BIG changes to Flashcards with new "Clue" option :0)

Until now, the Flashcards activity has looked like this:

The prompt is presented along with a question mark. The student tries to say the correct answer. They click the question mark and the correct answer is revealed. They then click the green tick if they got it right or the red cross if they got it wrong. (And if they got it wrong, that question was repeated again later.)

Well, most of that is exactly as it was before. The big difference is the option to set a different clue instead of just a question mark. (See the image at the top of the page which shows the option box.) So what you end up with now is all of the following ways of viewing Flashcards (as well as the default question mark option, which is still there):

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New text-to-speech "sections" option added to many text activities.

The Tile and Horizontal activities, Paragraph, 1in3, 1in4, 1in5, Million and Next word now have a new feature: TTS sections.

If you have enabled TTS for your resource, you should see TTS sections as one of the TTS options for these activities. If you select TTS sections, a "Speak" button appears with a dropdown box for each sentence in the text. (See above). Click "Speak" to hear the current section.

See the embedded Tile 3x4 activity below as an example:

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TTS for spelling activities, with meaning reinforced by L1

Add text-to-speech to your Match activities to create audio-based spelling activities where the meaning is reinforced by displaying the L1 as a prompt.

To do this:

  1. Make a Match activity with the items listed as L1>L2
  2. Add a TTS voice to the right match (L2)
  3. Use one of the "Fill in the letters" Match activities, with TTS on.

See the embedded example below:

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TTS (text-to-speech) added to Space (Separate the words)

We've now added text-to-speech (TTS) to the Space activity ("Separate the words").

If your resource has text-to-speech enabled, turn on TTS using the selector at the bottom of the screen, and click "speak" to speak the text one sentence at a time. Use the number selector to jump to a different part of the text. (After finishing speaking a sentence, the number selector jumps to the next sentence automatically, so you just need to keep clicking the "speak" button.)

Here's an embedded example for you:

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Things to consider when making a textivate sequence...

Please note that this post was written before the arrival of individual student passwords on textivate. These now make it possible for students to complete a sequence in multiple sessions on multiple devices. With this in mind, many of the considerations regarding time available, devices available etc are no longer so important. That said, many of the points below address other important issues related to sequences, so it is still definitely worth a read.

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