FIRST PERIOD INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Instructional technology is an excellent subject where students as future teachers can learn a lot because it provides a set of useful tools that make the teachers’ life easier. Moreover, instructional technology does not provide difficult software, but those software demands a lot times in order to get accustom to use it. In the first period, instructional technology class have studied some easy and useful tools such as Prezi, Wix, Ardora, quizfaber, and hot potato.

First, Prezi is a tool that helps teachers to create some dynamic presentations. Moreover, this tool is better than power point because Prezi has more multimedia resources that make the presentations more attractive to the audience, but there is a trouble for all the free users, and it is that they cannot use all the privileges of this tool; however, if someone wants to get all the privileges of this tool, he or she has to pay for a premium account. One advantage of Prezi is that users can save the presentations online or in the computer. Moreover, they can add multimedia resources; for example, images, videos, songs, transitions effects, and nice backgrounds, but the most important is always the information that users add.

Second, Wix is an online tool that creates nice and attractive web page; it can be very useful for everybody because the objective of this tool is to spread information. It can be information oriented to academic purpose as information about any subject or it can be information with the only purpose of informing people about any event. Some advantages that this tool has is that is totally free; on the other hand, people just do an account, and they can use it completely; moreover, if you have a Facebook account, you can sing in with that account.

Third, Ardora is a free software that contains a great variety of activities as crosswords, matching, and hangman. Moreover, this tool is a little complex because it has an interface with many options that tend to confuse the users. This tool can be useful for any topic. In other words, users can adjust their topic to any activity.

Fourth, Quizfaber is a software that creates or make some kind of quizzes such as multiple choice, false or true, fill the gaps, and matching; moreover, this tool works with local database (access, MySQL) or external database (some serves). People can publish on internet or save them in the computer.

The last tool is hot potatoes. It is a free software that teachers use for making quizzes; moreover, it has some other activities like crosswords and matching. The best part of using this software is that it is easy to use, and that users can upload the activities on internet. Furthermore, people can make reading and comprehension test with this tool.

            To sum up, instructional technology is a subject that opens the mind of the students for this coming second period because they expect more useful tools that they can use in the future when they work as teachers.