Quandary

Quandary is a free software from the same stable as Hot Potatoes. Quandary is an application for creating Web-based Action Mazes, A form of model or scenario; the user is presented with a situation, and a number of choices as to a course of action to deal with it. On choosing one of the options, the resulting situation is then presented, again with a set of options. Working through this branching tree is like negotiating a maze, hence the name "Action Maze".

Like Hot Potatoes, it is simple to use and the resulting maze can be a simple modelling program like having a set number of pounds and a choice of items to buy.

It is based around Decision Points where a series of actions are possible and depending upon which action is taken depends upon which next decision point you are taken to. It is saved in XHTML format, again like Hot Potatoes which means that the only thing you need to utilise the finished Maze is a web browser. the Maze could be run interactively on a whiteboard using the class as participants and the nice thing about that format is that it could be used to generate discussion at each of the decision points. This would be advantageous in checking overall understanding, especially of a difficult concept.

The other thing that you can do is link events to the action taken. these events are called transactions. For example if you were creating a quest and e.g. on the hunt for the mystical database, then when they get to the point of Handling Data - they must have already created a table. If they haven't created a table then they can go no further until they have gone back and created a table. Or if shopping and modelling you can link the transaction so that they reduce money when they buy certain Objects.

Visually you have a certain power to alter the appearance - colours, fonts - insert pictures directly from the web, and also locally. Also there is the ability to embed or insert sound and video.

Finally there is also the ability to add multi-choice options to your actions.

All in all I like it and I think it has many uses within education, from a series of case studies linked to form a concept, to quick games to reinforce learning.
FAB!!

Hot Potatoes

Hot Potatoes from 1/2 Baked Software is a neat little tool that can be used by teachers not matter what their ICT capability. The Hot Potatoes suite includes six applications, enabling you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is freeware, and you may use it for any purpose or project you like. It is not open-source.I was originally developed by the University of Victoria and its HOME page offers links to tutorials, easy downloads and also links to resources.



One of the advantages of Hot Potatoes is that whilst your quizes can be exported for printing, they can also be converted into a text page which meeans that to run the acivites interactively all you need is a web browser, which all PC's have. The activity can either be run off an interactivw whiteboard with individuals coming and anxwering the key points on the board. or set up on a shared network drive and the students can access the quizes individually.

I feel the application is ideal for starters or plenaries where you may want to test understanding - but the real advantage is that it is easy to set up and seems to motivate students especially at Key Stage 3 / 4 although I have also had some success occasionally at KS5.

Prezzi

I have been experimenting with 'Prezzi' for a while now and whilst I am the first to admit that when I first used it I was unsure whether it was little more than a flashy presentational tool more suited to the bright spark in the office wanting to impress his peers, I am becoming more and more enamoured.

Prezzi is an online presentational tool, which is free if using the basic package. this allows you to produce presentations online and to download the presentations and show offline - this gets around the problem of the internet being unavailable whether from network failures or as may be the case in many schools / colleges blocked access.The basic package also gives you 100mb storage. For a fee there are more facilities open to you such as having the 'Prezzi' watermark removed and also maiking the pesentations private along with offline cretions with the most expensive licence, and of course you get much more storage.

Recently Prezzi has caught on to it's appeal for education and is now allowing a student / teacher licence which allows you

• Online creation
• Offline presentation
• Removal of watermark
• and the ability to make your presentations private or shared with selected individuals.

This last pointer has made the system more appealling to me. One of the drawbacks that I had in using the tool was that it made it difficult to share my presentations with my students for later reflection. Whilst there is a search tool present, it is not cery exacting, and you cannot search for authors. Being able to make presentations private would mean that providing all the students had an account would mean that the relevant presentations could be saved with relevant individuals on particular courses.

Prezzi is quite easy to use once you have had a little practice, I am still a novice, but each presentation is becoming slicker, my students seem to enjoy them and there is a strong argument for ringing the changes from an interest and motivational point of view. One of the key advantages in my mind is that the very nature of the application limits the amount of text that you can put on the screen at any one time. This forces you to think about what you need to say and keeps you on track with the key points you wish to expand. it is easy to attach external documents you may wish to refer to, ans embedding items such as videos is far less fiddly than for example PowerPoint. the presentation is made over a single screen and transitions exist in the form of 'paths' which zoom in on key areas. I can see how care needs to be taken with these as if there are two many too quickly then it is possible that some people may suffer motion sickness.

As with many applications it has its drawbacks and the key thing is to think about how you are going to apply your presentation and if it is the right tool for the job!! Further as with all new application there is always a novelty factor and it will be interesting to see how the application is developed to counteract this.

Classroom managment on Prezi