Create online learning with 123ContactForm

123ContactForm may not sound like the kind of tool that would be of interest to educators, but as I discovered when they asked me to review their online form creation tool, they offer quite a range of features that can solve many of the problems we have as 21st century teachers.

We can use it to:

• Create surveys to do research and action research


• We can create interactive materials based around multimedia objects


• We can eve use it to sell our materials or services online and take payments

The tool itself is browser based and so doesn't require any downloading or installation and that in itself can save a lot of hassle if you work in an institution that has very restrictive practices regarding the installation of software.



To get started you just need to go to the site and register at: http://www.123contactform.com/education-forms.htm



Once you have registered you get access to the dashboard and this is where you can start creating your forms. You just need to click on 'Create New Form'.

You will then get a choice of different types of form to create. It's a good idea to click on 'Other Forms' this takes you to the online educator forms.   If you have a look at some of the templates and educator forms that have already been created it will give you some idea of what the platform can do. There is an Education section with some ready made templates in.

When you are ready to create your own educator forms, you could start by clicking on 'Blank Form'. Call your form 'My first activity' and then save it and look at the different types of interactions you can create.

You will see the basic interactions you can add to the page. Clicking on them will add the interaction type to the page.

Then when you click on the interaction type you can edit its features.

Some of the advanced interaction types are particularly interesting, especially the html feature which enables you to embed interactive media objects such as videos or digital books into your forms and then build interactive activities around them.

You can also add social buttons to enable users to share your activities through social media channels. 123ContactForm does also have a Facebook app so once your activities are complete you can post them directly into Facebook pages or groups for users to do from there.



This video shows you how to use all the main features of the forms.







Once you have created your activities they are saved in the 'My Forms' section of the site and you can go there to edit them. Here you can get the code to publish your educator forms into your bog website or CMS, or get a link to email out to students.

You can also check to see who has submitted answers to the questions and see the record of what answers have been given in the 'Reports' section. This is one of the best features of the site as it turns it into a form of LMS (learning management system) where you can collect and analyse students responses and generate graphs of the results.



The site also allow users to add and customise the theme of the forms, so if you want them to blend into your site or blog, then customising the look and feel of the forms is quite easy and you can even add your own logo.



This video shows you how to customise your form.







So how can we use this with EFL / ESL students?

• We can create action research forms and get detailed and anonymous feedback on our teaching


• We can create multimedia materials for learning or assessment and track our students responses. This is particularly useful if we a creating homework assignments and we need to assess these and know that our students have done them.


• We can create learning objects to embed into online courses that track and assess students' performance.


• We can make fun engaging quizzes based around images.

As ELT professionals

• We can use the forms to create surveys for research.


• We can start selling materials, self published books, or private online classes and collect payment in a safe and secure way.

What I like about 123ContactForm

• It's a very versatile platform and really does enable a lot more than the name suggests. In fact it's a pretty sound way to create online learning materials with a built in LMS.


• It's a great tool for freelancers who want to start making money online by selling their own products and services in a user friendly way.


• It runs in the browser and is pretty simple to use.


• It's easy to produce something that looks very professional.


• I've said it already, but the tracking capabilities are great.


• The company runs on a freemium model, so although it is a free service, there is also a business model there to support the site so it's less likely to suddenly disappear or fold.

What I'm not so sure about

• As I said the company runs on a freemium model, so many of the best features are the ones they charge for.


• On the free subscription you can create 5 forms and collect up to 100 students' responses each month which is probably enough for the individual teacher to use it with a class, but it would be nice to have a few more of the premium features available to the Free subscriber, such as the html embed to enable the use of video and multimedia in the activities.


• You have to be on the Platinum account to be able to enable payments and that costs $29.95 per month, which for a company or school is not much, but for a teacher / freelancer who wants to test the waters with selling their own products or services, it might seem like quite a big risk when they are just getting started, but you can cancel your subscription if things don't go well and 123ContactForm does offer a 30day money back guarantee. It's also worth mentioning that if you are a teacher or teacher trainer and you get in contact with the company, they are offering a 35% educational discount, so that can help to reduce the risk and the cost.

On the whole I think this is a really good product, particularly for a small school that wants to venture into online teaching or blended learning, then a platinum account at $29.95 per month is quite a small risk. For a teacher thinking of going freelance it might be a good option if you are confident that you can make enough through online sales to justify the monthly outlay. As a teacher working in class, then it's a nice way to get started with creating some online learning with a degree of interactivity, but it would be much more attractive if the html embed functionality came as part of the free subscription.



123ContactForm has plenty of potential for the online educator or anyone wanting to create blended learning, so it's well worth checking out, and when I get my book finished I may well be using it myself. I hope you find it useful too.



Related links:

• Learning technology news portal


• Web Tools for Learners


• Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak


• Survey Creation Tool for Students


• Create Quick Online Polls


• Create an ESL EFL Video Quiz


• Make your own chat room

Best

Nik Peachey

Online Teacher Development Works Best - 15 Reasons Why

I've started this article with quite a bold statement, but it's a conclusion that I have been coming too over the course of quite a few years now. I should really put this into context though, as most of the teacher training I do deals with pedagogical training for the use of technology and is most often delivered during intensive face to face sessions, usually with groups of teachers working in a computer lab. Though, having said that, I do still believe that many of the reasons I have listed below do also apply to other kinds of more 'mainstream' teacher development too, especially intensive courses.

So, here are my 15 reasons why I think developing your teaching online can be more effective.



Learn while you teach - This gives you the opportunity to try things out with your own classes working in your own environment with your own students. Often when we take a face to face intensive course we leave our familiar teaching environment and come back with lots of new ideas only to find that in our everyday reality many of them don’t work or create unforeseen problems that we don’t know how to deal with. Studying while we teach can give us the time to try out new ideas in our own work place, discover the obstacles and try to adapt them to our own context.



Non competitive - Face to face courses can often become quite competitive and tend to favour people who are more confident and extrovert and who like to shine. This can often lead to the quieter more reflective types being overshadowed and not having the opportunity to contribute what may well be valuable comment or ask the questions for which they need answers. The text based and asynchronous nature of online training makes it much easier for everyone to have their say and can lead to a much richer and more collaborative learning experience.



Work at your own computer - This sounds like a very strange advantage, but training with technology on your own computer can be a huge advantage. Contrary to popular belief, computers do tend to be unique. The way one computer is set up and how it responds and the kinds of problems you encounter can be very different from one computer to another. Nothing is ore frustrating than going on a course with a computer that is set up to make things easy for you and then returning to your own computer and finding that there are a whole different set of problems that you don’t know how to solve. Training to use technology with your students needs to include training to trouble shoot the problems that you may have with your computer and learning how to overcome these and set your own computer up to run effectively in your own working environment.



Experiential learning - The best way to learn about technology
and online learning is to experience it for yourself. Being part of an
online course gives you first hand experience of being an online learner
and helps you to understand some of the challenges and obstacles your
students will face when they use technology to study online.



Develop digital literacies - Even if you aren’t doing an online course which is technology specific, you should still be able to pick up a few new techniques and develop some of your digital literacies by studying online. Again, a good online course will have some element of digital literacy and study skills development built in. This should go some way towards helping you understand how your students are learning in the real world and the kinds of study skills they need to develop.


Digital networking literacies - This really falls within digital literacies, but it is worth highlighting as I feel that developing your digital networking skills has real significance for your continuing development. If you can learn how to build supportive relationships with the other trainees on your course so that you can retain these contacts as a network after you finish the course then you can put these networking skills to good use within the various open online communities and networks that exist within various social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Having an online learning network and knowing how best to work within that network can help to ensure that you can guide your own continuing development after the course you are training on has finished.

Build international contacts - Online training often provides
a much more international learning environment than the classroom and
so this can help to broaden the learning experience as there is a much
wider range of experience to share. Finding out about how things are
done in different countries and very different contexts to your own can
be very refreshing and enlightening and can really enhance the learning
experience and the network building potential of the course.


Differentiated learning - As a trainer when you encounter a group of teachers face to face, it takes time and effort to see them as individuals with individual needs and interests. As an online trainer this experience is reversed, you are constantly dealing and communicating with each member of the group as an individual and this enables you to more rapidly assess their needs as individuals and adapt the learning to suit them.


One to one time - Following on from the previous point, almost all tutor - student time in online courses is one to one rather than whole group, so again it is easier to ensure that as a trainee you get the attention you need from your tutor.


Personality types - For shyer less confident students online leaning can work to their advantage because contributing in text can be much less threatening than doing it orally. You also have more time to consider your contributions to the group and can edit and re-edit them to be sure that you express yourself clearly.


Longer period of study - Learning something well really takes time. Online training can often take place over a much longer period of time than most face to face courses can. This keeps you supported and engaged in the learning process for a greater period and so allows more time for development.



Your learning journey - Because the interactions within an online
course are digital, they are recorded and captured so you have the
opportunity to go back and retrace and review your entire learning
journey. This greatly increases the chances of a deeper learning
experience and greater retention of what you have learned.



Time for reflection - Online training allows more time for
reflection and good online learning structures in this reflection, so
that you not only reflect on your learning process but have time to
discuss and share your reflections and share in the reflections of other
teachers


Flexibility - You can study at times that are convenient for you and for time periods that suit your learning concentration span. A lot of classroom training time often turns into dead time, because the length of lessons are dictated by administrative convenience rather than pedagogical advantage and trainers and trainees are often left pushing their way through materials long after their optimum concentration period has been exceeded. When you study online you can have a break whenever and however often you feel like. This gives you time to ponder what you have learned or move on to new materials at your own pace and use your time more efficiently.


Lower cost - The costs, not only of courses but also of
travel, accommodation and time off work are often vastly reduced when
you take an online course rather than a face to face course.



So those are my 15 reasons. Feel free to add any of your own in the comments section.



Related links:

• Learning technology news portal


• Web Tools for Learners


• Author of the Month

Best



Nik Peachey

3 More Tasks to Teach Yourself to Teach with Technology

At the end of 2010 I published the first 5 tasks in a series to help teacher learn how to use technology with their students. Now I would like to add 3 more tasks to that collection. The first few tasks are all quite simple to lay the ground work and get teachers started. As the series progresses I hope to get on to more adventurous tasks. Please feel free to use these tasks yourself or to share or use them for teacher training.

Task 6: Creating a video review activity
In this task you’ll learn how to create a film trailer review activity using film trailers from YouTube and an online notice board called Wallwisher. Here’s an example to look at before you start: http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/nikstrailers

Wallwisher is a really useful tool for giving students a semi restricted choice of online videos or links to other resources from around the Internet.

• Read the task
• Download Task 6 (pdf)

Task 7: Creating screenshots using Jing
Jing is a really useful free tool that allows you to create and annotate images grabbed from the screen of your computer.
This can be really useful for creating instruction sheets like the ones used in this series and helps you to grab images to add into websites or other documents.

• Read the task
• Download Task 7 (pdf)

Task 8: Create your own YouTube channel
Video has become one of the most useful resources on the Internet for language teachers. There are a great many video sharing websites on the Internet, but YouTube is by far the biggest.
In this task you will create your own YouTube channel. It’s very useful to have your own channel even if you never create your own videos. It enable you to subscribe to other channels, share videos with groups of your students and even annotate and add subtitles to videos. We’ll be doing all those things in future tasks, but in this task you will create your channel and subscribe to some other useful channels.

• Read the task
• Download Task 8 (pdf)

I hope you find these tasks useful and I hope that you'll soon find some more here.

Related links:

• 5 Tasks to Teach Yourself to Teach with
• Using Online Sticky Noticeboards
• Cropping YouTube Videos to Create
  
• Tutorial: Using Videos from
  
• Technogogy for edtech news
  
• 100 + Online activities for EFL ESL learners
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Create your own social network 7 steps
• Web 2.0 Tools for EFL and ESL Teachers
• 10 Teacher Development Task for Web 2.0 Tools

Best

Nik Peachey