Create Elearning Worksheets for Comprehension & Speaking Homework

This is a great site for building digital interactive worksheets with a whole range of different interactions. You can embed video, images, text or audio into the worksheets and then build a wide range of interactions into them.

With some of the activity types, like the open text one, students have the option to write or use voice input in the worksheets.

The results are all collected in the simple LMS where teachers can see the students’ results and type in feedback to send to the student.

Wizer is great for teachers who want to take their first steps into developing interactive online content. It’s very simple and quick to use and isn’t too big a conceptual leap from the sorts of activities and worksheets that many teachers already design for their classroom.

You can get a lot of inspiration and possibly some ready made materials by looking through the Gallery of activities that have already been created by other teachers.

Then when you are ready just click on 'Create' and you can start adding video, text or image input and building a sequence of interactive tasks.

I hope you enjoy this really great free tool and create lots of useful and engaging worksheets for your students.

You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

My Books:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Create Blended Learning with Video Based Discussions

This is a great tool for creating a blended learning element to your face to face courses or even for building 100% online learning.

Using Flipgrid you can create a number of grids based around top level themes and then build 'topics' into these that explore specific areas of the overall theme.

When you build a topic you can add various video based resources and then students can respond by recording short video clips giving their opinion on the topic.

I've built a quick example here which you are free to respond to. My grid is based on the theme of EdTech in ELT and here's a topic based around Exploiting YouTube apps for ELT.

The free version gives you one grid that you can use to create any number of discussion topics. The paid version which is $65 a year has a lot of additional features including the ability to connect up with other Flipgrid classrooms around the world.

It's well worth looking through the existing grids that have been created on the platform to see how it works and look at some of the really great work that's being done with the platform.

• The What if ... grid looks at global issues and has 16 topics with lots of responses from students: https://flipgrid.com/qst244c
• Spark a Flipgrid Idea has tips and suggestions for using the platform and creating tasks: https://flipgrid.com/spark

This is a great tool to set up speaking homework tasks and get students exploring a wide range of issues whilst developing their digital skills and confidence in front of their webcam.

I hope you enjoy using Flipgrid with your students. You can find more tools and activities like these in my ebook 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom.

The book is available on iOS or as PDF for other devices.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Build Professional Level Online and Blended Courses with this Free Plugin

H5P is a tool for building complete courses with a wide variety of interactive task types. The tool works as a plug in with a range of platforms including Moodle, Drupal and Wordpress (all of which have free versions available) .

It’s very easy to install the plug in (took me less than 5 mins with Wordpress) and once this is done  you can choose any of the interactive elements to add to your pages.

The activities the plug in produces are html5 so they will run equally well on both desktop and mobile platforms. Many of the activity types are also ideal for language learning and the development of multimedia content.

There are great tools for creating interactive video based quizzes, presentations, audio responses, a variety of games and text manipulation activities.

If you look at the content types here you’ll see examples of each one as well as some information about how to use them.


For such a powerful tool, the learning curve on creating the activities is quite gentle and you should be able to start producing content quite quickly. H5P is open source and there is a good community of developers sharing expertise on the support forums if you get stuck.

It is also a tool that’s being developed so it’s likely that it will continue to improve. So if you want to start building your own blended learning or online courses this could be a great tool to do the job.

I hope you enjoy building fantastic courses with H5P. You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: http://peacheypublications.com/. All my ebooks are available for iOS and as PDF.

Sign up for my twice monthly free newsletter and get a free copy of Digital Tools for Teachers at: https://tinyletter.com/technogogy/ 

Related links:

• 20 Tech Enhanced Activities for the Language Classroom
• Digital Tools for Teachers
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media
• Exploiting Infographics
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video – A Manual for Language Teachers 

 Best

Nik Peachey

Why do students frequently drop out of online courses?

Over the past couple of years 'MOOCs' (massive open online courses) have become the latest trend in the attempt to harness the power of online learning. MOOCs though, just like other forms of online learning have suffered from very high drop out rates.

So what's the cause the high drop out rates among online learners and what can we actually do about it?

In the questionnaire below I've added some possible causes of drop out. Please could you add any others that you can think of and use the 'Pros' in the argument section to make any simple suggestions for how to combat the problem.

Thank you for sharing your suggestions and helping with this simple research questionnaire.

Related links

• How I use social media for my professional development 
• Online Teacher Development Works Best - 15 Reasons Why
• Developing your digital study skills
• Learning Technology News Portal
• Web Tools for Learners

Best

Nik Peachey