TUTORIAL
Creating interactive activities using JClic author By Tarak Brahmi, Teacher of English
JClic is an application for the creation of interactive multimedia activities. It has been used for a wide range of purposes but it is particularly ideal for the creation of educational CDs and interactive tasks for school children. There are seven types of activities that you can create with JClic author which include association games or activities, crosswords, puzzles, word searches, memory games, etc.. Objectives of this tutorial:
THE AIM OF THIS TUTORIAL is to help you to have a grip on JClic author and to create interactive educational activities with confidence. You are going to follow a step-by-step guide that will demonstrate how you can create a simple interactive activity with JClic author and how your students can initiate this activity from JClic player.
Prerequisites:
The following steps presume that you have already installed JClic and JClic author on your PC. (See installation).
Installation: “JClic is a great tool but it won’t help make your task any better if you don’t plan it well and think about whether or not it is appropriate for your students.”
It is almost straightforward. But this is not the foremost focus of this tutorial as installation is explained in thorough detail in the application’s website here: http://clic.xtec.cat/en/documents/ jclic_offline.htm
Activity description:
This is going to be a matching exercise. The students need to match a set of words with the corresponding 20
The Tunisian English Teaching Forum | Issue 3 4
May September 2010 2010
phonetic symbols. STEP 1: PLANNING Before starting to work with JClic author, we need to think about what we really want to do. It is always helpful to answer a few questions and to plan the task on a piece of paper in advance. JClic is a great tool but it won’t help make your task any better if you don’t plan it well and think about whether or not it is appropriate for your students’ level, whether the time you assigned is enough for the task completion, etc... These are a few things to consider when designing an activity: Are you going to use clip arts, videos or animations? Will they add to the general purpose of the task? Where can you get them from? How much time will your students need to spend on this task? Do you need to record your voice? Is the activity better presented as a matching exercise, a gap-filling activity, a memory game, etc? Do you need to add some feedback? Will it be written feedback or audio feedback?