Authoring tools on the Web

In a time not so long ago, authoring tools would have been considered to be a set of pens and a blank sheet of paper. Then came the digital age. Visi Alaminos returns to the Mac Mag Online to reveal what this ‘newspeak’ means, where the tools can be found and how they can be harnessed for the benefit of English language learning.

As English teachers, we always try to individualise our teaching as much as possible in order to cope with the mixed ability levels we find in our classes. We often use the many additional resources included with coursebooks, or search the Web for online interactive materials. My personal aim has always been to make my lessons as varied as possible and to individualise them, creating activities and tasks that match both the level of my students and the contents in my coursebook.

The Net offers so many resources and possibilities to create our own materials to supplement the curriculum that it is almost impossible not to dip right in and try them at least once. Authoring tools offer us an opportunity to personalise our approach to our students and create activities that are adapted to their level. Individual differences among students are noticeable and custom-made exercises can help them to get the feeling they are learning and progressing. Different students have different learning styles. For example, with vocabulary learning, some work best matching pictures with words, while others prefer to memorise lists, find the words in a word search or unscramble anagrams.

What are authoring tools?
Authoring tools could be defined as ‘tools for creating materials for interactive media’. In laymen’s terms, they are exactly what the name suggests: tools which you can use to author your own activites. They help you to create interactive or e-learning content by means of word-processor style interfaces, predesigned templates and Wizards (computer programmes or scripts used to simplify complex operations for an inexperienced user). Again, as is the case with most cyberworld lexis, this sounds much more complicated than it is. By ‘interactive or e-learning content’ I don’t necessarily mean complicated WebPages, but rather simple activities such as word searches, scrambled words or sentences, quizzes, interactive readings, surveys, treasure hunts, crosswords, worksheets with pictures, quiz busters and bingos. We’ll look at some examples of each later in the article.

Why and when should we use them?
Word searches and memory games are a good way of learning or practising vocabulary, especially given that students often need to go over the same words again and again to learn them. Students can do self-study tests (see Worksheets below) which help foment learner autonomy, as they can choose which areas they feel they need more practice with. Extra reading practice can be gained through treasure hunt activities and sentence structure and word order can be reviewed by scrambled sentences.

There are numerous ways we can work these kinds of activities into our syllabus. For example, we can generate cultural-related activities for festive times of year such as Christmas and Easter. We can use them for extra-curricular lessons or as extra homework for students with special needs. We can even use them as a basis for extra activities for those students who stay at school while others go on school trips.

What features can we find?
Most tools are easy to use and provide ready-to-use templates with step-by-step instructions. They offer the choice to create online (interactive) or offline (printable) activities. Sometimes hosting of the activity is offered. This means that the materials you make can be stored on the site and accessed by logging in.

What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Authoring tools are fun, motivating and provide a welcome break from the routine of the coursebook (even though their prime function is to supplement it. They are interactive and as such offer immediate feedback. They can be personalised and the topic can be chosen by the teacher. And above all, they’re free! However, they can be time-consuming to prepare and they rely on a fast connection (although the printed version is always a viable alternative).

Aspects to consider when choosing which site to use
There are so many websites out there that the words ‘needle’ and ‘haystack’ easily spring to mind. Here are some factors to take into account.

• Registration
Registration is usually easy with a username, password and an email address to confirm registration being the only typical requests. A verification email is then sent to you to confirm that you wish to sign up. As these sites are educational in nature, signing up does not usually mean receiving spam in your inbox.
 
• Output
By output, I mean how the activity is going to be delivered to students. Some sites (such as Teachers Direct) give you a choice of making your materials interactive or printable.

• Hosting
Once you have created the activity, does the site offer you free hosting, ie can you save the activities you’ve created onto the site? Or do you have to download software to make the materials? This is more inconvenient, as the materials you make won’t be accessible online (and the software download may not necessarily be free). Ideally, once an activity is created, you should be able to bookmark the page (with Internet Explorer this means adding it to your Favourites) so that it can be recalled at any time.

• Type of activity
The type of activity you wish to create should govern your choice of site, not the other way round.

Where can I find them?
Now lets look at some examples, starting with a couple of directories where you can find comprehensive lists of sites containing authoring tools. There is an ‘authoring tools’ section in Christine Bauer-Ramazani’s site which lists activities according to category (quizzes, surveys, puzzles, etc) with brief descriptions: http://academics.smcvt.edu/cbauer-ramazani/Links/authoring_tools.htm and there’s a similar list in my own site: http://www.visi.es/ict/ict_teachers_create.htm .

• Word searches