What's new in Textivate?
Well, there's a new version for a start :)
It's called TextActivities, and it is essentially Textivate 2.0, but with so many changes from the original that we had no option but to launch it as a totally separate website.
Those familiar with Textivate will recognise in TextActivities many of the activities and pedagogical features of Textivate, but delivered in a completely different way, with a totally new interface, a completely different approach to classes, school management, resource creation, student logins and assignments, and hopefully a much more intuitive work flow.
While our hope is that current Textivate users will value the many improvements and will want to migrate to TextActivities, the original Textivate will remain in place (although it is unlikely to be developed further).
Subscribers to TextActivities can import their Textivate resources onto the new platform one by one, as and when needed, even after their Textivate subscription has expired.
See this post on the TextActivities blog for a comprehensive list of the differences between TextActivities and Textivate.
Read on for a list of previous Textivate updates...
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Sound effects added to activities
Some simple sound effects for keyboard and click interactions.
See this post for more details.
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Share with classes
New method of sharing any textivate link -- resource menu, activity, sequence or challenge -- directly with your classes.
See this post for more details.
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Group subscriptions: sharing resources with group members
Those with group subscriptions can now share public and shareable resources with one another.
See this post for more details.
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Textivate now served via https (secure log-in)
This has implications for those with locally saved resources (via the filing cabinet icon). The blog post provides a fix to retrieve lost locally stored resources.
See this post for more details.
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Create Challenges based on Textivate Plus resources
You can now add Textivate Plus resources to your Challenges, as well as any of your own Public or Shareable resources.
See this post for more details.
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Parameters for Challenges
You can now set up various parameters for the activities contained within a particular Challenge, such as autocheck, switched matching items, split by sentence, etc.
See this post for more details.
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Working with "chunks"
You can now specify multiple-word chunks to be treated as separate elements for some of the reconstruction activities.
See this post for more details.
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New "manage classes / students" feature
Teachers can now set up classes of students and assign them individual passwords. This impacts primarily on how sequence data is submitted and allows teachers to see records of unfinished sequences.
See this post for more details.
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New optional text activity: Trapdoor
A new activity which teachers can choose to add to their text resources.
See this post for more details.
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Set and enforce team names for challenges
This new feature allows teachers specify team names which their students must select before they start on a challenge.
See this post for more details.
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New search functionality (plus likes and views)
New search resource type and search order options, likes and views to be counted, increased limit of recently viewed and favourite resources.
See this post for more details.
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Exclude activities from the menu
This new feature is particularly useful for Challenges. It allows teachers to remove particular activities from the menu screen to limit the range of activities available, which they may wish to do for a number of reasons.
See this post for more details.
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Copy name from scoreboard - for Challenges
This new feature is good for Team Challenges. Students can now select a scoreboard name from those already on the scoreboard, to join a particular team.
See this post for more details.
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New menu screen
We've tried to make the menu screen look less crowded by adding a menu bar to the left, rather than the square "textivity" buttons.
See this post for more details.
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New section for subscribers: Textivate Plus
A work in progress. This section of the site will continue to grow as we add more.
See this post for more details.
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BIG changes to Flashcards with new "Clue" option
A new Clue option which allows students to view Flashcards in a variety of ways.
See this post for more details.
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Text-to-speech "Sections" added to many text activities
A new TTS option which allows students to listen to the text one sentence at a time.
See this post for more details.
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Text-to-speech now added to Space ("Separate the words")
Space was one of the few activities on textivate that didn't have TTS enabled, mainly because we couldn't work out where to put the speech buttons :/
We've added it now :)
See this post for more details.
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SWITCH feature on many MATCH screens
Switch allows you to switch the order of the matching items for many of the Match activities in textivate.
See this post for more details.
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Text-to-Speech (TTS)
Make your textivities talk with Text-to-Speech !
See this post for more details.
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New text activity: "Speed Read"
A new activity which aims to get students reading a text quickly and repeatedly. Great for memorizing a text.
See this post for more details.
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Improvements to "Flashcards"
You can now flip the flashcards; random / original order and flipping can be specified in sequences and url links and embed codes.
See this post for more details.
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Improvements to "Space" (Separate the words)
You can now specify how many words are affected / joined up.
See this post for more details.
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3 new activities based on '3 in a row'
- A text activity where students have to choose from 4 options each time to fill random gaps in the text.
- As above, but based on user-defined gaps. The gaps used are those specified for the user-defined gapfill. This activity is only available if the user-defined gapfill is also available (and requires a minimum of 5 user-defined gaps).
- A match activity, where students have to choose the correct match from (up to) 8 options.
See this post for more details about how the 3 in a row game works, plus some embedded sample activities.
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3 new activities based on Football (Soccer)
- A text activity where students have to choose from 4 options each time to fill random gaps in the text.
- As above, but based on user-defined gaps. The gaps used are those specified for the user-defined gapfill. This activity is only available if the user-defined gapfill is also available (and requires a minimum of 5 user-defined gaps).
- A match activity, where students have to choose the correct match from (up to) 8 options.
See this post for more details about how the football game works, plus some embedded sample activities.
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New text activity: Word Invaders
A new text activity, similar to the other Invaders activity, where students click on the words missing from the text in the correct order.
See this post for more details.
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New text-reconstruction activity: Jumbled Words
A new text activity where students put the words of the text in the correct order, one section at a time, until they have rebuilt the whole text.
See this post for more details.
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Increased list of available activities for non roman-script resources
We've added another 7 activities to the list of textivate activities that can be used with non roman-script resources.
See this post for more details.
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Division of texts by sentence v. word-count
We've added the option for re-construction activities (and worksheets) to split texts by sentences (line breaks and full stops) rather than simply by average word count.
See this post for more details.
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Drop-down boxes replace +/- tiles buttons
Changes made to several screens to improve navigation.
See this post for more details.
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Match Jumble
New Match activity: The words on the right-hand side of your matches are jumbled up. Students click the words in the correct order to rebuild the phrase.
See this post for more details.
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Challenges
A challenge is a time-limited competition based on one or more textivate resources, where students score points for completing activities and compete to get the top spot on the scoreboard. Can be used for class work, homework, etc.
See this post for more details.
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Tabs
We've added tabs to textivate to make it simpler, and so that users no longer need to type all of their bizarrely formatted text into a single textbox, taking care to put everything in the correct order. Users can now add their data via the first 4 tabs and textivate automatically combines it into a "Show all" tab, (which is the equivalent of the old textivate text box).
See this post for more details.
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Various tweaks related to uploading resources...
- Resource title text maximum size doubled to 60 characters.
- See how many resources you have stored on textivate via the My Account button (when logged in)
- Edit resource title, tags, info etc via the +i icon on the edit screen (for your own resources, when logged in).
- New edit / upload as new option when you click on the upload icon.
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Alphabetical word-cloud (sort of...) based on your text
You can now automatically generate an alphabetical list of all of the unique words contained in your text and add this as a parallel text for your resource.
See this post for more details.
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URL fine-tuning via the share box
Although we already had URL fine-tuning (see further down this list) this had to be done manually, and it was difficult to remember all the various options. We've now made it much quicker and easier to fine-tune activity URLs by adding this functionality to the share box.
See this post for more details.
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Printing improvements in Internet Explorer
Printing wasn't great in IE before... on some versions it was variable and on others it didn't really work at all. That's now fixed.
See this post for more details.
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Colour schemes
We've added a "palette" icon to the index page and menu screen, so users can change the background colour etc. You can also specify a colour scheme in your resource links.
See this post on colour schemes.
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Multiple-resource sequences
You can now create sequences based on activities from more than one textivate resource
See this post on multiple-resource sequences.
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User-defined gap-fill: prompts for gaps + red-herrings
When you create a user-defined gap-fill you can now add clues / prompts for when the activity is viewed without the word list and / or red-herrings for when the word list is shown. These changes add much more versatility to the user-defined gap-fill. These improvements affect worksheets too.
See the posts on clues / prompts and red herrings.
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Gap-fills: gap limit increased (plus a few other improvements)
Gap-fills can now have up to 26 gaps. All gaps are numbered. All words in the word list are lettered (A-Z). These improvements affect worksheets too.
See this posts with lots more information.
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Protected resources = scrambled urls
You can now click an option box to "protect" a textivate resource. If you protect a resource and upload it as shareable (or public - but shareable makes more sense), all activity and sequence urls are "scrambled" and students can't get access to the main text. Useful if you are using a sequence as an assessment or for homework.
See the posts on protected resources and sequences.
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You can specify wrong answers for Multi-Choice
For some of the actvities on the MATCH side (the 4 Multi Match activities plus Million) you can now add your own incorrect answers to add more of a challenge. Good for creating reading and listening comprehensions as well as multiple choice quizzes.
See the posts on adding wrong answers and reading comprehension.
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Run some MATCH activities with questions in specific order
We've added a feature that allows you to choose between random order (default) or original order for some of the actvities on the MATCH side. This makes it much easier to use match activities based on questions and answers along with parallel text, audio or video to create comprehension activities.
See the posts on random v original order and reading comprehension.
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Parallel text, video, audio, image for non-uploaded resources
We've changed the way that you can add additional text or media to a textivate resource and made it possible to add additional text or media to non-uploaded resources, resources created "on the fly" and resources stored in local storage.
See the posts on audio, parallel text, big image or video embedding for more details.
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Audio embedding
Add the ability to create resources based on an audio transcript -- ideal for a variety of listening and scaffolded dictation activities.
See this blog post.
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Parallel texts
Add a L1 translation, a response to a text, some vocab, notes etc, so that students have the option to view this additional text while they complete the interactive activities.
See this blog post.
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Big image along with textivities
Adds the facility to create resources based on an image: a response to an image, a description of the image content, etc.
See this blog post.
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Menu-screen glossing
Adds a clickable gloss feature to the menu screen for all Text+Match resources, meaning that students can read through the text and click on words to check their meaning.
See this blog post.
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Video embedding
Adds a whole new dimension to textivate -- the facility to create resources based on a video script (e.g. dictation), a response to a video, a description of the video content (e.g. movietalk), etc.
See this blog post.
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URL fine-tuning
These allow you to configure the page that students land on via a link you provide to a particular activity.
See this blog post.
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Sequences
Textivate sequences now mean that you can set learning homework, reading homework, assessments etc via textivate, AND record completion, AND access scores and time taken via the textivate gradebook.
See this blog post, which includes 3 video tutorials + links to further posts related to sequences.
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Multiple-word gaps
Facility to create multiple-word gaps for your user-defined gap-fill activity.
See this blog post (which includes a video).
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Maze match
New game added to the match-based suite of activities.
See this blog post.
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On-screen keyboard for text entry activities
What the title says... We added on-screen text entry options to make textivate easier to use with touch devices and interactive whiteboards.
See this blog post.
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Images
OK, this is not widely known, but you can add images to textivate match resources. (You just can't upload them -- they need to be already hosted elsewhere...).
See this blog post for more details.
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Worksheets
Many textivate screens now have a "Print worksheet" button, allowing users to print a range of worksheets based on their resource content.
See this blog post (which includes a couple of videos).
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Video tutorials
These are growing in number as we add all these extra features.
See this blog post.
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Text+Match in the same resource
We then added the facility to include a text and matching items in the same resource, providing over 50 activities from a single textivate resource.
See this blog post and this video.
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Match activities
In addition to the 20 or so text activities, we added the facility to create a similar number of vocab based / Q&A / definitions>keywords / matching activities.
See this blog post and this video.
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MySite resources
These allow the creator of a resource to limit its access, making it available only via a specific domain / web address.
See this blog post .
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User-defined gap-fill
We added the facility to create a user-defined gap-fill, in addition to the automatically generated random gap-fill.
See this blog post and this video.