Online Exercise Makers from CLA Language Center

These little tools have been around for quite a while, but I have to admit that I had forgotten about them until a couple days ago, when a colleague asked me if there was a better way to make a matching exercise for her online training (the one in the CMS wasn't very pretty). I snooped around my bookmarks and rediscovered these online exercise makers from the CLA Language Center at the University of Minnesota.

There are only three tools, and they have their limitations, but they are FREE, and they are easy to use. The first allows you to make "glossed" web pages - so learners can click on a hyperlinked word to see information about it (whatever extra information you have provided in the 'gloss'), the second allows you to create self-check learning activities (you can embed audio or video, which is nice), and the third to create drag-and-drop matching exercises (including matching to an image).

Once you've made your exercises, you save them as .html files, then share the files with learners through a website or course management system. If you're teaching online, they can make a nice supplement to other online teaching tools.

Check them out at: http://languagecenter.cla.umn.edu/index.php?page=makers.

In the News... Online Citizenship Study

Earlier this week a colleague and I were interviewed by Katherine Glover of MinnPost.com for an article about our efforts to create free online self-study resources for immigrants preparing for U.S. citizenship.

You can check out her story here: Minnesota Literacy Council piloting software to help immigrants with citizenship test.

The new self-study resources are under development as part of the Learner Web (LW) project, of which the St. Paul Community Literacy Consortium is a regional partner. While the Learner Web materials will not be available except to LW partners for the duration of the original 3-year demonstration project, once that project is complete, the goal is to have LW released as open-source learning management software, something akin to Moodle, but focused on delivering self-access, self-paced learner-directed resources rather than semester-based, instructor-led online courses.

But Moodle and Learner Web shouldn't really be seen as competitors: the two systems in our case work together in partnership. Using our existing Moodle site we were able to create lessons and practice exercises and host our own content. That content can be seen at: http://online.themlc.org/ -- click on "Study for the U.S. Citizenship Test". Those lessons are then linked into Learner Web, which is a system for organizing existing resources (such as online courses, websites, books, community organizations, etc.) around the steps a learner needs to take to achieve a goal.

Anyone is free to browse through the Moodle course, which is open to guest users. While you're there, you might want to check out our other online training courses for adult educators and volunteers.