iDea 1: Addendum - Quizlet Diagrams

What I did on my snow day

Thanks to some unexpected snow days here in Scotland, a planned Quizlet session in the school had to be cancelled. (You can read my thoughts on Quizlet elsewhere: iDea - Quizlet.)

Since we were unable to meet, I recorded a short video on Quizlet Diagrams. I show a few examples:

• Chemistry - The Periodic Table of the Elements
• Geography - Plate Boundaries
• French - French Vocabulary

I also give a give a quick demonstration of how pupils can use diagrams and then a longer demonstration of how to create a Quizlet diagram.

Quizlet was a really useful tool even before diagram support was added. The addition of diagrams brings a whole new dimension of usefulness!

Useful? Interesting? Let me know what you think.

Creating Online Questionnaires

There are some great tools that help you create and process questionnaires. SurveyMonkey is probably the most comprehensive tool I have used but some of the more useful features (particularly, export to Excel) are not available for free. Also, it is probably over-powered for the majority of tasks I want complete. For example, there are a number of occasions where students want to collect data (e.g. 6th Year projects) and for them, I generally recommend Google Forms or Microsoft Forms.

There is not a lot to choose between Google and Microsoft for small-scale, pupil created questionnaires. Both provide similar tools, similar summaries of responses and similar levels of technical ability (minimal!) are required to create and process questionnaires. But creating an effective and useful questionnaire requires more than technical skills.

Often I will recommend pupils include questions that invite a response on a rating scale ranging from "Strongly agree" to Strongly disagree" (or similar). Recently, I was sent a form for comment where a series of rating questions were asked with a multiple choice format rather than a grid (see example below).

Multiple choice format:

1. Chips are better than mashed potatoes.
   A) Strongly agree.
   B) Agree.
   C) Disagree.
   D) Strongly disagree.
2. Muppets are better than puppies.
   A) Strongly agree.
   B) Agree.
   C) Disagree.
   D) Strongly disagree.
3. Marmite is the best thing since sliced bread.
   A) Strongly agree.
   B) Agree.
   C) Disagree.
   D) Strongly disagree.

Grid format:

	Strongly agree	Agree	Disagree	Strongly disagree
1. Chips are better than mashed potatoes.	O	O	O	O
2. Muppets are better than puppies.	O	O	O	O
3. Marmite is the best thing since sliced bread.	O	O	O	O

I asked why a grid had not been used and the student expressed surprised that it was an option. The sample questionnaire had been created in Microsoft Forms, so I made this video to show it could be done. I thought others might find it useful.