Collections: Quia

Written by: Marci Campbell
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

It’s Monday morning in the computer lab, I was just informed that the 5^th graders will be coming to the computer lab to work on their geography projects. I have 5 minutes to prepare some extra activities for those students that finish early – and for me that means it is time to find Quia activities.

Quia has created a concept that provides educators “the ability to create customized educational software online, built around their own course materials and made available to their students over the web.” Over a million educators have registered to use this service and almost 700 of these shared assessments have been catalogued in netTrekker d.i.

The Quia activities found in netTrekker d.i. span over 100 categories from Accounting to Zoology in the form of quizzes and tests including matching games, scavenger hunts, hangman, and much more. These assessments can be accessed by individual students or for whole class instruction.

I login to netTrekker d.i., click on the Middle School tab, enter the keyword geography and click search. From these 1000+ resources, it is very simple to pull out only the Quia activities by using the Quia Collection Refinement menu… I can hear them coming down the hall … I have 1 minute before they arrive in the lab… I quickly select 4 of the Quia activities, Save to My Portfolio in a folder shared in the School Portfolio… the 5^th grade class has arrived and I am ready to help them with their geography project and also direct them to some extra activities!

netTrekker d.i. has over 70 Quia resources catalogued in the Elementary section. Some of the more popular include activities to help students practice geography and map skills. Jeopardy-like games are utilized to practice reading skills for the emerging reader – by practice alphabetizing, rhyming words, and word families.

netTrekker di has over 130 Quia resources catalogued in the Middle School section. Some of the most popular include activities to help students practice matching up the World Language vocabulary. And to get students off to a good start on a research paper – have them play a challenge board game to review info needed for a research paper.

netTrekker di has over 140 Quia resources catalogued in the High School section. Some of the most popular include activities to help students review economics vocabulary. Newton’s 3 Laws of Physics can be confusing – until a student practices matching the terms with the definition.

Quia provides high-interest activities for the student by providing them with an interactive game to practice and learn skills and facts. Even though the students think that they are playing games, they will actually be learning geography!

As an added bonus by using Quia within netTrekker d.i. – you have the assistive tools for your students to use with the Quia activities – Assessments with Assistance! Dictionary HotKey provides definitions and translations for the instructions listed with the Quia activity, and for those students needing auditory support, instructions can be read to the student with the Read Aloud feature.

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Tags: netTrekker, netTrekker d.i., quia