Building Quizzes with Artificial Intelligence

Back in December 2018, I reviewed an excellent web-based application called Quillionz. The site was developed using AI to instantly produce a wide range of questions based on any text of 300 - 3000 words.

Since then the tool has been a great success and I've had some very positive reports from many English and subject-based teachers who have used it to save time and create instant reading comprehension tests based around authentic content.

Quillionz has now released a Pro version, which I've just tried. I have to say it's really impressive.

These are a few of the new features the pro version offers:

• Generate Wh questions
• View the context of a question
• Generate unlimited question sets per day
• Save unlimited question sets
• Input content as text and PDF
• Export question sets as a text file or QuilliQuiz

The new feature that I like best is QuilliQuiz. This is a feature that turns the questions into virtual quizzes. Here's an example of a QuilliQuiz abut a newspaper article on Brexit:https://app.quillionz.com/Quiz/Index?id=UIi9wC

So once students have read and done their comprehension exercises, you can use this feature to have a group class-quiz or students can use it individually to review and revise the content.
They simply look at the questions, try to remember the answer and then click the flashcard to see if they have it right.

Quillionz Pro is priced at just under $10 a month, so if you are creating lots of materials based around text then it can be a really economical way to save lots of time.

If that is expensive for you, you can still continue to use the free version and quickly create some great quizzes and content for your students.

I hope you enjoy using Quillionz with your students.

You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: https://payhip.com/peacheypublications

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


Check Out My Books:

• Hacking Creativity
• 10 Short Image Lessons
• 10 Lessons in Digital Literacy
• Digital Video
• Thinking Critically through Digital Media 

Best
Nik Peachey

Create Reading Activities from Authentic Text in Minutes with Quillionz

As teachers, we are constantly hearing about the wonders of AI and how it will take over education and make all of our lives easier.

Well here finally is a genuine example of something we can use to save time and effort. Quillionz is an AI-powered question generator that can help you to take any text from anywhere and create a range of comprehension or test questions around it.

All you need to do to get Quillionz to generate your questions is register and the find the text you want to use.

You can copy-paste your text (anything between 300 and 3000 words) into the Quillionz editor, give it a title, select a domain (the domain is the area of study) from the drop-down menu and then click on ‘Proceed’.

It will then suggest some keywords from the text that you can choose from. Selecting these keywords will help to direct the focus of the questions towards the things that you think are most important from the text.

Then click on ‘Proceed’ again and the AI-powered platform will analyse the text and highlight any areas in the text where it could be improved for better clarity. 

Finally, click on ‘Get Question Ideas’ and the site will generate a large selection of possible questions for your text.

It can create three different types of questions:

• Short answer
• Multiple-choice 
• Recall

(Recall questions are ones with a sentence and a space that students have to complete.)

Once you have the question you can read through them, delete the ones you don’t want and edit any that aren’t quite right.

Then you can save it to your dashboard to use again and simply download it as a text file.

The text file comes complete with answers so you can keep that as your answer key and copy and paste the questions into a worksheet for students.

• Here you can see a Quillionz tutorial

Using Quillionz you can now find interesting and current texts and turn them into activities in minutes. This is another great step away from the ones size fits all textbook and a great tool for enabling teachers to create content that is suitable and relevant to their student's lives and interests. You could even get students to register and create reading tasks for each other.

I hope you enjoy using Quillionz with your students.

You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: https://payhip.com/peacheypublications

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 Vocabulary Activities from Authentic Text in Minutes

WordBooster is a real time saver for anyone creating courses using authentic materials. The site generates word lists and vocabulary quizzes from authentic texts and includes definitions of the words and a range of activities to help students understand and remember the words.

All you have to do is choose the text and download the worksheets ready for printing.
You just copy and paste the URL of the page you want to use with your students and after about 1 minute the process will be complete.

You can then see the text of the page with the key words underlined and download three separate documents, Reformatted Text, Word List with definitions, Vocabulary Quiz activities, as PDF.

The word list also contains example sentences of the words used in context as well as a QR code that links back to the original article or webpage online.

I hope you find WordBooster useful. 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

An App for Making Grammar Addictive

The ‘Quiz Your English App’ is a great new free app available for on both iOS and Android that has been designed to make English learning and revision into an engaging, enjoyable and addictive game.

The app has been produced by Cambridge English Language Assessment and can be downloaded for free from: http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/learning-english/games-social/quiz-your-english/

Once your students have installed the game they need to register either by using a Google or Facebook account. Once registered students can challenge other users in competitive language quizzes. They do this by clicking on ‘Play’ and then choosing a topic.

Once they have their topic, the app will match them up to an opponent and they then have to answer a sequence of five timed questions.

The students then have ten seconds to answer the question. The student that answers correctly first scores more points.

The whole quiz is finished in less than 1 minute and then the students can ask for a rematch or challenge someone else.

As the students gain points they are added to a scoreboard and they can search through the scoreboard and challenge other players.

By clicking on ‘Results’ students can review their past games, see how they scored and look at which questions they got right or wrong.

This is a really simple but very well designed app that will keep students at a lower intermediate + level engaged with and reviewing language on a regular basis.


Using Quiz Your English with Students

• It would be a great tool to use as a filler in the classroom for students who finish early or for some autonomous learning tool.
• You could also start your class by getting students into pairs or small groups to share the questions they got wrong and work together to try to find  out why their answer was wrong and which one was correct.

Summary

• There’s a lot to like about this app. I actually really enjoyed playing it myself as a native speaker, so for students who are drawn to competitive games this could be quite addictive.
• I also like that you know who you are playing against and where they come from, even though the app doesn’t enable any form of contact, so it’s still safe for students.
• The fact that the quizzes are so short also keeps the interest levels and students can quickly go to reviewing their answers or play another opponent.
• There is of course a commercial element to the app and there are in-app purchases so that students can buy particular quiz packs, including one for IELTS, but this could be a really good way for students to do some enjoyable revision and improve their score.
• I have some reservations about having to register using my Facebook or Google account. This is great in that it reduces the chances of students forgetting or losing passwords and automatically creates their profile and enables them to challenge other friends on Facebook, but it would be nice to have a log in option for students who aren’t Google or Facebook users or ones that prefer to opt out.

On the whole I think Quiz Your English is a great app and can add a really useful dimension to your students’ learning and your classroom teaching. I hope you and your students enjoy using it.

You can find links to many more tools like this and activities for the digital classroom in my ebooks at: https://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/ 

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 Quick Online Polls

Vorbeo must be one of the quickest and easiest poll creators I've ever seen. All you need to do is to go to there website at: http://vorbeo.com/

Type in your question add different answers each one on a new line, choose your colour and size etc. As you do that, a code is generated lower down on the page.

When you are ready you simply copy the code into your web page or blog and publish it.


Users simply click on their answer and click vote and they are taken to a new page to see the results. try this one to see how it works:

Do you use technology in your classroom?

Yes - every day
Yes - sometimes
No - never
No - not very often
No but I get my students to use it outside the classroom

This is really no frills stuff, but it is simple, quick and easy and also free. You don't even need to register or part with your email address. All user responses are anonymous.

This is a great tool to use with students

• All responses are anonymous so you can use this to get some honest feedback on your teaching if you are doing action research.
• You can create opinion polls based on videos from YouTube (just embed the video and poll questions in your blog page) or text.
• You can get students to create their own research polls for their peers and then discuss the results in class.
• You can use it to get some feedback on your blog.
• Students who write blogs can use it to get quick responses from readers.
• You could even use it as a comprehension check for online text audio or video activities that you create for your students.

You can create a number of questions and embed the code for each one in the page, so you aren't limited to just one question, but you are limited in terms of giving students some response to their answer. They will only see how other people have responded so they won't know whether they are right or wrong.

I think this is a great simple tool that is really easy to use. I hope you find a good use for it. So what do you think?

Will you use Vorbeo

Yes
No
Maybe

Related links:

• Survey Creation Tool for Students
• Create a Quick Discussion Forum
• Videos for Global Issues Lessons
• Education for the Global Economy
• Tackling political issues
• Video debating website
• Express Your Opinions

Best

Nik Peachey

Create an ESL EFL Video Quiz

ESLvideo.com is a great free site that enables you to create your own quizzes based on video clips from popular sharing sites like YouTube or BlipTV.


You have to register and log in and then you just grab embed codes for the video you want to build you quiz around. The site is multilingual so it doesn't just have to be an English language video.

Then you just add your questions and then embed the finished quiz into your blog or site. There are instructions here telling you how to create your own video quiz

As well as this the site has a huge collection of quizzes that have already been created by users and you can grab the code for these and add them to your blog. As users create quizzes they also classify and level them so it makes it very easy to choose something for your class even if you are in a hurry.



Here's an example one.


You can also register and create your own 'class' on the site. which you can then invite your students to, so that you control which quizzes they do.

This is a great and simple way to create motivating online tasks for your students and it's totally free. It also allows you to produce materials at home that your students can watch at home in schools where YouTube is blocked.

The only problem I had with it was that some of the video clips are restricted geographically by YouTube, but if you are creating your own for students in your country then you'll soon realise what is and isn't available.

I hope you enjoy this site and create lots of great quizzes.

Related links:

• 20+ video activities for students
• 20 WebCam Activities for EFL ESL Students
• Online Video: For Language Development
• Online Video: As Knowledge Resource
• Online Video: Authentic Genres
• Free Educational TV Channels
• News Videos for EFL ESL Materials Design
• Exploiting a Video Viral
• Create a YouTube Carousel
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Sending Bubble Joy to your EFL / ESL Students
• Great Video Commenting Tool

Best

Nik Peachey

Writing Upside Down

Have you ever wanted to write upside down on a web site? Well now you can, just go to Upside Down Letters, type in your text and watch as it appears upside down in the field below.

Then just cut and past your text into your page. Here's what it looks like.

˙ǝʞıן sʞooן ʇı ʇɐɥʍ s,ǝɹǝɥ ˙ǝƃɐd ɹnoʎ oʇuı ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ ʇsɐd puɐ ʇnɔ ʇsnɾ uǝɥʇ
˙ʍoןǝq pןǝıɟ ǝɥʇ uı uʍop ǝpıspdn sɹɐǝddɐ ʇı sɐ ɥɔʇɐʍ puɐ ʇxǝʇ ɹnoʎ uı ǝdʎʇ 'sɹǝʇʇǝן uʍop ǝpısdn oʇ oƃ ʇsnɾ 'uɐɔ noʎ ʍou ןןǝʍ ¿ǝʇıs qǝʍ ɐ uo uʍop ǝpısdn ǝʇıɹʍ oʇ pǝʇuɐʍ ɹǝʌǝ noʎ ǝʌɐɥ

As you can see, it's not perfect and there are no upper case letters, but it does the job.

So why have upside down text? Well could be handy as a reading challenge or also to add answers to online tasks and stop students from going straight to them.

Hope you find Upside Down Letters useful.

Related links:

• Cloze Test Creation Tool
• Listening Dictation Puzzles for EFL ESL
• Creating an interactive cloze text
• MS Word tutorial 1: Adding ‘comments’
• Create EFL / ESL Lesson Plans in Mins
• Adventure Narratives for EFL ESL Students
• Using Word Clouds in EFL ESL
• Prompting reading speeds

Best

Nik Peachey

Vocabulary and rice

This is a great site for revising vocabulary (at a higher level) and helping to donate food to the UN World Food Program. There is an audio of a word and students have to choose the correct synonym (there's a choice of four). For every correct answer Free Rice donates 20 grains of rice.


The site also rates the level of your vocabulary and sneds you more difficult questions if you are getting the answers.

Great vocabulary building and a worthy charity all in one.
I found it pretty addictive. Try it at Free Rice

Best
Nik