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Free multi-choice patience activity template

Posted on July 11, 2017 by davefoord

When I worked as a teacher, as well as using technology during the teaching and learning process, I also often used it to create activities that didn’t use technology during the actual session. One such activity that I created is something I have called ‘multi-choice patience’. This is a series of ‘cards’ that are printed out and given to the students. Each card is numbered and contains a multiple choice question, with 4 possible answers (1 correct and 3 wrong). Answering each question directs the learner to the next card. To complete the activity the learners have to create ‘loops’ e.g. if using the 36 card set, the answer to the 6th card, should point back to the 1st card in that loop. If it doesn’t then one of the 6 questions has been incorrectly answered, but the learner doesn’t know which one, so they have to go back and try different options, until they correctly complete the loop. Once a loop is created, they pick another card from the pack and start again trying to create a ‘loop’. Screenshot of the multi-choice patience activity

I generally used this activity in the last week of term, when the learners were not up for anything too heavy – I would have the learners in groups of about 4, and they would race against the other groups to see which group could complete the challenge the quickest.

To create the cards, I created a template in excel, where I entered the questions and answers, and the computer randomised the answer order, and worked out the ‘loops’, randomly changing the options each time, and it is this template that I have shared so others can create similar activities.

If a teacher wants to be even cleverer, you get the learners to design the questions in one week (and you could set up something like a Google form that the learners populate) – you then check the questions, copy them into the grid, print out and cut up.

I have recently changed the template, so rather than being limited to having to have exactly 36 questions, it will now work with either 36, 30, 25 or 20 questions.

The template itself can be directly downloaded from:


A complete example can be downloaded from:


And other similar activity templates can be viewed at:


A video showing how to use the multi-choice patience template is:


Filed under: CPD and reflective practice, e-learning, Excel | Tagged: activity, choice, College, Excel, free, fun, game, learner, multiple, Muti, primary, questions, School, secondary, Student, teacher, template | Leave a comment »

Creating a YouTube based discussion activity in Moodle

Posted on April 12, 2016 by davefoord

I run a lot of training on effective uses of a VLE (usually Moodle) and one of the easiest activities that I show, is finding a video on YouTube, and then embedding this into a forum activity within the VLE.

The reasons for doing this are:

It doesn’t matter if students don’t actually post their answers to the forum (although useful if they do), as they will still benefit from watching the video with the question in their mind.

The following video goes through the steps of how to embed the video, and the basic settings within a Moodle forum activity.

And if you want to only show a portion of the video you can always identify the exact start and end points that you want to play, by following these instructions:


Filed under: CPD and reflective practice, e-learning, How do I...?, Resources, social software (web 2.0) | Tagged: activity, discussion, embed, FE, forum, HE, learner, moodle, School, teacher, VLE, youtube | 3 Comments »

#FELTAG – buying or not buying resources conclusion

Posted on March 17, 2015 by davefoord 

Top tips for sharing audio files with learners

Posted on July 9, 2012 by davefoord

I use audio a lot in my work, both for giving learners feedback but also for the creation of learning objects. One way to use audio is for each week or topic of teaching to provide a short audio file to set the scene, to provoke thought or as a form of additional information for those that want to take the topic further (differentiation). Many people will use their VLE to house these audio files – and if we do this there are a few tips that we can apply to make this process easier for ourselves and the learners. The following video will explain some of these ideas, and the details are further explained below.

Using leading zeros when naming files

If we are producing a sequence of audio files (e.g. 1 per week) – if we name  the files:

This is OK if you have less than 9 weeks in total, but if you have 10 or more weeks, what can happen is when the files are saved together in a folder either on a computer or an audio playing device (e.g. mp3 player/phone) – the order of them may be displayed alphabetically, and with the above scenario, this would look like:-

So to avoid this, it makes sense to save the filename with leading zeros e.g.

This way if the files are arranged alphabetically, they will remain in the correct order.

Use CamelCase rather than spaces

If we have spaces in our filenames, when these are displayed as web addresses the space is often replaced with a %20 – which then stops the filename from making sense, so I tend to avoid spaces. What I do instead is use CamelCase – this is where all the words are lowercase, but the first letter of each word is capitalised so that it stands out (and creates a bump – hence the name CamelCase). This makes it easier to read on the eye.

Adding meaning into the filename

With the example that I have used so far, this works if we know what is being covered in each week, but if a learner is coming back to this at a later date to revisit a topic that they are struggling with, or need for their assignment – if they don’t know which week each topic was taught in it can be frustrating trying to guess which file they want, so adding a brief description at the end of the filename will help e.g.

Makes a lot more sense.

If using dates use yymmdd format

If you want to include a date in a filename – then use the yymmdd format, or reverse format – e.g. todays date is

9th July 2012

This would be recorded as the year first (12) then the month (07) then the date (09) to give a final date of 120709. The reason we use this is if the files are arranged alphabetically – if we have used this format they will also appear in the correct chronological order. e.g.

Zipping the audio files for easier downloading

If distributing the files each week via the VLE then that is great if the learners are diligent enough to access the VLE, to select the file and download it onto their audio player or computer. However it is worth considering as well as doing this, also putting all the files into a folder, zipping this up, and uploading this zip file as a file – this way the learners have the option of downloading the whole series in one go, rather than having to visit every link in turn and save etc.

If you are recording the files as you go along with the teaching, then this can be done at the end of each term for example for students to download retrospectively, or if the audio files have been produced in advance, then you have the choice of doing this at the beginning, so they have the files in advance.

Another important feature when using audio files is to use the metadata options – which will be covered in the next post….

Filed under: e-learning, How do I...?, Resources | Tagged: audio, convention, differentiation, Distribute, files, learner, Naming, podcast, Resources, teaching, technology, VLE | 2 Comments »

Changing attitudes towards learner owned devices

Posted on February 6, 2012 by davefoord

Last week I presented at an ‘Arts and Media’ Conference in Chester organised by Sector Training.

I presented at the same conference last year, running a session on Mobile Learning (amongst other things), and in the session mentioned (in passing) that at some point in the future the norm would be that learners would turn up to lectures with their own devices – a suggestion which caused a bit of a stir amongst the delegates as they identified all sorts of reasons why this wouldn’t happen, and why it would be a bad thing if it did happen, and how I was such a heretic for suggesting something so completely outrageous…..anyway…..

….fast forward 12 months, an at the same conference with a similar set of attendees, I run another session alongside Ian Wilson. Ian was introducing the use of the iPad within this area of work, and the discussion moved onto the logistics of equipping every learner with an iPad, and the attendees completely bought into this idea – amazing the magnitude of the attitude shift in just 12 months. I think embracing learner owned devices is the only viable option for organisations for the future. A large college may spend many hundreds of thousands of pounds per year to update the computers that are more than 3 years old – this is a huge expense just to stand still, and when you look at the stats in terms of usage – you cannot find an empty IT suite on the room booking system for love nor money, yet the computers are used for probably less than 10% of the time – so we have a huge investment in technology that sits idle for most of the day.

Embracing learner owned devices does present some problems, but all of which can be managed. The single biggest issue (and in my opinion where investment should be going) is getting a good, reliable and robust wireless network that students can connect into. A few years ago I was saying that electricity was going to be a big issue as people power up their laptops etc. But if the iPad does prevail, then this has ample battery to get through the day negating this problem.

Filed under: CPD and reflective practice, e-learning, m-learning | Tagged: Art, attitude shift, Colleges, Conference, devices, heretic, Ian, iPad, learner, learners, Media, Owned, Sector, Sector Training, Tablet, training, Wilson | 2 Comments »

Using technology to create paper based games

Posted on February 4, 2011 by davefoord

This is the 7th entry in a series on ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning’.

As a lecturer, I quickly identified that traditional ‘chalk and talk’ was not an effective method of teaching especially for someone like me with a monotonic voice and really bad hand writing. It was this that guided me into the area of using technology in my teaching, but I also looked at different ways of creating little activities to do, and over the years I produced dozens of non technological resources out of card, paper, wood and laminated sheets.

Most of these were very bespoke to a particular topic, but 2 of my ideas are transferable to other areas.

The first I have called ‘multi-choice’ patience, The tutor enters 36 multi-choice questions and the answers into an Excel grid, which then converts these into a 36 card activity, where you pick a card out of the pack, answer the question, then choose the card identified by the answer. You keep doing this until you have answered 6 questions, if you have all 6 questions correct, then the 6th card should point back to the first card in that set. You then pick another card and try to complete the next set of 6 cards. 
The difficult part of this is thinking of the 36 questions, but once they are created, very easy to print out the cards, cut them up (and laminate if used more than once).

The template can be found at http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/MultipleChoicePatience.xls with the worked example (anatomy and physiology based) being http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/MultipleChoicePatienceEXAMPLE.xls

The second activity that I created is ‘Buzz word bingo’, and was originally for myself and colleagues to use at boring meetings, to make them more interesting, but they can be easily used in a teaching and learning situation.

All you need to do is add a list of buzz words (which could be the answers to questions) into an Excel grid. This will then convert these into different bingo cards of different sizes, which you print out, cut up and give to the learners. Very easy to do especially as an end of topic revision activity, or something to do in that last week before Christmas. Buzz Word Bingo

Buzz Word Bingo can be found at http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources/BuzzWordBingoGenerator.xls

All of the resources listed here can be found at http://www.a6training.co.uk/resources_class_management.php which also contains links to resources that can be used to split classes up into random groups, and allocate topics to students.

Filed under: CPD and reflective practice, e-learning, Excel, Resources | Tagged: active, activity, bingo, buzz, cards, choice, fun, fundamental, learner, learning, multi, patience, teacher, Word | Leave a comment »

Using QR codes for explorative learning

Posted on January 21, 2011 by davefoord

This is the 4th entry in a series of ‘putting the fun back into fundamental learning‘

QR codes are like a bar code, but rather than being made up of lines, are constructed of squares. An example QR code being below. A QR code is a graphical representation of a string of text, and they can be created by anyone, using something like http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ The above code is for the web address of this blog (https://davefoord.wordpress.com)

Most mobile phones that have the ability to take photos can read Qr codes – some will need to download some software (or an app) onto the device (usually free) – you then take a photo of the code, and it will convert it into the text that it represents. In the case above, because the text is a web address – if the phone is internet enabled, it will then go to that website.

There are many ways that QR codes could be used in education, some examples are:-

An example of something like this, has been created by an Australian PE teacher ‘Mr Robbo‘

With further details on his excellent blog – http://thepegeek.com/2009/03/26/using-geocached-qr-codes-for-revision-in-a-pe-classroom/

Filed under: e-learning, How do I...?, m-learning, Resources, social software (web 2.0) | Tagged: code, fun, fundamental, geocaching, learner, learning, Qr, Qr code, revision, Student, teacher, trail | 2 Comments »
