LearningApps Tutorial

For as long as I have been teaching, I have always strived to find fun ways to teach students, and to give interactive exercises instead of the usual exercises from the textbook. Teaching English has its own pressure, as we are pushed to be creative in conducting the teaching and learning process, and that includes making learning English fun for the students. Therefore, I am so glad that I got introduced to an online software which will definitely help me, specifically, to do just that. It is called LearningApps. and I assure you, it is a lifesaver for me.

It is an easy-to-use tool with a variety of activities teachers and students can use, adapt, or make from scratch, to practice all kinds of subjects, from English to Chemistry and French, it has everything! This is what it looks like at the homepage.

Looking at the Browse Apps section, there are many categories that we can choose from, based on our chosen subjects.  This app is available in many languages, as seen at the top right of the page. There is also the level of stages, from elementary to vocational and further education, showing the versatility of the app to all users. 

Let's say we picked a subject from the list of category; like English. A page filled with examples of activities related to the subject appears, and we can choose any activity that fits with our topic of the day. These activities are made by teachers from all around the world, so you can see various of activities in different languages, which can be seen through instructions. It is quite exciting to see activities that we don't even think to create, actually are available here.

If we want to create our own apps, we can just click on the 'Create App' button. A simple instruction of how to create an app on our own will appear at the top of the page, like this:

The template mentioned here is a series of game or activity templates that we can choose to insert our materials. There are 21 templates available, from the usual ones like cloze text and multiple choice quiz, to rare ones like horse race and the millionaire game, which is quite intriguing. Some of the templates can be seen through the image below:

You can also create a collection, whereby the apps are being put together for your classroom. These are the instructions for creating a collection:

• Select your own apps or other apps for a topic. The names of the apps can be customized.
• The apps can be grouped and provided with subtitles or instructions.
• The default setting is that the apps can be edited by the learners in any order.
• Optionally, the apps can only be solved one after the other, if the previous one has been solved in each case.
• Optionally, a text can be displayed as feedback after solving all apps.
• Communicate the collection link or QR code to students.
• The collection is not displayed publicly on LearningApps.org. Optionally, the collection can be displayed to others in your profile page.

At the end, you can refer back to your finished apps in the 'My Stuff' section. The page should look like this:

This is an example of my own page, of which I had utilized five different templates for my own lesson. They are very easy to use, and I think that every teacher should be aware of the existence of this app.