hi folks, I'm not sure what people would like to go over this coming week on Thursday, but since we actually spent most of last week talking about Blackboard quizzes, without going into a lot of detail about QUIA and other types of quiz and activity possibilities, maybe we could continue on with that on Thursday? let me know if that would be good, or if you would like to propose some other topic - here is what I was thinking: QUIA: detailed overview of all the QUIA activities and quiz options, linking to QUIA activities, copying and modifying existing QUIA materials http://quia.com Hot Potatoes: free software from the folks at Univ. of Victoria for creating online jumbles, crossword puzzles, Cloze (gap-fill), multiple-choice, and short-answer activities online. (Markin, the writing critique product Karen mentioned last week, is written by one of the Hot Potatoes developers.) http://web.uvic.ca/hrd/halfbaked/ Quandary: from the same folks who built Hot Potatoes comes Quandary, which can be used to create "branching" game scenarios Ceck out the Evil Landlady to see how this software works: http://www.english-zone.com/convo/llady/llady01.htm Java scripts: these are free scripts available online that you can easily add to webpages giving all kinds of dynamic options. the "Let the Fates decide!" option in my reading pages is a Java script. for a sample, look here: http://www.mythfolklore.net/3043mythfolklore/weeks/week09/index.htm I think that would give us more than enough to talk about on Thursday, but if people would prefer some other topic, send a note around to the list - I'm sending this email out well in advance so that we can have plenty of time to figure out online what topic would best suit people's needs... and the week after is SPRING BREAK...! thanks everybody, Laura