Headmaster's Speech on the Online Thanksgiving Quiz Competition

Dear teachers and students,

Good afternoon! Today I have important news to announce that our school will hold an innovative Thanksgiving quiz competition this month.

Nearly four hundred years ago, our forefathers explored to this land and lived on it after experiencing unimaginable frustrations as well as hardships. Because of their great efforts, life gets better and better. It is the history and culture that we should never forget. Therefore, to sustain our forefathers' tradition and bring you pleasure before the Thanksgiving holiday, our school will hold this Thanksgiving quiz competition.

This year the competition is based on an advanced way - the online quiz, which means that the competition can be held within flexible time, with more contestants and more pleasure, but less pressure. Next, please allow me to give you some detailed instruction.

About the time and place: because we hold this competition by the means of making an online quiz, you can do the quiz on our school's Website anytime from October 18th to 20th. This online quiz system allows hundreds of you to do the competition when you have time. It will save you out of the dilemma between your academic work and the competition. Compared with the traditional round-after-round quiz competition, it will cost much less time to do an online quiz.

Then, about some instruction of the quiz's content: this online Thanksgiving quiz competition will check your knowledge from various dimensions. You will be tested on Thanksgiving's history, custom, and so on. There will be 8 question types including true/false, multiple choice, sequence, click map, etc. Also some multimedia question will appear, such as the question with audio, Flash movie as well as video embedded. Besides, every contestant will get the randomized questions to avoid cheating.

Finally, this is a competition with cool prizes for top 50 winners with 5 the first award, 15 second award, and 30 third award. As for the score, you can know it immediately. Because it is a self-grading quiz, you can see your score once you finish the testing. Teachers will get all your results through the Quiz Management System. The more amazing point is that the results can be ranked by the scores and top 50 winners can be picked up shortly. It is quite efficient, isn't it? The exact name list of the winners will be declared on the website soon after the quiz competition.

Thanksgiving is a time when we can reflect upon this rich, Christian heritage, but it's a pity that many of us are often ignorant of our country's origins, so this Thanksgiving quiz competition based on online quiz would come as a booster for you to maintain the knowledge about this nation's foundations. I hope that you will not only take this quiz competition but also share the Thanksgiving quiz with others. I also hope that you will be encouraged to study more about the historical and traditional foundations of this country.

Dear students, welcome to the competition based on the online Thanksgiving quiz. Wish you good luck!
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Grading Online Quizzes Created by Google Docs Automatically

For teachers, grading quiz results for paper test manually is definitely a hard job. Google Docs provides a good way for teachers to create online quizzes or surveys for teaching and learning, you can view the posts about creating quizzes and sharing quizzes with Google Docs. But teachers, do you know how to grade the quizzes automatically? If you don't know, this tutorial about how to grade the quizzes automatically will give you the details.

...full post
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Google Docs for Online Classroom: Sharing Quizzes to Inviting Students to Take the Quiz

At the last post about creating online quizzes with Google Docs, I showed you the steps to create online quizzes with Google Docs. In this post, I will guide you to share the quizzes you created and then invite others to take quizzes.

You can share the quiz spreadsheet with others or publish it. About sharing quiz spreadsheet online to let other take the quiz, there are 2 ways: embed the quizzes to blogs or websites, and Email others the quizzes.

You can get more information about how to share quizzes created by Google Docs, please click the link and do it for you
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Creating Online Quizzzes with Google Docs for Free

Google Docs is a favorite thing for us teachers. It is a totally free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and form application. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users, especially for teachers using it in online classroom. In addition to being a stellar way to write, store and manage your documents and slideshows, it is also a fantastically useful way to create online quizzes for online assessment.

Here are the step-by-step illustrations about creating an online quiz with Google Docs.

Step 1. Log in to Google Docs

To get started, log in at Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/) with Gmail account. If you don't have a Gmail account, come out from that rock you live under, boot up the computer, and get yourself a Gmail account.

...

Step 2. Start creating quiz

Once you're logged in, click "New", and then "Form".

To view more details, please go and view how to create online quizzes with Google Docs for free.

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12 Free Online Quiz Creators for Teachers to Create Online Quizzes

Here is a collection of 12 free online quiz creation tools for teachers to create quizzes for free. These 12 free quiz creators will help teachers make quizzes for teaching online for free, such as ProProfs, Classmaker, QuizCenter
and other 9 tools.

You can get more free tools at:12 Free Online Quiz Makers to Create Online Quizzes

Do you know of any other free online quiz makers that can be helpful? Please add your favorites in the comments.

...full post
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Some Useful Tips For Web Conference Training

Companies and organizations today use web conferencing in many aspects of their organizations-to conduct meetings, collaborate on projects, demonstrate products and services, and more. Learning to use web conferencing technology is pretty easy, but there is a lot more to training via web conference than just putting on a headset, dialing up an audio-conferencing bridge, and logging onto the application.
This article offers some helpful tips specifically targeted to web conference training:...

Even though you are using web conferencing to deliver training, the training content itself must still be planned and crafted just as carefully as if it were for a traditional classroom session or e-Learning course.

When developing PowerPoint slides to use in web conference training follow these guidelines:

• Simplify content.
  
• Use a large, bold, simple font like Arial.


• Have no more than 6 to 8 lines of text per page (fewer are better).


• Make no more than 4 to 5 training points per page (fewer are better).


• Use plain backgrounds that contrast well with the text without clashing.


• If possible, avoid complex animations (i.e. no spinning text, etc.).

Establish one person as the point of contact, (POC) for communicating with their group of attendees. Provide all information to this one person and let them communicate it to their own people.

Provide an outline of objectives for attendees prior to the conference.

Test all aspects of your presentation ahead of time. (Enlist the help of an online facilitator or a student for these tests.):

• Check your phone lines and headset, and replace weak batteries with full new sets.


• Though most web conference technologies automatically run a short program to install and test your machine, open your own test conference and run your presentation. Confirm that your machine won’t freeze up because of low PC memory or connection speed.


• Check any online exercises, tests, or polling questions you have planned for the session.


• Run through the presentation twice, to both check its timing and leave ample time for questions and answers.

If student answers are being stored in a database or a learning management system (LMS), determine how they will be scored, saved, and accessed later.

Are you using an electronic whiteboard? Check to see how its images will be stored. Will your students need them later? How can they access this material? Is it something you can post in a reference area on your training LMS?

If you are going to demonstrate with examples, try to keep them relevant to the audience. It’s easier for people to learn when material is presented through examples that make sense to them.

Check how much background noise your system produces. Stage the actual conference in a quiet place, where you can control any heating or air conditioning noise. Be careful about rustling papers. And never eat anything or chew gum during the conference.

Will a host introduce you or will you have a guest presenter during the web conference? If so, you’ll need to run through all of things discussed in item 5 with the other participant.

Do you or your guest tend to run long? If so, you may want to use cue cards. Or use a second computer (or laptop) as a time clock, to signal when someone is running long.

Limit each session to 60 – 90 minutes. Longer sessions are not productive.

Limit your audience. When possible, keep the number of people attending small. (No more than six people are best.)

You might want to ask your technical people to set up a dual monitor configuration on your PC (or laptops) for you, so that your presentation appears on one display (as others are seeing it), while your delivery screens and notes appear on the other.

If appropriate, check time zones before scheduling the web conference. You’d be amazed how often even experienced trainers forget to do this.and end up opening a conference at the wrong time.

Related to item 15, check in advance to make sure that dates and times appear correctly in all meeting listings and notification messages. Confirm that the dates and times you define are communicated consistently to all participants.

Check ahead of time that all online links through which students can join the web conference will work… whether they are delivered to learners in an LMS message, via email, or on a web page.

If any learners are located in other organizations, try a test connect into their facilities well before the actual conference. Though rare, their IT departments may need to change some firewall settings before you’ll be able to communicate in.

Have more than one Web Conference option ready to use. Then, if some participants can’t connect, you can create a new conference on the spot, with different conference tools.

Generally, you do not want people to join a web conference until it is actually open for business. Depending on the system you use, you may be able to enforce this with a student display that says: "Cannot join until…"

Before starting, ask your POC if everyone is present and if it’s OK to begin.

During the actual conference, check in periodically by asking questions of the attendees. For example: "Does that make sense. Are there any questions so far? Can you think if an example where you might use this __________." This helps to ensure the attendees are attentive, and to see if they have any questions. Silence is a sign that the information is not being understood.

Try to stay "on course" but allow for flexibility. Often questions asked will take you to another topic area and may require more explanation than allowed in the allotted time. Try to answer all questions and offer to follow up with more information offline, or in another conference, when time is limited.

When you get close to the end, if you feel like you might run over or need a few extra minutes to finish up, stop and check with all participants. Be considerate of others’ schedules.

Provide training exercises on the topics discussed.

Plan ahead for how you will close the session. Thank everyone for their time and attention, leave time for any closing comments or information, discuss next steps (if any), and review how you can be contacted (if needed).

Follow up with your learners after their web-conference training. This could be by email or perhaps even through a test to gauge their understanding of the material.

Keep a log of all training and notes. It can help improve your future training.

Originated by Mary Polley-Berte :http://elearningweekly.wordpress.com

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Developing an Online Course in Moodle as Quickly as Possible

I had a reader send me a question about how to estimate the time it will take to develop a course in Moodle. I'd like to share her question and my answer with you. As always, your comments and experiences are welcome.

Her Question:
I am just about to embark on my masters dissertation project, and am looking a web-based tutorials for teaching. At the moment I’m considering putting together a tutorial as part of the project using moodle (I have copies of your books in front of me now).One question I cannot seem to find an answer to, is realistically how long would it take for me to construct something like this? I have seen reports stating that construction of online courses can take up to 18 months, but I think these were from scratch as opposed to using a software programme such as moodle. I am fairly Internet literate, and have created basic webpages before, but have never done anything like construct my own online course.I am studying via distance learning and also have a full-time job. I have between now and June/July to work on my project (including analysis and user-testing, etc) – do you think this is something which I can realistically achieve in this kind of time frame? ....

My Answer:
In my experience, the old methods of determining how long it takes to develop courseware were never very accurate. With the variety of tools available to us today, the many different situations, and the many different expectations from learners and stakeholders, those old recommendations are even more inaccurate.
I no longer ask, "How long will this take me to develop?" Instead I ask, "How long before the client needs it?" And then I determine what I can do between now and then. It sounds to me like you have a few hours a week to spend on developing an online course, between now and June. That's not much time. So instead of dwelling upon how long it will take, let's talk about how to maximize your output in the time that you do have.

First, try to get out of installing Moodle yourself. If you can use an outside hosting service, find one that has a one-click install for Moodle. If you must use your organization's web server, try to get the web admin to install it for you. When Moodle installs without trouble, the installation goes quickly. When it gives trouble, you can spend hours tracking down the problem. If you pay a few dollars a month for a hosting service that will install Moodle for you, I advise it.

Second, resolve to stay within Moodle's built-in capabilities. Some of the add-on modules add great functionality. But for a project working against time constaints, I advise you stick with Moodle's built-in functionality and not get bogged down in trying to get add-ons to work.

Third, make as much use of existing material as possible. As a librarian, I'm sure you can locate web pages that you can use as course material. I think there's nothing wrong with a course whose learning material consists entirely of links to external web pages, video, and audio. For example, if I was teaching a course on public speaking, I might link to a funny Youtube video of public speaking bloopers, tips from Toastmasters, and famous speeches. Creating your own multimedia takes especially long, so I would search Creative Commons for media I could use in my course.

Fourth, I would try to use Moodle's built-in Web page editor (Web page Resource) to write a short description of each resource that I link to, and what I want the students to pay attention to while viewing it, and what I'd like them to get out of it. To ensure that they read this before going to the resource, I would put the link to the resource on this web page instead of on the course's home page. Then, the students would need to go through the web page that I write before clicking through to the external web page/video/audio.

Fifth, I would follow up each reading/viewing/listening resource with an activity created in Moodle. For example, I might ask the students to:
contribute to an online discussion, and to rate other students' postings in that forum. (Forum activity)
take a short quiz on the material (Quiz module)
write a summary of the material and upload it (Assignment activity)
record a snippet of speech and upload it (Assignment or Workshop activities).

Sixth, I would use outside services for things that Moodle doesn't handle, or that it handles only with plug-ins. For example, after the students have completed viewing the resources and doing the follow-up activities, just before an exam, I might schedule a summary lecture with WebEx or GoToMeeting. The lecture could include a slide show of the material that will be on the final exam, whiteboarding, and chat. If possible, I would record the session and offer it to the students as a download.

Seventh, I would offer an online exam open only at a given time, to ensure that students don't take the exam and pass along the answers.

That would be my model for rapid development of an online course. And if I could, I would choose a topic for that course based upon the amount of good material freely available online.

Originated by William Rice:http://williamriceinc.blogspot.com/

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How to convert PowerPoint to Flash with Adobe Flash CS4

"Convert PowerPoint to Flash" has been the hot topic on Internet. Put this phrase into Google or Bing, you can easily get a huge number of web links there. Comparing with PowerPoint, Flash has more advantages for circulating presentation online or offline. Flash can be played directly on every computer and Internet, while PowerPoint has many limitations; Flash can only be played and hardly to be edited by others; the size of the converted Flash presentation can be reduced to almost 80%.

So we know "Convert PowerPoint to Flash" is a trend, but how to do that? Should you we do it with PowerPoint? So far Microsoft hasn't added this function in it. How about doing it with Adobe Flash? If you have the time and if you are familiar with Adobe Flash – then it can be one of your choices! Today let's see how to convert PowerPoint to Flash with Adobe Flash
CS4.

....

First, save the PowerPoint presentation as WMF files, it applies to PowerPoint 2007.

1. Open your presentation in PowerPoint, click the Office button-> Save As-> Other Formats, then Save As dialog box appears, choose Windows Metafile (*.WMF) in the Save as type drop-down list, and click Save.

Notes: WMF is a vector format, and Flash accepts all vector formats. These WMF files can be resized without losing their resolution.

2. A message window appears asking if you want to export every slide or just the current slide, click the Every Slide button. Then another massage window states the folder where the WMF slides have been saved.

Secondly, import these WMF slides to Adobe Flash CS4.

1. Open Adobe Flash CS4, create a new Flash document. Please select Action Script 2.0.

2. Now choose File-> Import-> Import to Stage.

3. Then the Import dialog box appears; select the folder where the WMF files were saved, and click the first file. Click Open.

4. There will be a message asking if you want to import the entire sequence, click Yes.

5. Then the files are imported to Adobe Flash CS4, go to File-> save-> save as the Flash (.FLA) file.

6. Go to Modify -> Ungroup.

Notes: The ungroup option converts all PowerPoint slide objects as individual components in Flash that can be animated using native Flash options.

Thirdly, export the Flash file as an SWF file from Adobe Flash CS4.

Notes: Before exporting the Flash FLA file to a SWF file, make sure that the WMF file dimension and the Flash movies dimensions are the same.

1. Click on any of the imported images, then click Properties panel, you can see the dimension of this image.

2. Click the Modify -> Document, then Document Properties dialog box appears; change the dimensions to match those of the imported WMF files, and at the same time do remember change the Frame rate to .25 fps. Then click OK.

3. From the File menu, choose Export-> Export Movie.

4. Choose the output folder, and then click OK to export.

Then you can get the SWF files, the PowerPoint presentation is converted to Flash.

Pay Attention:

In this way you can only convert the whole presentation to the static images or bitmaps, all
settings of timing, transition and animation cannot be saved. If the presentation contain some multi-media elements, such as music or video, it is obvious that all of them will become just static images or disappeared.

If you think this tutorial is so complicate and verbose that you don’t spend time on it, and also want to
prevent dynamic design and multi-media elements in your presentation from being converted to static/bitmap pictures, you can try some professional converting softwares, such as Wondeshare PPT2Flash, Articulate Presenter etc, all of them can as well help you converting PowerPoint to Flash with easier steps.

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Social Learning Resouces

I found a few valuable social learning resources. Take a look at these slideshows below for several perspectives and best practices for using social learning at your organization.
Defining Your Social Learning Strategy

Social Learning and Internal Communications

Harnessing the Power of Social Networks in Teaching and Learning

Social Learning Success Stories, Models, And Roles

Also, be sure to check out these books:
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate (Voices That Matter)


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How to Make a Quiz on Facebook

As a popular social-networking website, Facebook is a great platform to have a collabrative learning for doing cases and sharing knowledge, it is also a useful teaching tool. Howerver, "How do I make a quiz on Facebook? " is a popular question facebookers distributed, this article will guide you how to make a quiz on facebook....

Step 1 – Get the quiz app to make the quiz

Log in to your Facebook account, go to http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/apps/directory.php, then input "create quiz" in the search box, you will get more apps which could help you make quiz on facebook. Now, I will take Quiz Creator for example to show you how to create a quiz on facebook.

Step 2 – Get the quiz app to make the quiz

Click the Quiz Creator application. On the next page that appears, click the button Go To Application in the upper left corner. Another page will appear to ask you to allow the application to access your personal data. Click Allow. Finally, you’ll get to the page where you start creating the quiz.

Step 3 – Enter some basic info about your quiz

Enter your quiz name and a short description for your quiz. You also could set th quiz language and visibility to the quiz. You are allowed to upload a picture for the quiz to make your quiz more popular if you like. And then, click Next to advance to the quiz result setting page.

Step 4 –Enter quiz results for your quiz

Specify the result title and description for your quiz, then people can get the results at the end of the quiz. You also could follow the prompts to upload a picture to accompany each result.

Step 5 – Enter the questions for your quiz

Enter the questions for your quiz, and pair the answers with the desired result. After inputting all the questions, click Next.

Step 6 - Install the Developer App

On the pop-up new page, you will get a page with a giant button: Install the Developer App. Click it. Then, go back to the previous page, where there's another giant button: YES, I have the Developer App. Click that. You're going to need to follow a bunch of instructions to pop up a bunch of windows. Some of them will direct you to yet other windows. Just follow these instructions.

Step 7 – Invite friends to try your quiz

Congratulation. Your Quiz have successfully created and published, and please invite your friends to follow them.

Of course, there are many quiz apps on facebook could help you make quizzes. All the quiz apps have its cons and pros. Howerver, the quiz creation steps are similar with this. You could pick any of these apps to make simple quiz for you. If you want to make multimedia Flash quiz, you could choose some professional flash quiz makers, such as Wondershare QuizCreator, that will help you create interactive quiz with ease.

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5 Effective Ways to Create Online Quiz

Online quiz becomes more and more prevalent in the web 2.0 era. For bloggers or webmasters, quiz is an outstanding way for engaging readers and growing blog or Web site traffic. For trainers, online quiz is a good e-assessment authoring tool. For business men, an online quiz can also be used as a sales tool. Here are 5 ways to create quiz for online use.

1. Create quiz with desktop Flash quiz maker

Some Flash quiz makers supply an easy way to create professional Flash quiz in minutes. With them, you could create Flash-based quizzes with images, sounds, narrations and Flash animations with up to 10 question types. You also could set feedback to each questions and randomize questions and answers. Some quiz maker also supply free quiz result tracking system, like QuizCreator. Users could track all the quiz results with email or free Quiz Management System. You could view the quiz below which is created by QuizCreator.

2. Create Flash quiz with Adobe Flash

If you are sophisticated with Adobe Flash editing, you could use Adobe Flash to make quiz for you. Adobe Flash MX and above versions have quiz templates included, and it is designed to automatically track results and send them to a learning management system configured for your quiz. Here is a tutorial about how to create Create a Quiz with Free Quiz Template with Adobe Flash.

http://www.sameshow.com/quiz-creator/flash-quiz-adobe-flash.html?page=110

3. Create quiz with php Script or JavaScript

If you are familiar with php script or JavaScript and HTML code, you could choose HTML code and script to create online quiz. Here are some tutorials to help you createquiz for your Web site.

Create quiz with php script, please have a peek at:

http://www.trap17.com/index.php/php-quiz-script_t8729.html.

Create quiz with JavaScript, please have a peek at: http://www.spacefem.com/tutorials/typequiz.shtml.

4. Create quiz via free online quiz creation tool

There are numerous online quiz-building tools that can make quiz and grade less of a chore. Do a Google search for "make online quiz free", you will get many free online quiz tools.

ProProfs is a free program that is supported by ads, lots of ads. So it is a totally free online quiz program. It features 3 question types. It has many options that control the behavior of your quiz. You could add multimedia objects such as video and image to the quiz, this is rare to a free online quiz tool. Quibblo and Classmarker also have such features. However, ProProfs sounds the most powerful for a free quiz creation tool.

5. Create quiz with screen recorder

Some screen recorder has the feature of quiz creation. As far as I know, Adobe Captivate and Tech Smith allow user create Flash quiz with them. Take Captivate for example, it contains advanced quizzing functionality that makes it easy to create your own robust quizzes and assessments.

In summary, all these 5 ways could help you make quiz for online use. Which way works for you is depending on your use. For blogger, choose free online quiz creation tool is the best way, such way will generate the quiz code automatically, and the quiz code could be embedded to blogs. For webmasters, using HTML JavaScript or desktop quiz maker way will be perfect. You could make professional flash quiz to engage the visitors. For trainers, please choose the desktop quiz maker to create Flash quiz. On the one hand, you could engage the learners by adding multimedia objects to the quiz with desktop quiz maker. On the other hand, you could use quiz result tracking system to track learners' quiz results without hassles.

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Free Flash tool for Online Teaching - ClassTools.net

I found a very cool yet free teaching tool (Classtools.net) these days, it will be a good tool for teacher teaching online. Classtools.net allows everyone to create free educational games, activities and diagrams in a Flash! And then host them on your own blog, website or intranet! No signup, no passwords, no charge!

You may have such question: Why these resources on classtools.net free of charge? What does it rely on to operate well? Yes! The site is supported by Google Ads. So, there is no charge for creating resources with any of these templates. What's more, each template can be saved as a stand-alone HTML file or as a Widget that can be embedded into a blog or wiki.

Right now, there are 17 templates that are available for teachers to fill in the blanks and images
. You could go to http://classtools.net/samples/full_list/ to view more.

Classtools.net is a very useful teaching tool for teachers, you could try out it in your online classes.

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Liven up eLearning course to engage learners with funny quiz

Making good eLearning courses is a developing art. As a trainer, your goal is to make the training memorable. As you design the course, you must design not only the "what" (or content), but also the "how" (the delivery mechanisms). Integrating funny quiz (like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire") into eLearning course is an easy way to capture the attention of learners and make your course memorable. Learners will interact with key concepts for your course quickly.

A funny quiz can energize almost any content and produce powerful new understanding for your learners. Funny quiz promote learning – more than revive tension, it creates opportunities for the learners to "interact" with the quiz so as to demonstrate learners' understanding of the course. Many benefits would funny quiz holds to course:

• Funny quiz entertains learners with a purpose


• Funny quiz gives learners valuable feedback


• Funny quiz gives trainers feedback


• Funny quiz motivates learners


• Funny quiz accelerates learning process

So then, there comes into the question: how to integrate the right funny quiz into your course? Let's take a look at these following steps.

Step 1 - Identify your course objective.

What objective you want your course to achieve after training, please take careful consideration. Specifically, what skills and knowledge do you want your learners take from your course. Then think about it how the funny quiz will help the learners meet the course objective.

Step 2 - make course plan

After determining the objective, what you should do is making the lesson plan according to the course objective. Analyze and list the task you wish to cover in your course plan. Supposing you are going to explain the details about H1N1 flu in one course, you list would look something like this:

course objective for swine flu knowledge: learners will be able to master the details about H1N1 flu.

• List what is H1N1 flu.


• List the Signs and symptoms about H1N1 flu.


• Describe how to prevent H1N1 flu.

From this list you will develop a set of task that to achieve your course objective. The next step is crux to import funny quiz to your lesson and enhance your course.

Step 3 - choose the funny quiz for your lesson plan

The right funny quiz make a difference in motivate learners. Here are some criteria to select a right funny quiz:

• Corresponding with the major lesson objective


• Create an opportunity to practice skills


• Challenge the learners intellectually

So, follow the criteria to select the right funny quiz. This will do as a Catalyst to help learners master the major point of your course.

Step 4 - Create funny quiz for your course

After choosing the right funny quiz, the following step is creating the funny quiz with the questions you have prepared. Which quiz tool you should choose? Quiz in Flash format instead of plain text quiz would really attract learners' attention, especially for eLearning course. Luckily, some quiz tool could help you create great-looking flash quizzes in minutes without programming skills, such as QuizCreator.

Step 5 - place the funny quiz in your course

Where the funny quiz should be in your course is also important. Generally, placing a funny quiz at the beginning of your course is a good way to take learners into your course. This starter quiz can establish a comfortable environment for learner. Learners will quickly access to the role of the course. On the other hand, you could integrate some outstanding questions into the funny quiz, these questions will cause learners to seek the solution in the course consciously.

The end of the course is a prime time to place the funny quiz. You can add some questions corresponding to the starter funny quiz. This will help you test whether the learners acquire the knowledge or not. If they acquire it, you could advance to the next lesson, and learners will have the feeling of success and they want to learn more. If don't, you could direct the learners to review the course.

Design eLearning course and apply funny quizzes to your eLearning courses. Funny quizzes make your courses better and help you be more productive.

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My favorite eLearning tools

As you work online you become dependent on certain e-learning tools. Here's my favorite list of tools I've come to depend on. What about your favoriate tools?

Favorite Quiz Maker -QuizCreator

QuizCreator is a powerful assessment tool that you can create Flash online exam, quiz, test and survey. It combines interactivity and multimedia to engage learners through the learning process and offers flexible results tracking and score reporting.

Favorite courseware tool -Articulate Presenter

Articulate lets me create high-impact Flash presentations and eLearning courses from PowerPoint with rich media. My course could run on any Web server, any LMS.

Favorite screen recorder - Camtasia studio

Camtasia is what I use for creating interactive content. It's a great tool to capture computer screen. The latest version is 6.0, I could add simple quiz to the content, I like it very much.

Favorite LMS - Moodle In my view, Moodle is changing the face of the e-learning industry. It is an open source product which has come of age. It is a simple and quick way to get a blog up and running. Simply the best virtual learning environment and no licence fees!

Favorite virtual classroom tool - Dimdim

I have been playing with DimDim these days, and I am impressed with the open source virtual classroom tool. Though it does not yet have the full features of many of the commercial alternatives it allows you to run virtual classrooms and the voice over IP is better than most I have used.

Favorite blog tool - Wordpress
I use both the Blogger and WordPress platforms. I like Wordpress, and I also host my blog on it, which is still a primary tool for my personal learning even when I'm not posting as regularly. I will update regularly in the future. :-)

Favorite RSS tool - iGoogle

iGoogle lets me Keep pace with information happening everywhere. It is my first choice remains RSS feeds. My RSS feeds are set up using iGoogle – my Google home page but you can use any number of readers (Feeddemo and so on). I love it because I can set up RSS feeds for news and issues I want to track.

Favorite social bookmarking - delicious

It is the tool I use to collect all the interesting sites I find through Google Reader and elsewhere. Being able to highlight, keep cached copies of the pages, and post to my blog automatically makes it much more valuable for me than just bookmarking.

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How to Make a Flash Quiz Yourself

Many of us would want to make a quiz for our website or blog. Especially for many bloggers, add quiz to blog is a nice way to attract more visitors to blog. For teachers, a quiz is good assessment tool to test students' knowledge of learned course. So then, do you know how to make a quiz? You might and you might not, answer truthfully and find out. If not, you could continue to read this tutorial to learn how to make it.

### Step 1 - Prepare questions
First, think about which topic you make the quiz for. Make a list of all questions you want to include in this Flash quiz. Be creative. Challenge others with good questions. Are you ready to make a quiz for your challenging questions? Then, go to the next
step.


### Step 2 - Choose the right way to make a quiz
Many ways could help you do this work. If you only want to make a simple quiz without multimedia objects or complex question type, you could choose some free online service to make a quiz, such as http://www.quizyourfriends.com/.

If you want to make a quiz with multimedia objects, some Flash quiz maker could do this work, it is the easiest yet quickest way to make a multimedia quiz. Here are the following steps to make a quiz with QuizCreator.

Download and install QuizCreator

Add prepared questions to quiz
You could add as much as 9 question types (True/False, Multiple Choice, Multiple Select, Fill the Blank, Matching, Sequence, Click Map, Short Essay
and Word Bank ) with QuizCreator.

Customize Flash quiz

Add image, Screenshots, Flash, and music to enrich your quiz.




Besides, you also could make intro page for the whole quiz, set time limit, and customize feedback for each questions.

Publish the quiz

Click the publish button, you could publish your quiz to webpage, Word, Excel or LMS, just do it according to your needs. What's more, you also could track the quiz results via E-mail, Web database, and free online reporting system - QMS.

### Step 3 - Host your quiz online
Now, only one thing left is putting your quiz on website or blog, tell your friends or students to take the quiz you make and view the quiz results.

That's it! Simple as can be, right? Right. So now you know how to make a Flash quiz by yourself, what the hell are you waiting for? Get started to make a quiz for you with QuizCreator!

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Top 6 Quiz Makers - Choose The Right One For You

There are tons of quiz makers on the market, search it on Google, you will find more. Most of them are online quiz makers, now I choose some popular desktop quiz makers, and list some useful data for each quiz makers. Hope this information could give you some direction to when choose the right quiz maker to create Flash quiz....

Wondershare QuizCreator

Wondershare QuizCreator is a robust solution designed for teachers, testers, researchers and evaluators to create flash-baesd quizzes, online surveys and web assessments. This is one of the easy yet effective ways to access knowledge and get valuable opinions.

Price: $129.95
Question Type: 9 question types. Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Word Bank, Hot spot, and Short Essay.
Hot features:
Integrate images, Flash and audio into the quiz.
Randomize questions and set Time Limit.
Track quiz results free with online quiz results tracking system.
7 major math and science symbols supported.
Publish for Flash, Word, Excel, QMS, CD and SCORM packages.
Recommended index: 5 Stars

Question Writer

Question Writer is a quiz authoring tool for Microsoft Windows. It is used for authoring questions and compiling them into quizzes in the Flash file format.
Price: Std: $195, Pro: $395.
Question Type: 8 question types. Multiple Choice, Multiple Response, Matching, Sequencing, Fill in the Blank, Essay, True/False, and Partial Credit.
Hot features:
Multiple languages supported.
20 quiz themes.
Randomize questions and set time limit.
Integrate images, Flash and audio into the quiz.
Publish for Flash and SCORM packages.
Recommend index: 4 Stars

Articulate QuizMaker

Articulate Quizmaker gives you unprecedented power and freedom in a new streamlined interface. Whether you're a new or seasoned quiz creator, you'll easily create professional, custom Flash quizzes and surveys.
Price: $699.95
Question Type: 8. Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Hot spot, and Word Bank.
Hot features:
PowerPoint-like interface.
Integrate images, Flash and audio into the quiz.
Randomize questions and set Time Limit.
Hassle-free question pooling.
Professional, customizable themes.
Publish for Flash, Word, Articulate Online, CD and SCORM packages.
Recommend index: 5 Stars

Tanida Quiz Builder

Quiz Builder provides an easy-to-use interface to design the quiz and does not require any Flash or programming knowledge. You can customize several aspects of the quiz appearance, add images to decorate the questions and preview the quiz at any time.
Price: $99
Question Type: 8 question types. Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Word Bank, and Hot spot.
Hot features:
Randomize questions and set time limit.
Publish for Flash, Word, and CD.
Recommend index: 3 Stars

Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is an electronic learning tool which can be used to author software demonstrations, software simulations, and randomized quizzes in .swf format. It contains advanced quizzing functionality that makes it easy to create your own robust quizzes and assessments.
Price: $799
Question Type: 6. Multiple choices, Short answer, Fill-in-the-blank, True/False, Matching, Hot spot, sequence
Hot features:
Capture and record screen activity and effortlessly synchronize audio and video.
Develop and deploy engaging computer simulations and skill assessments.
Rapidly develop soft-skills training with complex branching scenarios.
Create informal learning content such as podcasts and screencasts.
Recommend index: 5 Stars

ViewletQuiz

ViewletQuiz enables the most sophisticated, fun and interactive quiz or survey you could possibly imagine. With ViewletQuiz, you can truly create your own “style”. You have full control of the timing of objects and can have them appear and disappear as you like.
Price: $299
Question Type: Multiple choice, Multiple response, True/False, Fill-in-the-blank, Matching, Sequence, Hot spot, short answer, and Lickert.
Hot features:
Create Flash-based quiz and survey.
Randomize questions and set time limit.
Integrate images, Flash, and audio into the quiz.
Publish for Flash and SCORM packages.
Recommend index: 5 Stars

Frankly, I really like Articulate QuizMaker, the second is Wondershare QuizCreator. Adobe Captivate is definitely a good screen recorder, if you don't want the screen capture function, there is no need to choose this tool. However, for the point of price, I will choose QuizCreator, what is your choice? Take a look at these test makers and try these. Choose the right test maker for you.
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Two drawing tools you could use in your elearning courses

Tom Kuhlmann wrote a post about telling stories visually in e-learning courses rather than making them information heavy. He demos LectureScribe, a free tool for capturing whiteboard lectures. He notes that LectureScribe outputs to Flash so you can insert it into your e-learning course if the authoring tool you use supports that. Tom works for Articulate, a rapid e-learning development tool, so his demo uses that product. Do you have a situation where a whiteboard demo would make sense? If so, you might want to check it out.

And, speaking of drawing, Wesley Fryer notes that Google had added vector drawing capability to Google docs. From Google's blog

…create drawings using lines, free hand scribbles, text labels and a large
choice of shapes that you can move, resize, rotate and adjust. Group, order,
align and distribute and other features are available when you select objects
you’ve drawn. You can also customize a range of shape properties, from line
widths to fill color, and from arrowheads to font size, and much more. If you
change your mind, there is undo and redo. You can collaborate with a friend or
colleague on a drawing, or work alone, just as you can in Google Docs today.

Seems this also has some potential use for elearning. Looking at existing free tools you can use with your current e-learning authoring tool(s) is just one way to expand your options. (JC)

Originated from: http://www.brandon-hall.com/workplacelearningtoday/?p=4045
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Open Source LMS - 10 Alternatives to Moodle

When refer to Open Source Learning Management System, many people will think of Moodle. Well,there’s nothing wrong with Moodle, but it certainly isn’t the only open source LMS out there. There are 10 Open Source LMS alternatives to Moodle.

Because there is no licensing cost involved with open source solutions, its easy for organisations to just jump in and set up the first solution that comes along. There is however a cost to installation and support, either financial or time related. Anyone setting up an LMS has a responsibility to research and choose the solution that is right for the learners and the organisation.

As a starting point here are 10 open source alternatives to Moodle. These are deliberately brief descriptions, and I would encourage you to visit these sites and explore each solution in some detail.

Docebo In use in corporate and higher education settings. Offers support for a number of different learning models and is compatible with SCORM 1.2 and 2004. It offers interfaces to external systems such as video conferencing and HR systems.

eFront The base install is quite minimalist, but this is easily extended with modules available from the site. Commercial versions with additional features are also available.

Dokeos A very well featured LMS that also offers content authoring and video conferencing tools. Supports converting Office documents into Flash. Offers user synchronisation with HR management systems such as Oracle and SAP.

Claroline Aimed more at the educational than corporate arena, this system is based around specific pedagogical principles (as is Moodle). Supports SCORM content as well as a built in Wiki and other online content tools.

ATutor Actually an LCMS, ATutor also offers tools for the management of learning. The “A” stands for Accessible and it has excellent support for key accessibility standards as well as support for SCORM, IMS etc.

ILIAS Provides testing and assessment tools as well as collaboration tools such as chat and forums, and distribution technologies like RSS and podcasts.

OLAT A well featured system in its tenth year of development, but has quite steep server requirements.

Sakai Aimed at Universities, this project has a clear roadmap and has seem considerable development in the last few years. Backed by the Sakai Foundation which manages relationships with educational and commercial supporters.

.LRN Originally developed at MIT, .LRN claims to be the most widely adopted enterprise class open source LMS solution.

openelms Marketed specifically as a business solution, and claims a diverse customer base that ranges from Merrill Lynch to Queens Park Rangers football club.

Ganesha This LMS developed by Anema, has been around since 2001 and is in use in several large organisations. The site, and the LMS itself, are in French but it can be translated.

Originated from: http://barrysampson.com/2009/04/open-source-lms-10-alternatives-to-moodle/

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