibility that the  agent adapts its behaviour to each student, and learns how to evolve to interact better depending on previous interaction) can be: 6.1 None 6.2 Adaptive possibilities 6.3 Evolution possibilities 6.4 Adaptive and evolution possibilities The ubiquity (i.e. the possibility that the agent is not only used on a computer but on other devices too) can be: 7.1 To be used with a computer 7.2 To be used with mobile devices such as smartphones and/or PDAs The domain (i.e. the knowledge or competences in which the  agent involves the student) can be: 8.1 General 8.2 Specific



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The language in which the agent speaks (spoken and / or written), and the age of the target students (i.e. Pre-Primary Education, Primary Education, etc.)

5.5 Exercises Let’s do several exercises to practise the content of this chapter. Remember that all exercises are solved at the end of the chapter, but do not read the solutions until you have tried to answer the  exercises on your own first! It is also possible that you’ll find different answers to these questions; in that case, you can tell us about them on the book’s website. 1. Imagine that you want to improve your 6-year old students’ narrative story telling skills, which agent would you use? 2. Imagine that you want to improve your 12-year old students’ Math skills, which agent would you use? 3. When would you use a troublemaker agent? 4. Imagine that you want to use an agent following the  Learning by Teaching paradigm, which agent would you use? 5. Which role is the one that agents following the Learning by Doing paradigm take? 6. Imagine that you want your 2-year old students to start learning some words in English, which agent would you use? 7. Imagine that you want to teach your students that if they make an effort, they will be able to solve the Maths problems, which agent would you use? 8. Imagine that you want to use an agent following the  Learning by Explaining paradigm, which agent would you use?

5.6 Solved Exercises 1. I would use Sam because it is an agent that asks children to tell him a story, and helps them to improve that skill. 2. I would use Mike’s teachable agent so that students can approach Maths as a game and collaborate among themselves to solve the exercises in class. After class, I  would recommend that they use Jake & Jane so that they would feel accompanied when doing their homework. 3. I would use a troublemaker agent in the role of teacher or instructor when I want to test whether the  students are answering with something that they really believe, and they are sure of their answer. This can prevent them answering with the first thing they come up with. 4. I would use Betty because students can test whether they have understood the lesson by telling Betty, and if they tell her something wrong, Mr. Davis will teach them how to correct that.

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5. Usually companions. 6. I would use Baldi because they only need to click on the image and they will hear the name pronounced by Baldi. 7. I would use MyPet because with the energy bar they can see that the more they practise, the better the exercises can be solved. 8. I would use the agents of Active World created by Holmes.

5.7 References Arroyo, I.; Woolf, B.; Royer, J. M. & Tai, M. (2009), Affective Gendered Learning Companions, Artificial Intelligence in Education. Biswas, G.; Roscoe, R.; H., J. & Sulcer, B. (2009), Promoting Self-Regulated Learning Skills in Agent-based Learning Environments, Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Computers in Education. Chase, C.; Chin, D.; Oppezzo, M. & Schwartz, D. (2009), Teachable agents and the Protégé effect: Increasing the effort towards learning, Journal of Science Education and Technology 18, 334-352. Chen, Z.; Liao, C.; Chien, T. & Chan, T. (2009), Animal Companion Approach to Fostering Students Effort-Making Behaviors, Artificial Intelligence in Education. Crowley, R.S.; Tseytlin, E. & Jukic, D. (2005). ReportTutor – An Intelligent Tutoring System that Uses a Natural Language Interface, AMIA Symposium Proceedings. Ekman, P. (1999), Facial Expressions, New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Gallo, J. & Pérez-Marín, D. (2011), Lingu, un agente que te enseña a analizar frases en castellano, Final Project in Computer Science, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Graesser, A. C.; Jeon, M. & Dufty, D. (2008), Agent technologies designed to facilitate interactive knowledge construction, Discourse Processes 45, 298–322. Graham, C.R. (2005). Blended Learning Systems: Definition, Current Trends, and Future Directions, in ‘Handbook of Blended Learning: Global Perspectives, local designs’, Pfeiffer Publishing, 3-21. Hays, M.; Lane, C.; Auerbach, D.; Core, M.; Gomboc, D. & Rosenberg, M. (2009), Feedback Specificity and the Learning of Intercultural Communication Skills, Artificial Intelligence in Education. Holmes, J. (2007), Designing agents to support learning by explaining, Computers & Education 48, 523-547. Indurkhya, N. & Damerau, F.J. (2010). Handbook of Natural Language Processing, CRC Press. Johnson, W.; Rickel, J. & Lester, J. (2000). Animated Pedagogical Agents: Face-to-Face Interaction in Interactive Learning Environments, Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education 11, 47-78. Kelley, J.F. (1984). An iterative design methodology for user-friendly natural language information applications, ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 2, 26-41. Lester, J.; Converse, S.; Kahler, S.; Barlow, S.; Stone, B. & Bhogal, R. (1997), The persona effect: affective impact of animated pedagogical agents. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 366. Massaro, D.; Ouni, S.and Cohen, M. & Clark, R. (2005), A multilingual embodied conversational agent, System Sciences. Mitkov, R. (2003). The Oxford Handbook of Computational Linguistics, Oxford University Press. Nunes, M.; Dihl, L.; Fraga, L.; Woszezenki, C.; Oliveira, L.; Francisco, D.and Machado, G.; Nogueira, C. & Notargiacomo, M. (2002), Animated pedagogical agent in the intelligent virtual teaching environment, Interactive Educational Multimedia 4, 53-60.



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Pareto, L.; Haake, M.; Lindstrom, P.; Sjoden, B. & Gulz, A. (2012), A teachable-agent-based game affording collaboration and competition: evaluating math comprehension and motivation, Education Tech Research Dev 60, 723–751. Pérez-Marín, D. & Boza, A. (2013), A Procedure to Create a Pedagogic Conversational Agent in Secondary Physics and Chemistry Education, International Journal of Information and Communication Technology Education. Pérez-Marín, D. & Pascual-Nieto, I. (2012), An Exploratory Study on how Children Interact with Pedagogic Conversational Agents, Behaviour & Information Technology. Pérez-Marín, D. (2007), Adaptive Computer Assisted Assessment of free-text students answers: an approach to automatically generate students conceptual models, PhD thesis, Escuela Politecnica Superior, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Pérez-Marín, D. (2011), Investigación en Tecnologías de la Información, capítulo Uso de Agentes Conversacionales Pedagógicos en Sistemas de Aprendizaje Hнbrido (B-learning), Dykinson. Reategui, E.; Polonia, E. & Roland, L. (2007), The role of animated pedagogical agents in scenariobased language e-learning: a case-study, Conference ICL. Rickel, J. & Johnson, W. (1999), Virtual humans for team training in virtual reality, Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education, 578-585. Ryokai, K.; Vaucelle, C. & Cassell, J. (2003), Virtual peers as partners in storytelling and literacy learning, Journal of computer assisted learning 19(2), 195-208. Santos, O.; Pascual, I.; D.Pérez-Marín & Boticario, J. (2011), Extending Computer Assisted Assessment systems with Natural Language Processing, User Modelling, and Recommendations based on Human Computer Interaction and Data Mining, International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2519–2524. Segedy, J.; Kinnebrew, J. & Biswas, G. (2013), The effect of contextualized conversational feedback in a complex open-ended learning environment., Education Tech Research Dev 61, 71-89. Yee, N. & Bailenson, J. (2007), The Proteus effect: The effect of transformed self-representation on behavior, Human Communication Research 33(3), 271. Zhou, L. (2007), Natural language interface for information management on mobile devices, Behavior & Information Technology, 26, 197-207.

6 Future Trends (II): Mobile Devices for Education 6.1 Introduction In the previous chapters of the book we have studied many useful resources to cover different levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Moreover, in Chapter 5 we started looking at the  future with pedagogical agents that can bring advantages to education. In this chapter, we look at different devices and mobile applications for education. Figure 6.1 shows a general overview of this chapter.

Figure 6.1: General overview of chapter 6

M-learning means the use of mobile devices for education. It is seen as the evolution of e-learning by some authors (Quinn, 2000; Pinkwart et al., 2003). M-learning is not a  new term, and in some places, m-learning has been used for years, because it is easier in a class to have several tablets that students can easily move around, than moving all the  students to the  computer room. Moreover, digital whiteboards can allow teachers to give interactive lessons with the material they have created. Further, several students can interact with the board simultaneously, and the system will even save your annotations digitally, instead of just deleting them to make more space on the traditional blackboard! © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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We cannot limit ourselves any longer to just using computers, we now have the opportunity to teach with new devices and software! And, since I know that new devices can bring new challenges, I would like to teach you in the first part of this chapter, the hardware. If you have never used a tablet before, Section 6.2.1 would be useful for you. Similarly, if you have never used a digital whiteboard, you may find interesting reading in Section 6.2.2. However, tablets and digital whiteboards are just hardware. In fact, tablets, digital whiteboards, computers, hardware in general, these are all nothing without good software (and vice versa!). Therefore, in Section 6.3, I focus on the software that you can use to create educational activities with these devices, so that you can take advantage of your new knowledge and skills, and you can start using those devices to achieve pedagogical goals too!

6.2 Hardware 6.2.1 Tablets Think about your computer for a minute. What have you seen when thinking about your computer? I suppose you have seen the screen, the keyboard, and the mouse. Now, think how these components can be combined into a thin device with a 7 to 10 inch screen. See Figure 6.2 for an example of a tablet.

Figure 6.2: Example tablet

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Well, the screen is what you see and it has been integrated with the  CPU (it is inside, trust me, you do not need to see the microprocessor!). The keyboard is also on-screen and there is no mouse! How is it possible to have no mouse? It is because the interaction is pretty much all the time with your fingers (sometimes, you can also use a pen if your model of tablet has it, but not all models use pens). OK, I would like to buy a tablet, one of these like Figure 6.2, what are the features that I  should look for? Well, several, namely: the screen, size, weight, operating system, processor, memory and hard disk capacity, battery, connectivity, audio, and possible accessories. Let’s look at each of these features. Regarding the  screen, it is important to look at the  type of screen: capacitive or resistive. Capacitive screens may cost more, but they are better because they are more responsive than resistive screens. However, my advice is that you try both types of screen so that you can choose which one feels best for you, but do not buy a  resistive screen without trying a  capacitive one. As you can imagine, given the importance of the screen in a tablet, there are many more things to check out, like the  size: a screen of 6-7 inches can be a  little small, but these are still good enough to read. However, for reading and working for longer periods with a tablet, a 10 inch screen is usually best. The resolution of the screen and the type of crystal are also important factors to take into account when buying the tablet. A good, high definition, screen resolution should be able to reach 1024x768 pixels, and show high quality video fast. Videos are important, so try watching one before buying any tablet. This is also important because it is related to other factors like the processor and memory. It is possible that, even with a good resolution, you are not able to watch the video, since the processor is too slow or the tablet does not have enough memory. Finally, regarding the screen, you should ask if it has anti-glare technology. This is useful to avoid having problems, especially when trying to look at the screen from different angles. Tablets are not usually much bigger than their screen, so the  size of the  tablet is usually determined by the size of the screen. Normally, a 7 inch tablet will weigh around 400 grams. This is another advantage of tablets, they are really light. In fact, in my case, I think that the cover of the tablet is heavier than the tablet itself. However, it does not mean you should forget about the cover. Given that tablets are pretty much their screen, it is fragile and if it breaks, you lose your tablet, so it is very important to put on a cover. In fact, two covers: one plastic, which is stuck onto the screen, and an outer cover to protect the screen from external knocks. The operating system is also important because it will determine what software you can install, and how you are going to interact with the applications. Some people (in educational circles) are iPad enthusiasts because of the high quality software you can download. Other people prefer that the software they download is always free, and therefore prefer a  free operating system such as Android. Good news, though! Now, you can choose! It usually depends on the policy of the school and your own ideas, so I leave that choice to you!

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The processor, memory and hard disk capacity are pretty similar to the features of a computer. All in all, a tablet is a computer too. So, it needs a processor that runs all the programs (e.g. 1.2 Ghz Tablet Processor). The higher the speed, the better the tablet will run the applications, and the faster it will respond to your requests (of course, the higher the price will be too!). As with computers, it is possible to have more than one processor. The hard disk size you’ll need also depends on how you intend to use your tablet. For teachers, I have seen that in most cases, it is not necessary to have more than 8-16 Gb of internal memory, a 1 GHz processor, and an 8 Gb hard drive (usually with tablets you upload many things to Dropbox or Google Drive, so you don’t need to have a big hard drive, just enough for the operating system to work, and your apps). Nevertheless, before buying, always try the  tablet, to see how it fits your needs, and ask if it is possible to extend some of its features later (e.g. with external cards or an external hard disk). As is the case with your mobile phone, the battery is very important. You do not want to be looking for a plug every time you want to work with it. This would mean you lose the mobility advantage. Big, high resolution, color screens consume a lot of battery. So, many tablets not only have good batteries, but also good procedures to save energy, e.g. to turn the screen off when you are not looking at it. 8-10 hours of use is usually what you can get from one of these devices, if you are using it all the time. In that case, it is like a mobile phone, do not forget to charge it during the night. In some schools, they have charge stations, so that children leave the tablet there when the lessons finish, and next day they have their tablets ready for new lessons! Connectivity is another important feature you cannot overlook. Nearly all tablets will have a WIFI connection so that you do not need a wire to get an Internet connection. However, WIFI is not the only way to get connected these days! You may want to connect to the Internet even when no WIFI is available, as is the case with your mobile phone. Therefore, you may need the tablet to have a 3G connection. If the tablet(s) is always going to be used in class, and the school has WIFI, then you do not need to pay more for the 3G connection. Otherwise, it could be a good feature to have. There is also the option of getting onto the Internet via USB, so you can ask for this possibility. Moreover, you should enquire about all the ports that the tablet has. Some models have mini-ports to connect to a  computer so that you can share documents directly from the hard drive of the computer to the hard drive of the tablet (although you can always do that on-line with Dropbox or Google Drive). Other models may have a microHDMI port, which is very useful if you want to connect your tablet to a TV screen or a projector. The quality of the  audio is also important. Nearly all models have internal speakers so you do not need to bring external speakers. The idea is that tablets are easy and light to carry. It is also normal for them to have an input for earphones. So, as with other features, when you are watching a video to test the tablet, do not forget to evaluate the sound quality (stereo, Dolby, etc.). Finally, have a look at the accessories that the manufacturer of the tablet offers, and also at the tablet’s compatibility with other devices.

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6.2.2 Digital Whiteboards Think about your blackboard in class. What have you seen when thinking about your blackboard? I suppose you have seen some chalk, a duster, and the blackboard. Now, imagine that you do not need chalk and a duster any longer (so, you do not need to breathe chalk dust any longer, and get all your clothes dirty, particularly if they are black!) and that the blackboard is no longer static but you can interact with it, and not only you, but your students too. See Figure 6.3 for an example of a digital whiteboard (this is the digital whiteboard I use at my University). It is also possible to have smaller whiteboards that you can carry with you, these operate on batteries. As was the case with tablets, there are many features to look into before choosing which digital whiteboard to buy. Normally, however, if you are not the Information and Technologies Communication coordinator, or a  member of the  computer staff, you will not be asked about the model of whiteboard to buy, so do not worry. Also, it is not normal to buy a digital whiteboard for your home. So, it is a much better idea to learn how to use the whiteboard that you find in class. Digital whiteboards are becoming more common now in primary and secondary classes. So, let’s take advantage of them! Are you interested? I hope so, because I want to give you a step-by-step guide to the use of a typical digital whiteboard.

Figure 6.3: Example digital whiteboard

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First step. To turn the  computer on. Yes, you have read correctly, I  said turn the computer on. The digital whiteboard is connected to a computer and a projector, and you need the three things to work together. So, the first step is to turn the computer on (please, check that the computer is correctly connected to the digital whiteboard. Usually the  people from the  whiteboard company are responsible for installing everything correctly. If it’s not connected, call them!). Second step. To turn the projector on. You need the computer because it sends the information on its screen to the whiteboard. How can what is inside the computer be projected onto the  digital whiteboard? Well, it uses the  same technology that’s used when you want a  presentation from your computer to be shown on the  wall, you use a projector. Again, as with the computer, the people who did the installation should have connected everything so that you just need to turn the projector on, and not check any wires. If there is a problem, you may need to call them or the school’s computer staff. However, you should check that it isn’t something really simple like that the projector is not plugged in, or it is telling you that you need to press a certain key because it is in stand-by mode. It is always a good idea to practice using the digital whiteboard several times on your own or with other teachers to get familiar with it before going to class. Third step. To turn the  digital whiteboard on. By now, you will have the  computer with the  operating system on, the projector on (although you do not see anything projected yet, we are close!) and you need to look for a button that is usually on the  right of the  digital whiteboard to turn it on. Have you noticed that a digital whiteboard seems a lot like a giant tablet? It could be a good idea to keep in mind, because it may help you using the whiteboard. Whiteboards are also usually responsive to your touch. It is also true that many digital whiteboards have pens, but the basic idea is the same: touch what you want to modify, open, close or have any interaction with! Do not worry, because, as is the case with digital tablets, you can undo nearly anything you do, and the digital whiteboard will not get broken. It is very important that you explore in order to learn more about the whiteboard’s potential! Fourth step. To run the  digital whiteboard software. Although I  will explain more about software for digital whiteboards in Section 6.3.2, I want you to know that, as I  said before, with just the  hardware you cannot do anything, you need to run some software. You can run it from the computer, now that you should be able to see everything projected on the whiteboard. Sometimes, it is also necessary to calibrate the  whiteboard. This means that you touch, with pen or finger, on certain points of the whiteboard so that the whiteboard recognizes better the locations when you touch some part of it. If not, you may touch on one area of the screen, and the wrong program will be launched!

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6.3 Software 6.3.1 For Tablets OK, so now you have a lot of information about the tablet’s features. But, how can you use it? Well, there is something you already know, you interact with the tablet with your fingers. So, let’s see a  step-by-step example of how to use a  tablet. First, you need to charge the battery. Remember, if it is the first time that you’ve charged it, it is usually a good idea to leave it charging all night. Do you already have enough battery to go through the example? Perfect! Let’s start. First step. To turn the  tablet on. Unlike computers, tablets are usually on in stand-by power saving mode. This means that in many cases you just need to click on a button (on the right) to activate the tablet. See Figure 6.4 for an example39.

Figure 6.4: Turning on a tablet

If the tablet is off, then you may need more time to turn it on. You can see the logo of the maker of the tablet, the start of the operating system (like in a computer), and later the welcome screen. Take care! It is possible that the screen saver is on, so you will need to turn it off by touching the tablet screen with a left to right movement like the one shown in Figure 6.5.

39  All these images are from a video I recorded for my Spanish students, so if you know Spanish, you can watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e9aBoopIkY

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Figure 6.5: Turning on a sample tablet

Second step. To touch with your finger the  app to use. In the  case of tablets, the software programs are usually called apps, and they are saved directly to the screen. There are many screens and you can move your hand from left to right to see several screens containing all the apps. You can also organize your apps in folders so that they are classified according to certain rules. Anyway, you always touch the folder or app you want to open with your finger as you can see in Figure 6.6

Figure 6.6: Opening a folder by touching it with the finger on the screen

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It is pretty intuitive. In general, anything you want to do with the tablet is just a matter of touching the screen in certain places. So, please explore all the possibilities, and if you get lost, and you do not know how to go back, do not worry, because tablets usually have a back button. If there is no back button, there is often another icon that may be different depending on the operating system (you can ask in forums) but there is always one button that gives you access to the main menu so that you can go back to the start and keep exploring! Third step. To use the  app. Apps usually cover the  full screen when they are open. The reason is to facilitate your interaction with them. In my case, I have chosen to open an app to learn English that I love. It is called “English cards”, and it is free. The idea is that you are presented with scenarios like the  one shown in Figure  6.7 and the tablet tells you the name of an object (e.g. plant) so you have to look for that object in the scenario and touch it. It means that if you know what that object is, and you touch it right, the tablet tells you “Good!” and gives you another object name. Otherwise, the tablet tells you that it is wrong, so that you need to keep looking!

Figure 6.7: Interacting with an app in the tablet

Fourth step. To close the  app and the  tablet. Well, once you have finished using the app, you need to exit. It is a bit different from how you would exit a computer program. You just click on the back button of the tablet, or click on the options of the app as some of them have an option to log out of the app. It is also possible that if it is a free app you get some adverts. Finally, when you do not want to use the tablet any longer you can turn it off usually by clicking on the same button that you used when turning it on. How can you find more interesting educational apps? Well, it depends on the  operating system of your tablet. If it is Android, usually you will use “Google

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Play”40 (see Figure 6.8) and if the tablet is an iPad you will use “Apple Store”41 (see Figure  6.9). The main difference is that for using Apple Store you need an iTunes account, and you type your password every time you want to download an app to the iPad. In the case of Google Play this is not necessary.

Figure 6.8: A screenshot of Google Play

Figure 6.9: A screenshot of Apple Store

40  https://play.google.com/store/apps/category/EDUCATION?hl=en 41  http://www.apple.com/education/ipad/apps-books-and-more/

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The rest is pretty similar. You touch with your finger the app you want to install (free or by paying), and select the “Install” option, and that’s it! After a while, the tablet has installed the app on your desktop and you do not need to do anything more than try it. So, what’s the  difficult part? Choose which app to install. My advice is that you explore the  possibilities and try them. There are many possibilities depending on the topic, the age of the children, the language and in general, the pedagogical goal that you want to pursue. As always, the technology is just a tool, and the creative mind is in the teacher!

6.3.2 For Digital Whiteboards OK, so you already know that whenever you want to use the  digital whiteboard, you need to turn on the  computer, the projector and the  digital whiteboard. With the hardware running, in order to take advantage of all the possibilities that the digital whiteboard can bring, we need to learn about the  software you can use. There are many possibilities: Promethean activStudio42, SMART43, Interwrite44, etc. Usually, the software installed depends on the hardware. So, for instance, an Interwrite board (like the one that I have in my class) comes with Interwrite software. You can also use a free package like Open Sankoré45. The good news is that once you are familiar with one of these software packages, the rest are pretty similar. So, let’s see a step-by-step example of how you can use, for instance, Interwrite. First step. Once you check that the  screen of the  computer is projected on the whiteboard, you have to look for the Interwrite software icon on the desktop of the computer. If you do not see the desktop of your computer projected on the digital whiteboard, check if you have turned on the  projector and the  digital whiteboard. If you check both, and everything seems fine, call the  technical staff. Figure  6.10 shows the image that usually appears as the icon for this software.

Figure 6.10: Logo of the example software (the background color may change to purple or green)

42  http://www.prometheanplanet.com/en/ 43  http://smarttech.com/ 44  http://www.einstruction.com 45  http://open-sankore.org/es

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Second step. To start using the  software. Usually you can see a  new menu bar on the  right like the  one shown in Figure  6.11. The icons tend to be intuitive. You can use different types of pens, just by clicking on the  pen icon. There are many more possibilities, like using a  white background, an image or anything you need. Moreover, everything you write on the whiteboard is saved. So, for instance, if you open a  presentation and you make notes on the  presentation, you can save these notes, and upload them to Dropbox so that students who could not attend the lesson can read them.

Figure 6.11: Example of notebook background to write with the pen on the digital whiteboard

Third step. To start using different software. You should not limit yourself to the software provided by the manufacturer of the digital whiteboard. There are many resources on-line waiting to be used for your students on your board. You can start with something that you are already familiar with. For instance, Hot Potatoes, do you remember Section 3.2? I suppose that you worked with Hot Potatoes with your computer, but now you have the possibility of projecting Hot Potatoes on the board for all your students to interact with it. You just need to launch the program on the computer as shown in Figure 6.12. You can use it as if you were on a computer with the keyboard and the mouse (do not forget that you are using a computer too). However, I recommend that you try new things that are available for the whiteboard that you cannot use on the computer. For instance, Figure  6.13 shows the  focus possibility. I  love that option! You can put a  black background to everything on the  screen, except for a  certain spot.

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Figure 6.12: Using Hot Potatoes in the digital whiteboard

Figure 6.13: Using the focus feature of the digital whiteboard

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The spot can be very small at the beginning, and you can use that initial moment to start asking some questions of your students. For instance, if you want to do some matching, you ask them which Hot Potatoes program should we use? And when they say, JMatch, you can start making the spot bigger to focus on the right answer, and then move the focus to another part of the screen when you want to zoom in there. There are many more possibilities, so please, explore, enjoy it, and do not forget to close the  software. To do that, there is usually an exit option (in Interwrite it’s a  green door icon at the  bottom). After closing the  software, you need to turn off the computer, the projector, and the digital whiteboard, so that they are ready when you need to use them again. And, do not forget to bring some batteries if you are going to use the physical pen, as without batteries it will not work!

6.4 Exercises Let’s do several exercises to practice the content of this chapter. Remember that all exercises are solved at the  end of the  chapter, but do not read the  solutions until you have tried to solve the exercises on your own first! It is also possible that you’ll find different answers to these questions; in that case, you can tell us about them on the book’s website. 1. Search on the Internet with your tablet. If you cannot use a tablet, find a video of someone searching on the Internet with a tablet. 2. Search for an educational application in Google Play if your tablet has Android, or Apple Store if it is an iPad. Install it on your tablet and practice with it. If you cannot use a tablet, find a video of someone using an educational application on the Internet. 3. Use the  software on your digital whiteboard to make some notes about a presentation, save those notes and upload them to Dropbox. If you cannot use a  digital whiteboard, find a  video of someone making notes on a  presentation using a digital whiteboard. 4. Open a  JClic project in JClic player and project it on the  digital whiteboard so that you can solve the exercises on the digital whiteboard. Later, ask your students to solve the  exercises by interacting with the  digital whiteboard, and observe their reactions (you can compare them to their reactions when using JClic on their computers). If you cannot use a digital whiteboard, find a video of a group of students solving some educational exercise on the board together.

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6.5 Solved Exercises 1. I like the  video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nELQaWgdgQQ. In case it is no longer available when you try to watch it, just type the  words: how to search on the Internet with a tablet, for instance, in YouTube, and you will see many interesting videos. Although, the most useful thing to do is to get access to a tablet, then you can follow the steps, touching the screen with your finger to control the  browser (Google Chrome, Safari, etc.), and you can start typing in the search engine to find what you are looking for, or pasting the links that you want to see. You will soon see that it is pretty similar to searching on your mobile phone (but much better because the screen is bigger) or searching on your computer (and with the option of being outdoors and without any wire or heavy components to carry with you!). 2. I like the  video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtCf0MWVp14. In case it is no longer available when you try to watch it, just type the  words: using an educational application in your tablet, for instance in YouTube, and you will see many interesting videos. Although, the most useful thing to do is to get access to a tablet, then you can follow the steps, touching the screen with your finger to search for the application, and touching the “install” button. So that you can touch the icon of the app installed in your tablet, and interact with it. The more you practice, the faster you will become familiar with this new type of interaction. 3. I like the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75-7UqTy040. In case it is no longer available when you try to watch it, just type the  words: using a  digital whiteboard to make educational notes on a  presentation, for instance, in YouTube, and you will see many interesting videos. Although, the most useful thing to do is get access to a digital whiteboard and then you can interact with it on your own. You will see how soon you become familiar with its powerful tools! 4. I like the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYuIh2IduDk. In case it is no longer available when you try to watch it, just type the  words: children using a  digital whiteboard in class, for instance, in YouTube, and you will see many interesting videos.

6.6 References Pinkwart, N., Hoppe, H. U., Milrad, M. and Perez, J. (2003). Educational scenarios for the cooperative use of Personal Digital Assistant. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19, 3, 383-391. Quinn, C. (2000). M-Learning. Mobile, Wireless, In-Your-Pocket Learning. Linezine, Fall 2000. Found at: http://www. linezine. com/2.1/features/cqmmwiyp.htm.

7 Conclusions 7.1 Introduction Let me finish this book as I  started it, by sharing with you my experience when watching a video. In this case, “The future starts now” by the Norwegian Center for ICT in Education46. I enjoyed that video very much. Please, watch it, and if you cannot watch it, at least see Figure 7.1 with one of the snapshots of the video.

Figure 7.1: Snapshot of the video “The future starts now”

Some people may think that the  future is something far ahead of us, that we are now developing the technology and later we will learn how to use it for education. However, I  agree with the  video, the future of education is now! We already have the  technology, both the  hardware and the  software. In this book, you have learnt (I hope!) about different tools that you can use to accomplish pedagogical goals

46  See the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfN5SSiRoPs (last visit on August 27th, 2013) © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

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by using technology, and NOW you can start using them in your class! Why wait until some point in the future? It is like when, in the first chapter, we talked about the history of education. To make some progress, some changes are necessary, and by making changes we need to identify what works better for us. To help you with this amazing task, I have created a synopsis table (Section 7.2). You can use this as a starting point, as a guide to the tools that you can start using to achieve your pedagogical goals classified according to Bloom’s taxonomy. Section 7.3 provides you with a troubleshooting guide for any problems that you might have when using these tools or devices. Finally, the chapter ends, as always, with some exercises (Section 7.4) and their solutions (Section 7.5). Let me tell you something that you may have already noticed from previous chapters. It is that in many of the  exercises in this book, the goal is to make you search. In years to come, there will be other tools, new technologies, and the more you practice with technology for education, the easier it will be to try new tools and technologies and see how you can take advantage of them in your class. This is necessary because now and in some decades from now, even if you do not want to change anything in your class, the students change and they will keep changing! The students change because they are from new generations, digital natives able to interact with technology in an easy and familiar way, and they need new tools to accomplish the pedagogical goals in a way that is natural for them, so think about all the new possibilities you have and enjoy them!

7.2 Synopsis Table Table 7.2 gathers together the  tools taught in this book, classified according to the  pedagogical goal in Bloom’s taxonomy that they can help to achieve. Please, remember that it is just a synopsis, there are many more possibilities, and in some cases, the tool can be used in a creative way so that it can accomplish other pedagogical goals. Teachers have the last word! In the case of the first and second level of Bloom’s taxonomy, the tools Education Portals, MOOCs, Google Resources for Education and Dropbox were chosen because they are very useful to help learning and understanding new knowledge. In particular, Education Portals have many high quality resources such as documents and videos. Students can read and watch these and later explain what they have seen, or answer some simple basic understanding questions. MOOCs are considered by some experts as the  evolution of education portals. MOOCs have high quality resources similar to Education Portals, but they do not only gather documents and videos. MOOCs also integrate social networks to help students communicate with others, and they even have assessment features for groups of students or for students to do individually on-line.



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Table 7.2: Synopsis table Pedagogical goal

Tool

Brief description

To know more

Levels 1 & 2: to remember and understand new knowledge (define, describe, duplicate, identify, label, list, match, memorize, name, order, outline,…)

Education Portals

Websites created by the educational community for the educational community with content and services

Section 2.2

MOOCs

Massive Open On-line Courses created by experts in the area, open to thousands of students, usually uploaded in repositories with assessment and integrated social network possibilities

Section 2.3

Google Resources for Education

Gmail to communicate to the students, Section 2.4 Google Drive to create and share new resources on-line, Google Calendar to organize your class events, Google Video to find videos, Google Books to find books, Google Sites to create your own website and Google Blogger for edublogs

Dropbox

A program to share and upload files on-line Section 2.5 so that you can access them from any device connected to the Internet

Hot Potatoes

JCloze to create fill-in-the-blank exercises, JMatch to create matching exercises, JQuiz to create tests, JCross to create crosswords, JMix to create exercises to order words in sentences, and The Masher to create units with Hot Potatoes exercises

JClic

A program to create projects with interacSection 3.3 tive exercises selected from 16 different categories: puzzles, word search, matching, text activities, etc.

Delicious

A program to bookmark on-line your favorite Section 4.2 links so that you can share them, and have access to them from any device connected to the Internet

Webnotes

A program to create and organize notes on-line about webpages and PDF documents, used to do research

Section 4.3

Prezi

A program to create presentations on-line, based on relating concepts and focusing on the most important with zoom and size

Section 4.4

Animoto

A program to create videos on-line to express your ideas in a multimedia way with sound and sequences of images in movement

Section 4.5

Levels 3 & 4: To apply and analyze knowledge and competences (apply, change, choose, compute, demonstrate, discover, dramatize, employ, illustrate,…)

Levels 5 & 6: To evaluate and create (collect, combine, comply, compose, construct, design, develop, devise,…)

Section 3.2

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Google Resources for Education has been classified here but these can serve to accomplish goals in any of Bloom’s taxonomy levels depending on the  use made of these tools by the teacher. In the basic use, they serve to keep a website to show something to your students, watch videos, keep a blog, read documents together, but they can be also used to edit documents collaboratively, share events in a common agenda, and store documents in Google Drive or Dropbox. In the case of the third and fourth level of Bloom’s taxonomy, the Hot Potatoes and JClic tools were chosen because they are very useful to create assessment exercises to apply and analyze knowledge and competences. In particular, my advice is that they are used for formative assessment, i.e. not just to put a score, but to help students to reach some pedagogical goals, so that students can learn from their mistakes. There are some activities that can be created both with Hot Potatoes and JClic such as the text activities, matching exercises or crosswords. In these cases, teachers can choose whether they prefer to have the  activities organized in a  unit created by Hot Potatoes on-line, or with a project played by JClic. In some cases, if it is not possible to install Java on a  particular computer and you can only access on-line resources, Hot Potatoes can be more useful. In other cases, you may want to have more configuration possibilities (up to 16 different combinations of activities) and using JClic could be more appealing. Sometimes, it is just a  matter of taste. In any case, try different possibilities because students usually find these activities fun, and they are able to learn while having fun! In the case of the fifth and sixth levels of Bloom’s taxonomy, Delicious, Webnotes, Prezi, and Animoto were chosen because they are very useful for letting students create and evaluate their knowledge. In these higher levels, it is no longer a matter of teaching something new to the students, but the students are responsible for their own learning. Tools such as Delicious and Webnotes allow them to do some research. In the case of Delicious they can bookmark the webpages they consider interesting, and later with Webnotes make notes and highlight the  main ideas. They can even generate a report with those notes to help them with their research. Finally, Prezi and Animoto are presented because in the  highest levels, just to generate a  document isn’t enough. Students should give oral expositions using the  presentation software of Google Drive or Prezi. Prezi is different in that the exposition is not based on a sequence of slides, but on a sequence of related ideas according to a  mind map. Animoto helps the  students to add sound, and images in a video sequence, so that they have all the multimedia possibilities that current technology offers to allow them to communicate their ideas in a much more effective way than just talking. Please, remember that this book is not a  novel, so any time you have a  doubt regarding any of the tools that I have been talking about, go back to the section in which it is explained step-by-step and practice! Practice makes perfect! So, even if you make a mistake, don’t worry, you can undo almost everything you have done. The computer will not get broken because you clicked on the wrong option, and the worst

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you can do is just ignore all the  possibilities that these technologies can bring to education. As I  said in Section 7.1, the future is now, so start using these tools, try them, see what works best for you and explore new options. You will see how your students achieve your pedagogical goals, and you’ll see something that it is really rewarding for any teacher: that they are able to enjoy your class and have fun! Finally, I would like to encourage you to try the future trends described in Chapters 5 and 6. I know that Pedagogical Conversational Agents (PCAs) can still seem a little bit like science fiction, a computer agent able to interact with your students. However, the research in the field suggests that in the last decade, students using PCAs have been able to achieve higher final scores, they have found the task of doing homework more satisfactory (pretty amazing!) and, at least, when they are children, they can study more when they are interacting with these agents because they can feel that they are helping the computer (their friend). Similarly, when I say computer, I mean equally tablet or digital whiteboard. As I said in Chapter 6, the computer as we know it, with its screen, CPU, keyboard and mouse may be destined to disappear. Have a look around you, you can see more and more laptops, tablets, and smartphones. These are all intelligent devices that can also run educational programs, and they have the advantage of being easy to carry and easy to interact with (you just touch what you want to use!). The future is now, so enjoy it!

7.3 Troubleshooting In this Section, you can find ten problems, which I  have chosen because they are pretty common from what I  have seen in my teaching experience with computers. Please, use the following list for reference to know how to solve such problems: 1. If you try to type a link in a browser, and it does not work (i.e. you cannot see the webpage in the browser), just try to type into a search engine like Google some keywords related to the content of the webpage, surely it is because it has been updated or changed, and you will find some updated link or a related link in one of the top ten results gathered. 2. If a website does not look exactly the same as it does in the book, please remember that webpages change, so when reading any chapter of the  book, please get the basic knowledge to get you started, and the skills to be able to work with any version even if it is not exactly the same picture as shown on the page. You can ask questions on the book’s online forum. 3. If you have problems trying to recover images, sounds or any other resource that you have uploaded to a website, blog, or even a program such as Hot Potatoes, please check that the path in which you saved the resource has not changed. If it changes, the computer will not be able to find it, and you will not be able to use it.

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4. If you have problem 3, and you have already checked that the  path has not changed, then you can check the name that you gave to the resource. In some cases, it is not possible to use accents, spaces or strange symbols such as ;:-},.. so if you rename the resource to a simple short and meaningful name with just letters and/or numbers you will be able to use it. 5. If you do not remember where you have saved some work on your computer, you can use the  “Recent files” options of the  software that you are using, or the  “Search” option of the  Operating System (e.g. in Windows by clicking on the magnifying glass). 6. If the file does not appear even after trying 5, then maybe you did not save the file. To avoid losing work, the first step whenever you start working with any software on the computer is to save the file with a name, taking into account points 3 and 4 above. 7. Sometimes a website or a computer application may take a while to respond, but it is working, so it is useless and even harmful to click several times to try to get an answer faster. It is better to wait some minutes (with one click being enough), and after that time, if the website or the computer application does not respond, then you may need to restart your computer. 8. Some websites require that you log in with your username and password in order to be able to work with them. If you have forgotten your account information, you can try the  “I have forgotten my password” option that many websites offer to recover your access data. 9. Sign out every time you finish working with any website. If you just close the browser, the session may remain open, and other people could access your data. 10. If, when working with some mobile device you have problems, check the version of the  operating system, and whether the  software has had its latest update (otherwise, update it with Google Play, Apple Store or by asking the  software provider for a new version). If it still doesn’t work, check that there isn’t a hardware problem (i.e. there is enough battery, everything is turned on and not in stand by mode), otherwise call technical support.

7.4 Exercises Let’s start with some exercises to get warmed up. Remember that all exercises are solved at the end of the chapter, but do not read the solutions until you have tried to solve the exercises on your own first! It is also possible that you’ll find different answers to these questions; in that case, you can tell us about them on the book’s website. 1. Search on the Internet for another tool that you can use to achieve pedagogical goals in each one of Bloom’s taxonomy levels. Provide a sample of how you can use that tool to achieve a sample goal. 2. What challenges do you think that teachers of XXI century have still to overcome?



Solved Exercises 

 183

7.5 Solved Exercises 1) For level 1, to learn new knowledge, I  really like Khan’s Academy (https://www. khanacademy.org/). It has over 4,500 videos in nearly all areas of knowledge. It is amazing how well Salman Khan explains complex concepts with simple videos. Please, have a  look at them! It is free and you can help your students a  lot by telling them to watch the videos and then later discussing them together. However, this is just one possibility. As I mentioned before, please if you have found other interesting links at this, or any other, level do not hesitate to share them with us on the book’s website. For level 2, to understand new knowledge, I  really like on-line tests such as the  Geography test (http://www.purposegames.com/game/countries-europe-quiz). You do not need to log in, you just need to be connected to the  Internet. It is very intuitive, as you can see in Figure  7.3, you just need to click on the  country that the program asks you about. If it is the country requested, the country has a green background color. If it is not the country, then the program makes a wrong answer noise, and you can try again. If you are able to identify the country in less than three tries, then the country has an orange background. Otherwise, it has a red background.

Figure 7.3: Sample on-line Geography test to identify countries

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 Conclusions

For level 3, to apply knowledge and competences using formative evaluation tools, I really like the Physics classroom exercises page (http://www.physicsclassroom.com/ class/1dkin/u1l6d.cfm). Again, you do not need to log in, you just need to be connected to the Internet. There are many exercises in which you need to apply a formula, which you have just learnt, in order to solve a problem. For level 4, to analyze knowledge and competences using formative evaluation tools, I really like on-line interactive exercises for linguistics analysis, which you can find at this page: (http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pxc/nlp/InteractiveNLP/NLP_syn1.html). You do not need to log in, you just need to be connected to the Internet. The exercises are interactive and students can try them several times. For level 5, to synthesize (create) knowledge and competences using formative evaluation tools. I  really like Skype (http://www.skype.com/ ) if you need to ask some students to present some project work, but they are not in class, say because they are abroad or they cannot come to the class for some other reason. The quality of the video and audio connection is usually good and you can interact with them as if they really were in class. For level 6, to evaluate knowledge and competences using formative evaluation tools, I  really like Dipity (http://www.dipity.com/ ). It is an easy on-line tool that allows you to create interactive digital timelines, as you can see in Figure 7.4.

Figure 7.4: Sample Dipity timeline

Other interesting options are: –– Padlet to create your own wall on the Internet (http://padlet.com/) –– StudyBlue to create tests on devices such as smartphones (http://www.studyblue.com/) –– Wordle to create word clouds (http://www.wordle.net/) –– Storybird to create stories and share them for viewing on any device (http://storybird.com/) –– Popplet to share ideas on-line (http://popplet.com/) –– Storify to aggregate content from social networks and create a  story (http://storify.com/)



Solved Exercises 

 185

2) In my opinion, the main challenges for XXI teachers are to how to filter the amount of knowledge and resources that surround us nowadays. It is an amazing time to be an educator! You no longer have the responsibility of being the only source of knowledge, your students are proactive and they can interact with many exercises to apply what you are saying. They can have fun while they are learning! This is wonderful! However, there are also some issues to take into account: teachers who do not want to change or teachers that want to change too much! Some teachers may want to keep doing things the same way they’ve always done them. This is not good. As I said, it is important to try new possibilities and explore new teaching strategies, always according to the pedagogical goals that you pursue. For those teachers, I encourage them to read this book and choose some tools to start practising. They will see how technology can really help in their class, no matter the age of the students or the area of knowledge. There is also the other extreme, teachers who always want to be up to date. They want to have the latest app, the latest tool, the latest information, and that task can be too time-consuming. Moreover, these teachers cannot enjoy the tool they have just learned, because they are thinking of the new possibilities that are to come. For those teachers, I encourage them to try new tools, but without the need to always be using the latest technology. Technologies, like students, evolve, but it is not necessary that you always know the latest fashion. Reading some blogs (e.g. at the beginning or end of the week), such as Lisa Nielsen, The Innovative Educator (http://theinnovativeeducator.blogspot. com.es/), Free Technology for Teachers (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/), or Steve Wheeler, Learning with “e”s (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/), is enough to keep updated. Moreover, you can talk to other colleagues and your students. My advice is to try tools for a  while, keep what you like and change what you think can be improved. Remember that technology for education is something that can make the way you teach much more fun, so please enjoy it!

List of Figures Figure 1.1: A snapshot of the video with its storyline Figure 1.2: The six levels of the Bloom’s taxonomy Figure 1.3: A wheel of verbs of the Bloom’s taxonomy (source: More than English, 2013) Figure 2.1: General overview of chapter 2 (tools for levels 1 & 2 of Bloom’s taxonomy) Figure 2.2: An education portal is a website, but not all websites are education portals Figure 2.3: An education portal must provide services, e.g. a content search engine Figure 2.4: A sample education portal (website, with education services and contents) Figure 2.5: Some didactic resources found in the sample education portal Figure 2.6: The search engine to help you find information in the education portal Figure 2.7: Some services provided by the sample education portal Figure 2.8: Services provided Figure 2.9: Oman Ministry of Education portal Figure 2.10: New Zealand transport education portal Figure 2.11: A sample international education portal Figure 2.12: BBC learning education portal Figure 2.13: Sample regional education portal Figure 2.14: Sample MOOC Figure 2.15: Sample certificate after passing a MOOC Figure 2.16: First step to enrol for free in the course Figure 2.17: Second step to go to class Figure 2.18: Third step to agree to the honour code Figure 2.19: Fourth step to read the welcome webpage Figure 2.20: Fifth step to enjoy the MOOC: read, listen and share knowledge Figure 2.21: Google Apps for education Figure 2.22: How to download Google Apps for education Figure 2.23: How to create a new Google account for free



List of Figures 

Figure 2.24: Confirmation of the creation of the Google account Figure 2.25: A snapshot of Gmail the first time a new user logs into his/her account Figure 2.26: How to sign out from Gmail Figure 2.27: How to sign in your Gmail account Figure 2.28: Reading a mail in Gmail Figure 2.29: Answer back a mail in Gmail Figure 2.30: Compose a mail in Gmail Figure 2.31: Snapshot of the welcome page of Google Drive Figure 2.32: Creating a document in Google Drive Figure 2.33: Sample document in Google Drive with a table and an image Figure 2.34: Sharing settings in Google Drive Figure 2.35: Mail with the link to invite a collaborator to work with me in Google Drive Figure 2.36: Sample chat between students using Google Drive Figure 2.37: Collaborative edition of a document in Google Drive Figure 2.38: List of documents uploaded in Google Drive Figure 2.39: Sample new presentation in Google Drive Figure 2.41: Updated list of documents in Google Drive Figure 2.40: Sample new presentation in Google Drive Figure 2.42: Updated list of documents in Google Drive Figure 2.43: Calculating a formula in a spread sheet in Google Drive Figure 2.44: Creating a form in Google Drive Figure 2.45: Choosing a theme and a title for a form in Google Drive Figure 2.46: Preview of the form in Google Drive Figure 2.47: How to set up a question in a form in Google Drive Figure 2.48: How to choose a response destination for your form in Google Drive Figure 2.49: Answers saved in Google Drive for the form Figure 2.50: A snapshot of Google Calendar Figure 2.51: Creating an event in Google Calendar

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 List of Figures

Figure 2.52: Editing an event in Google Calendar Figure 2.53: Using Google Videos for education Figure 2.54: Sample results page of Google Videos Figure 2.55: Sample results page of Google Books Figure 2.56: Main page of Google Sites Figure 2.57: Creating a site in Google Sites Figure 2.58: Sample site created from a template in Google Sites Figure 2.59: Edition possibilities in Google Sites Figure 2.61: Sample blog for education (edublog) Figure 2.60: Main page of Google Blogger Figure 2.62: First step to create an edublog with Google Blogger Figure 2.63: Second step to create an edublog with Google Blogger: to post something Figure 2.64: Third step to create an edublog with Google Blogger: to view your blog Figure 2.65: Dropbox installed in your computer and correctly synchronized (green tick!) Figure 2.66: Dropbox sample folder “projectTomAna” (in the computer) Figure 2.67: Dropbox sample folder “projectTomAna” (on-line) Figure 2.68: Inviting other people to use a folder in Dropbox (I) Figure 2.69: Inviting other people to use a folder in Dropbox (II) Figure 2.70: Public links in the public folder of Dropbox for everyone Figure 3.1: General overview of chapter 3 (tools for the levels 3 & 4 of Bloom’s taxonomy) Figure 3.2: Screenshot to download the Hot Potatoes program Figure 3.3: Screenshot of the main menu of Hot Potatoes Figure 3.4: Screenshot of the main page of JCloze Figure 3.5: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with the first JCloze file and the img subfolder Figure 3.6: Sample title and text for the JCloze activity Figure 3.7: Creating gaps for the JCloze activity Figure 3.8: Configuration options in Hot Potatoes Figure 3.9: Menu to generate the webpage in your computer or on the Internet



List of Figures 

Figure 3.10: Sample JCloze activity generated on-line Figure 3.11: Partially correct solved JCloze activity Figure 3.12: Screenshot of the main page of JMatch Figure 3.13: Sample folder for the Hot Potatoes activities Figure 3.14: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with JCloze and JMatch activities Figure 3.15: Sample title and matching columns for the JMatch activity Figure 3.16: Linking the JMatch activity to the JCloze activity in Hot Potatoes Figure 3.17: Sample JMatch drag-and-drop activity generated on-line Figure 3.18: Screenshot of the main page of JQuiz Figure 3.19: Sample Hot Potatoes folder with JCloze and JMatch activities Figure 3.20: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with JCloze, JMatch and JQuiz activities Figure 3.21: Sample reading for the JQuiz test Figure 3.22: Sample multiple-choice question for the JQuiz test Figure 3.23: Sample short answer question for the JQuiz test Figure 3.24: Sample hybrid question for the JQuiz test Figure 3.25: Sample multi-select question for the JQuiz test Figure 3.26: Sample generated JQuiz test in Hot Potatoes with time Figure 3.27: Screenshot of the main page of JCross Figure 3.28: Screenshot of the sample Hot Potatoes folder Figure 3.29: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with the JCross activity Figure 3.30: Sample crossword created in JCross Figure 3.31: Clues for the sample crossword Figure 3.32: Sample generated Jcross crossword Figure 3.33: Screenshot of the main page of JMix Figure 3.34: Screenshot of the sample structure of the Hot Potatoes folder Figure 3.35: Folder structure for Hot Potatoes, with the JMix activity Figure 3.36: Sample sentence for the JMix activity Figure 3.37: Sample generated JMix activity

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 List of Figures

Figure 3.38: Creating a unit with The Masher Figure 3.39: Sample unit generated by The Masher Figure 3.40: Verify the Java Version Figure 3.41: Downloading JClic Figure 3.42: Path to Java for JClic (only if JClic does not automatically locate it) Figure 3.43: Snapshot of the main screen of JClic Player Figure 3.44: Activity search in the JClic library of activities Figure 3.45: Sample information sheet of an activity in the JClic library Figure 3.46: Sample JClic activity in JClic Player (I) Figure 3.47: Sample JClic activity in JClic Player (II) Figure 3.47: Creating a project in JClic Author (I) Figure 3.48: Creating a project in JClic Author (II) Figure 3.49: JClic Media Library Figure 3.50: JClic screen to create activities Figure 3.51: JClic screen to set up the options of the word search activity Figure 3.52: JClic screen to set up the options of the word search activity Figure 3.53: JClic screen to set up the messages of the word search activity Figure 3.54: JClic screen to set up the panel of the word search activity (I) Figure 3.55: JClic screen to set up the panel of the word search activity (II) Figure 3.56: JClic sample word search activity Figure 3.57: JClic screen to set up the sequence of activities in the project Figure 3.58: Fakebook page in ClassTools.net Figure 4.1: General overview of chapter 4 (tools for the levels 5 & 6 of Bloom’s taxonomy) Figure 4.2: Welcome Delicious webpage Figure 4.3: Creating an account in Delicious (I) Figure 4.4: Creating an account in Delicious (II) Figure 4.5: Saving a bookmark on-line in Delicious (I) Figure 4.6: Saving a bookmark on-line in Delicious (II)



List of Figures 

Figure 4.7: Sample bookmark saved in Delicious Figure 4.8: Results webpage of a search in Delicious Figure 4.9: Sample annotated webpage (in particular, the Webnotes webpage) Figure 4.10: Webnotes sign up webpage Figure 4.11: Webnotes Welcome page Figure 4.12: Webnotes menu bar Figure 4.13: Sample annotated webpage using Webnotes Figure 4.14: Sample annotated PDF using Webnotes Figure 4.15: Organizer of Webnotes Figure 4.16: Results of a search in Webnotes Figure 4.17: Report generated by Webnotes Figure 4.18: Prezi welcome page Figure 4.19: Prezi main page Figure 4.20: Prezi edition page Figure 4.21: The edition frame tool Figure 4.22: Animoto welcome webpage Figure 4.23: Animoto video editing page Figure 4.24: Animoto show video page Figure 4.25: Sample Webnotes “ITC for Education” report generated Figure 4.26: Adding ideas in a Prezi presentation Figure 5.1: Shamael Figure 5.2: Fisca Figure 5.3: Lingu Figure 5.4: Herman the Bug (Lester et al. 1997) Figure 5.5: Steve (Rickel and Johnson, 1999) Figure 5.6: Guilly (Nunes et al. 2002) Figure 5.7: Sam (Ryokai et al. 2003) Figure 5.8: Autotutor (Graesser et al. 2008)

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 List of Figures

Figure 5.9: Baldi (Massaro et al. 2005) Figure 5.10: Willow Figure 5.11: Betty (Biswas et al. 2009) Figure 5.12: Agents in Active Worlds (Holmes, 2007) Figure 5.13: Mike’s teachable agent (Pareto et al., 2012) Figure 5.14: SBEL agents (Reategui et al. 2007) Figure 5.15: Crystal Island agents (Robinson et al. 2009) Figure 5.16: Jake and Jane agents (Arroyo et al. 2009) Figure 5.17: MyPet (Chen et al. 2009) Figure 5.18: BILAT agents Figure 5.19: Sample feedback webpage of Willow Figure 5.20: Template to create a course in Willow Figure 6.1: General overview of chapter 6 Figure 6.2: Example tablet Figure 6.3: Example digital whiteboard Figure 6.4: Turning on a tablet Figure 6.5: Turning on a sample tablet Figure 6.6: Opening a folder by touching it with the finger on the screen Figure 6.7: Interacting with an app in the tablet Figure 6.8: A screenshot of Google Play Figure 6.9: A screenshot of Apple Store Figure 6.10: Logo of the example software (the background color may change to purple or green) Figure 6.11: Example of notebook background to write with the pen on the digital whiteboard Figure 6.12: Using Hot Potatoes in the digital whiteboard Figure 6.13: Using the focus feature of the digital whiteboard Figure 7.1: Snapshot of the video “The future starts now” Figure 7.3: Sample on-line Geography test to identify countries Figure 7.4: Sample Dipity timeline

List of Tables Table 3.1: Exercise 2 Table 3.2: Solved exercise 2 Table 7.2: Synopsis table

Index Agent 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 181 Android 164, 170, 175 Animoto 120, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 179, 180 App 39, 40, 41, 54, 67, 169, 170, 171, 172, 176, 185 Apple 171, 175, 182 Assessment 25, 27, 120, 122, 124, 126, 128, 130, 132, 134, 136, 138, 140, 155, 161, 178, 179, 180 B-learning 154, 161 Blog 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 67, 69, 75, 180, 181, 185 Blogger 58, 60, 62, 63, 69, 179 Bookmark 19, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 139 Browser 19, 29, 36, 45, 58, 73, 80, 84, 121, 127, 128, 176, 181, 182 Google calendar 33, 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 69, 179 Chat 16, 43, 44 Checkbox 34, 74, 87, 90, 109, 110, 124 Collaboration 11, 15, 25, 27, 28, 68, 161 Companion 144, 157, 160 Competences 3, 7, 16, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 158, 180, 184 Connectivity 25, 164, 165 Cpu 164, 181 Crossword 75, 91, 93, 94, 105, 117, 179, 180 Database 100, 142 Delicious 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 139, 140, 179, 180 Desktop 3, 41, 63, 64, 67, 70, 74, 76, 101, 133, 172 Device 3, 11, 45, 46, 49, 63, 64, 65, 66, 73, 83, 121, 126, 158, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184 Disk 63, 77, 83, 88, 93, 135, 164, 165 Document 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 54, 62, 66, 67, 69, 131, 180 Download 19, 41, 45, 58, 73, 99, 103 Drag 84, 97 Drive 33, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 58, 62, 63, 69, 70, 76, 132, 165, 179, 180

Drop 84, 97 Dropbox 15, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 132, 165, 175, 178, 179, 180 Edublog 12, 61, 62, 63 E-learning 161, 162 E-mail 19, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 43, 65, 126, 131, 132, 139, 157 Evaluation 4, 25, 72, 74, 76, 78, 80, 82, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 114, 116, 118, 155, 184 Facebook 28, 41, 118, 119, 122, 138 Feedback 26, 79, 80, 87, 155, 156, 157, 160, 161 File 41, 45, 65, 66, 69, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 100, 101, 103, 105, 107, 108, 114, 182 Folder 45, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 74, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 85, 86, 91, 92, 95, 96, 97, 101, 105, 106, 107, 115, 116, 129, 130, 140, 169 Form 40, 49, 51, 56, 58, 116 Forum 25, 108, 170 Frame 135, 136, 139, 140, 141 Gmail 17, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 43, 69, 179 Google 15, 21, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 67, 69, 70, 75, 81, 125, 127, 128, 132, 140, 171, 175, 176, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182 Graphics 105, 148, 151, 152, 154, 158 Hardware 163, 165, 167, 172, 177, 182 Icon 37, 39, 41, 46, 47, 51, 62, 64, 69, 74, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 86, 88, 93, 101, 105, 107, 113, 114, 124, 126, 130, 140, 170, 172, 173, 175, 176 Images 58, 59, 60, 76, 83, 105, 108, 124, 134, 135, 136, 137, 168, 179, 180, 181 Installation 73, 74, 99, 100, 101, 103, 167 Interaction 2, 3, 142, 145, 157, 158, 160, 161, 164, 167, 170, 176 Interface 38, 79, 107, 109, 142, 160, 161 Internet 1, 2, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18, 29, 32, 39, 45, 49, 63, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 73, 80, 119, 121, 125, 126, 135, 139, 165, 175, 176, 179, 182, 183, 184 Java 73, 99, 101, 180 Jclic 72, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 137, 175, 179, 180

Index  Jcloze 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 90, 94, 98, 115, 116 Jcross 75, 91, 92, 93, 94, 179 Jmatch 75, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 90, 97, 115, 116, 175, 179 Jmix 75, 94, 95, 96, 97, 115, 116, 179 Jquiz 75, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 115, 116, 179 Keyboard 48, 163, 164, 173, 181 Link 10, 19, 21, 34, 36, 42, 43, 51, 52, 56, 59, 60, 63, 66, 67, 70, 73, 123, 124, 126, 132, 134, 136, 138, 139, 141, 181 The Masher 75, 97, 98, 115, 116, 179 M-learning 162, 176 Mobile 162, 164, 166, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176 Mooc 3, 15, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 67, 68, 69, 70, 75, 123, 178, 179 Mouse 40, 49, 51, 64, 78, 83, 116, 117, 163, 164, 173, 181 Multimedia 23, 26, 73, 107, 114, 117, 136, 137, 138, 160, 179, 180 Netiquette 29 Network 25, 27, 28, 29, 31, 41, 60, 118, 122, 125, 137, 179 Newsletter 25, 67, 70 Panel 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 117, 131 Portal 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 67, 68, 75, 78, 85 Post 61, 63, 69 Hot Potatoes 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 103, 105, 107, 109, 115, 116, 173, 174, 175, 179, 180, 181 Prezi 120, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 139, 140, 141, 179, 180 Privacy 54, 69 Processor 40, 164, 165 Program 6, 12, 45, 48, 63, 73, 74, 75, 77, 79, 81, 82, 97, 100, 101, 105, 106, 110, 113, 114, 116, 117, 167, 170, 173, 175, 179, 181, 183 Repository 15, 26, 28, 123, 179 Resource 40, 54, 56, 59, 107, 181, 182 Skill 25, 145, 154, 159 Skin 107, 109

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Slide 31, 46, 180 Smartphone 158, 181, 184 Software 12, 99, 126, 132, 149, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 171, 172, 173, 175, 177, 180, 182 Spreadsheet 33, 40, 45, 47, 48, 49, 52, 53, 56 Tablet 3, 162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 175, 176, 181 Taxonomy 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 20, 28, 29, 32, 36, 56, 58, 72, 75, 120, 121, 126, 133, 144, 152, 157, 162, 178, 180, 182 Technology 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 62, 160, 161, 164, 167, 172, 177, 178, 180, 185 Template 60, 62, 133, 134, 156, 157 Trends 142, 144, 146, 148, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176, 181 Twitter 41, 126, 131 Ubiquity 157, 158 Upload 69, 130 Usability 3, 68 Usb 76, 165 Username 34, 69, 126, 139, 182 Video 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 23, 27, 28, 29, 33, 56, 59, 67, 69, 110, 126, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141, 164, 165, 168, 175, 176, 177, 179, 180, 184 Web 41, 63, 64, 66, 69, 73, 100, 121, 126, 133, 154 Webnotes 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 139, 140, 179, 180 Webpage 18, 19, 21, 27, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 41, 58, 59, 61, 79, 80, 83, 84, 90, 94, 97, 98, 99, 101, 118, 121, 122, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136, 139, 141, 155, 181 Website 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 58, 60, 67, 68, 69, 115, 117, 139, 141, 156, 157, 159, 175, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183 Whiteboard 163, 166, 167, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 181 Windows 73, 99, 101, 105, 133, 137, 182 Wizard 74, 100, 101 Youtube 12, 13, 56, 59, 138, 176