Memrise is an online service and mobile application for learning foreign words. Pupils can learn not only words, but, for example, formulas, terms, capitals, but Memrise is mainly used to learn foreign languages.

It is assumed that a user does not create cards, but chooses a ready-made course and follows it. Students can choose, for instance, a course of basic English vocabulary and study it. You can also create a course yourself, but the emphasis is on studying ready-made courses.

Let’s explain what a “course” is. Similar services (Quizlet) have the concept of “decks” or “sets” which are made up of flashcards. There are no “decks” on Memrise, but “courses” and “levels”:

Each course includes several levels these are sets of words united by a topic. It turns out that words are combined into levels (sets of words), and levels are combined into courses. For example, the German 2 course consists of 19 levels of approximately 486 words.

After choosing a course, students can learn levels (sets of words) in order or randomly choose a level.

Words for memorization are issued in certain portions (a student can choose how many words he/she wants to learn per day) and in the order established by the program – student’s academic performance, a degree of assimilation of individual words are taken into account.

The service offers courses:

·         created by the Memrise team itself;

·         customized or added by other users;

·         created by a user him/herself.

The process of creating courses is quite simple and convenient. Words can be entered manually or loaded as a list. Unfortunately, audio cannot be added automatically as in Quizlet. You need to either upload an audio file from your computer or record the pronunciation using a microphone. Memrise is still designed to study ready-made materials, and not materials prepared independently.

In short, classes look like this:

·         Choose a course;

·         Study by passing a certain number of words;

·         Learn new words and repeat some already passed.

To unlock all courses, languages, and features

a subscription is needed.

Please check the plans here:

https://app.memrise.com/premium/?universal=true

Kahoot! is an application for educational projects. You can create your survey, educational game, or organize a marathon of knowledge. The app works on both desktops and smartphones. The main mode of Kahoot! this is the quiz creation mode.

The registration process is simple. You can use your Google, Microsoft, Clever, or Apple account or sign up with your email address.

After registration, a demo game will be available to you to see how the platform works.

Creating a learning game of Kahoot! only takes minutes. You can create a kahoot from scratch, use the platform’s question bank to mix and match existing questions, edit a template, or customize existing kahoots created by other users.

·         Select a type of your question

·         Set a time limit for each question

·         Decide how many points you will give for the correct answers

Choose a correct answer in advance

Plenty of useful options is also available on the platform.

Kahoot! EDU:

·         gives teachers powerful assessment tools to target instruction and maximize learning outcomes;

·         provides an opportunity to onboard hundreds of teachers and staff members with a Kahoot! site license;

·         gives teachers a robust toolkit to create and teach interactive lessons in any learning environment: classroom, virtual, or blended learning;

·         creates a private team space that teachers can use as a shared content library, and set up an unlimited number of groups for more targeted collaboration within your educational institution or externally;

·         makes it possible to choose from over 100 million existing kahoots, including kahoots from Verified educators and Premium partners within Kahoot! Academy, our global educator community.

Kahoot!’s distance learning:

·         allows you to connect with students when they are studying from home and increase participation;

·         can help you instantly capture actionable insights and target instruction in any learning environment. You will be able to do pulse checks and assess learning;

·         encourages students to create their kahoots based on learning content and host it live or assign it as a challenge.

Interactive lessons tool:

•  can be used to teach interactive lessons and engage students both in class and in virtual or hybrid learning;   
•  has an option to add slides with key points of topics you’ve covered to help students remember the most important information from the lesson. You can even easily import slides created in PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides, or from a PDF file straight into your kahoots and add interactive questions between slides. Direct Kahoot!’s integration into PowerPoint is also available. 

You can use the free version of Kahoot!, but several advanced features will be unavailable. Please check the best suitable membership for you here: https://kahoot.com/schools/plans/.

6 study modes are available:

 To enter the service, you can register or log in through Google or Facebook.

 Via this platform, you can send students a link to a module/course, or they can search for it by a teacher's name.

The program has a user-friendly interface for creating cards. You select language A and language B and type a word and its translation. Translation can be added automatically since the platform’s algorithms can detect it. You can add a picture as well. In the free version, pictures are available only through the search function, in the paid version you can upload them by yourself.

 Words do not have to be typed manually, they can be imported from a file or simply pasted in a table copied from Word or Excel. This is very handy if you are compiling dictionaries of words to memorize (for example, while reading), and then enter them into Quizlet. If you have found a selection of words on some topic and want to add it to the program, you do not have to type it manually, you can just copy and paste a table.

The “Import” function

You can find cards of other users posted in the public domain and copy them to yourself.

 If you want to print your cards, you can do it. There are 5 types of layouts to print your deck of words – table, glossary, small, medium, and large layouts.

6 study modes are available:

·         Flashcards. In this mode, you simply look through the cards, turning them over. In fact, only this mode is enough to memorize words. Here you can:

-          shuffle the cards so that they go in random order;

-          view flashcards from language A to language B and vice versa;

-          check a word pronunciation. Сards are very well voiced, so you do not have to worry about transcription;

-          mark words that are difficult to remember with an asterisk, and then only the marked cards can be taught.

·         Learn. As a word appears, you need to type its translation. If you guessed right, go further, if you did not – the difficult word is marked in the statistics and then it will be offered again.

·         Spell. It is a great exercise for developing listening and spelling comprehension. A speaker's voice can be slowed down.

·         Test. It automatically creates a test with 4 types of tasks from words included in a deck. Tasks are written translation of a word, matching a word and its meaning, multiple-choice, and true/false. A test can be printed.

2 play modes:

·         Match. A simple game in which you need to find words, and their meanings and glue them together.

·         Gravity. A game in which you need to “shoot down” flying words by typing their meaning:

Quizlet is free to sign-up for and start using. If you want to get some extra features, such as the ability to upload your own images and to record your own voice – you can upgrade your membership. Teachers can also track learner activity with formative assessments and homework as well. You will be able to adapt Quizlet Live, organize classes, use the app, and have no ads.

Check your subscription here: https://help.quizlet.com/hc/en-us/articles/360041181691-Subscribing-to-Quizlet. 

Duolingo is a language learning platform and app that uses game-like methods to encourage users to keep coming back to learn every day. Duolingo offers a skill tree of lessons that uses listening exercises, flashcards, and multiple-choice questions to drill learners on new words, phrases, and sentences.

 The platform offers a tool for teachers as well – Duolingo for Schools. It is a free tool for teachers created in order to help students learn languages through the Duolingo app, both in and out of the classroom.

 To enter the service, you can register or log in through Google or Facebook. After that, you can create as many classrooms as you need.

The main disadvantage is that you cannot compose your own content of lessons and a course as a whole. Only content created and offered by the platform is available.

The Quizizz service is aimed at teachers, and it is convenient to create educational quizzes, tests, and surveys here. With this tool, you can create a quiz or lesson, or import it from the Quizizz library.

 To enter the service, you can register or log in through Google or Microsoft accounts. After registering, you will be asked how you will use the service: as a teacher, as a student, for business, or as a parent.

With this platform, you can create a quiz or lesson, or import it from the Quizizz library.

If you want to create a lesson, you can choose the option “Create your own – Lessons”.

You can create a classroom as well. You will be able to monitor progress by class and share updates with parents. You can filter reports by class and send individualized updates home to parents.

The Padlet board is a handy tool for teaching at school and remotely. Its functionality is similar to an online board, where you can attach posts, photos, videos, files, and links to external resources, as well as add your own. The platform’s main feature is that several people can use it simultaneously, for example, all students in the class, and comment on each other's work.

 The convenience of the service is that you can discuss tasks in real-time: the student posted his/her work on a board, and a teacher immediately sees it and can evaluate and comment on it without collecting notebooks and downloading documents to a computer.

 Signing up for Padlet is easy: you can use your Google, Microsoft, or Apple account or sign up with your email address.

 The Padlet board has extensive functionality, the board can be designed in several formats, so you can use the Padlet for different school subjects.

 You can make a board in the form of a wall, stream, grid, shelf, map, canvas, or timeline:

How you can use Padlet virtual whiteboard in online lessons at school:

 1. To repeat what has been learned;

2. To study the algorithm of some process or phenomenon and memorize the chronology of events;

3. To organize a collective brainstorming session in the classroom. With the help of the service, this is possible even if the participants are at a distance;

4. To discuss problematic issues;

5. To survey studying a particular topic;

6. To create joint presentations, projects, or collections of educational materials on one of the topics of the subject.

 Unlike Google Docs, on the Padlet platform, you cannot remove someone else's comment, you can only rate it. Therefore, the entire progress of the work on the question is saved on the board for online lessons and is visible to everyone.

 Pupils will like this method of conducting lessons and the format of interaction with a teacher and classmates. Working with a whiteboard for online lessons is an opportunity to add creativity to your lesson, demonstrate the results of pupils’ work, express their opinions, and find out what others think. The fact that classmates will see the work motivates children to approach tasks responsibly and perform them efficiently.

You can use the free version of Padlet, but several advanced features will be unavailable. Please check the best suitable membership for you here: https://padlet.com/memberships. You have an access to a free trial for 30 days as well.

To test the above mentioned platformes, we have created some examples which you can use in your cleassrooms!