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Tuesday, August 30, 2022
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Interactive Tools
There are tons and tons of available interactive tools, curator tools, image makers, mindmaps, audio and video tools available online. Sometimes people can feel overwhelmed with the resources.
In this part we will mention those that definitely work with both SEN and mainstream students, are not time consuming and are mainly free.
Here is the list of some of the apps you can use to create interactive learning materials. These materials can help students with certain learning difficulties to revise and practice their understanding pf a certain subjects. I have used most of these tools with both my SEN students (esp. Cerebral Palsy, Cognitive Disabilities, ADHD) and mainstream students and I am sure many of you have tried some of these during our remote or distance learning.
OMOGURU. app - web and mobile software that empowers struggling readers. It is available in ENG and CRO. It is known as dyslexia friendly reader.
1. Learning Apps - (Suggested for all learners)
LearningApps.org is a Web 2.0 application, to support learning and teaching processes with small interactive modules. The website is translated to several European languages and allows creating various interactive materials: open cloze, matching activities, you can add images, audio, video, play hangman, create an online crossword etc.
If you don't have time to create your own you can explore among various public and free ready-made lesson ideas shared by teachers, esp. if you are a language teacher.
Here is one of my examples below.
Irregular Verbs -students can play it on their mobile phones or tablets, as well as their desktop computers.
2. Gabriel's Seeds (Suggested for mainly young learners and SEN)
is an interactive lesson material tool, created by a Croatian IT Developer Mr Dražen Klečina. It has really undergone many updates and allows great features. It is esp. suitable for Kindergarten, Primary and SEN students. It provides students with stimulus and a prize/award when they finish a certain tasks which is very motivating for SEN students.
3. Quizlet (Suggested for all learners and SEN)
Quizlet is a simple learning tool that allows you to create flashcards which can help students master a certain vocabulary. It also has a possiblity of adding images. If you are a language teacher, your students can practice pronunciaton, spelling and do a short quiz. Your only task is just to add words and definitions or images and the tool does everything itself. It creates the flashcards and tests students understanding of materialsindifferent ways: matching,multiple choice,writing-spelling,
This is a great tool for all my SEN and struggling students and I have used it a lot during remote teaching for mainstream classes in order to help students practice the new vocabulary.
Check out some of my examples.
4. TinyTap (Suggested for K-1 - K8 and SEN)
- is a social platform which empowers families, teachers and students to learn from each other by creating their own personalized learning apps and playing thousands of new ones shared daily by a worldwide community of educators and learners worldwide. The app needs to be installed on a mobile phone or tablet to be able to create content, but web version should be avilable soon. There are tons of materials you can use from the TinyTap market.
The site is also available in many languages. It has a special needs section with many materials. The teacher can even record his/her voice and there are many layouts to choose from which help you create your interactive lessons.
Definitely a must tool to be explored. Great for Young Learners.
5. EduCandy (Suggested for all learners esp. young learners and SEN)
Educandy- is an interactive game creater. It is still in beta version and it is more suitable for young learners. It's free and you can create 8 types of games. You can see the list on the screenshot below. Students can play these games on any device.
Screenshot 1: Educaplay
Another similar apps and tools are:
6. H5P- (Suggested for all learners)
H5P - a plugin for existing publishing systems that enables the system to create interactive content like Interactive Videos, Presentations, Games, Quizzes and more!
It can also be integrated into Moodle, Wordpress and other CMS.
7. LIVEWORKSHEETS (Suggested for all learners and SEN)
LIVEWORKSHEET transforms your traditional printable worksheets (jpg, PDFs, Doc into self-correcting interactive exercises that the students can do online and send to the teacher. This can be very useful esp. for students who have bad handwriting. You can create your classes online, and if you don't have time to create your own worksheets you can have your students to ready-made materials shared by worldwide teachers.
8. WORDWALL (Suggested for all learners and SEN)
Wordwall - a very similar tool to Learning Apps. You can make quizzes, match ups, word games, and much more. And you can even print out your materials. Unfortunately, a free version only allows you to make up to 5 different materials. The good thing is that the site is available in many languages, not just English. (Croatian, Hungarian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Serbian etc.) You can also use many shared interactive materials created by other teachers. Monthly subscription is not too expensive if you really like the tool and decide to use it more in your classes. There are also certain School plans, but to get more information you will have to visit their official website.
Screenshot 2: Wordwall template interactive elements
9. WIZER ((Suggested for all learners and SEN)
Wizzer- a digital worksheet and is very similar to Liveworksheets but you get to choose from the available worksheet layouts to add your tasks. You can use it for practice with your students, for delivering new and interesting materials, you can use it for formative and summative assessment, because the tool allows you do add points, just as you would add in your printed test.
Diffrent kind of tasks you can include in one worksheet vary from: open questions, videos, multiple choice, images, (I have seen Geography teachers adding images to test map skills) matching, text, sorting, drawing, link, embbed etc.
Screenshot 3: Wizer.me type of questions
The advantages are that you can record your instruction using audio option and have it written as well.
It is free, but you can only have one class to add students. This doesn't mean you cannot share your materials with any of your students, but if you don't have a class folder you will have to check manually.
You students need to share email to enter your materials and do the test.
If they have some school email accounts you can tell them to use those. By entering email, you get information who accessed your test and when.
Here is the example of one of my Wizer digital Worksheets.
For Croatian eTwinning colleague I also found a short tutorial in Croatian here.
Comics and Vocabulary Building Tools
Comic tools are great visuals and students love them. One of such comic tools is
MakeBeliefsComix - great for dyslexic, autistic, hearing impaired students
The website is translated into several world languages. To create a comic you don't even need to sign up but it is prefered in order to have your comics stored. You can have maximum 18 panels.
There is a special section called Special Needs where you can get many useful ideas how to use Comics with different SEN students (Hearing Impaired, Autism..)
I have used comics with my students in order to help them practice their grammar and language outcomes, you can use them for storytelling or even for creating materials to help SEN students better understand certain topic.
There are also Pixton, Storyboard.That., but MakeBeliefx is somehow more user friendly.
Another good comic website esp. for English Language Learners is
CIELL - Inclusive English Language Learning. This is an EU project whose goal was to enhance the quality of language teaching materials used for teaching writing as a second language and support the needs of dyslexic learners in a socially inclusive manner.
Since I am an English teacher I have the need to introduce you to some nice web 2.0 tools for building students vocabulary.
1. Lingro
Lingro is a very interesting and useful tool. You or your students just need to type or copy-paste a website address on the Lingro website and it instantly turns that copied website into a clickable dictionary that translates text in 12 languages. Lingro hides in the background until students need it. To use, students simply click on any word and several definitions of the word are instantly displayed. I could see this as very useful tool for just-in-time support for English language learners.
2. Lexipedia
Lexipidia is like a visual Thesaurus. It's very simpleto use. You just need to type in a word and it instantly displays the target word along with other words,usually parts of speech,synonyms and antonyms. It also color-codes the words by both parts of speech and relationships. As you hover over a word, a complete definition is displayed. On the left side of the screen y clicing on the parts of speech you can readthe meanings carefully or you can just hoover over the words in a visual mindmap display. It is available in 6 EU languages,not just English, but also Spanish, Italian,German, Dutch, French.
3. Free Rice
At Free Rice, students can practice matching words to the correct definition, and donate rice at the same time. For each correct answer, the United Nations World Food Programme donates 10 grains of rice to a country in need. It is both combining vocaulary practice and social awarness? When a student plays, there is a visual display of rice which is added to a bowl each time the student makes a correct response. Free Rice includes several other subject area lists in Geography (like world flags) Science, Math, and others. It is leveled so students can play at just the right level of challenge for them.
Note of caution: Free Rice may be addicting to both you and your students :))
4. Vocabahead
5. Thinglink
Thinglink is an app or a web tool to make your images interactive.
Some useful websites:
About Thinglink for education from their official website
Ways to use Thinglink in the Classroom - PDF
6. Rewordify - (Suggested for K12 and University students)
Rewordify is a powerful and simple tool that can improve students reading abilities as it simplifies the complex vocabulary and help with faster comprehension of certain topics but it also helps students to build up their vocaulary by effectively teaching new words with engaging lessons and all in achieving learning outcomes.
It's a great tool for university and secondary students. I use it myself to improve my vocabulary skills. This site was created by an English teacher, and according to him "This site makes reading less scary, making it more likely that people will read more."
Try to copy a complex text or just a paragraph from some American or English newspaper or magazines and paste it to Rewordify website to see how it simplifies certain words and expressions.
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