As a future elementary educator, I am always looking for new ways to make my lessons more interactive and engaging. This weeks tutorial on H5P has given me the tools to do just that! Below, I will share what H5P is, how it can be used in an educational setting, and also share some of my experiences with the useful interactive learning tool.
What is H5P?
H5P is a free, “open source authoring tool integrated with WordPress and many other platforms that allows you to quickly create, share and reuse a wide variety of interactive and engaging learning activities” (Watt, 2022).
Here are some of the pre-built activities and interactive content offered on H5P that can be embedded into videos, slideshows, presentations, blogs etc.
- drag and drop
- image hotspots
- multiple-choice
- fill in the blanks
- accordion
- flashcards
- memory games
- columns
- question sets
- dialogue cards
- branching scenarios
- and more!
H5P resources to assist in creating content:
My first experience with H5P
I am shocked that I had previously never heard of H5P. I have seen interactive components integrated into media before, but did not know what tool was being used for their creation. I found H5P very user friendly and following the provided H5P tutorial made the creation of my own interactive resource so simple.
After entering my multiple choice information, I made an error by not saving my creation before trying to embed it into this post, so I had to recreate it, but that provided me with more opportunities to play with the tool. Also, because it was my first time, I was unclear as to what the finished product would look like until I updated my post, but I was happy with the result in the end. In the future, I would also change my settings on YouTube to prevent pop-ups from occurring during the videos.
Here is my first go at H5P:
Which H5P tools will be the most useful for me?
In an elementary setting, I believe that most (if not all) of the H5P tools will prove useful. They provide an excellent opportunity for formative assessment as they give students a chance to practice critical skills with immediate feedback. Below are a few of my favorites so far and examples of how I would use them in the classroom.
- Drag and drop & dialogue cards – great way to solidify knowledge of terminology and new concepts
- Multiple choice – like my example above, this tool is great for measuring students understanding before, during, and after a lesson
- Question sets – useful for ice-breaker activities like ‘This or That’
Of these examples, I think the drag and drop and dialogue cards would require the most resources to create because you would need to pre-make sentences to be filled in, or terminology to review. This is a very small barrier for creation though because the benefits FAR outweigh the effort or resources required to create meaningful interactive components.
Bonus H5P creation
I just had to try another one of H5P’s tools. Below I explore using alternative options with a simple read-aloud on an Autumn Story For Kids: Leaves!
Resources:
Watt (2022). W-9: Active and Passive Learning. Retrieved from: https://edtechuvic.ca/edci337/2022/10/29/w9-active-and-passive-learning/
Hi Sarah,
I also had forgot to click the “create” button for my H5P and had to redo my Drag the Words as well. I do believe that the create button should have been put into the bottom as opposed to on the right (it is nearly invisible).
I really enjoyed your H5P creations and reading your posts they are always so well detailed and informative. I also agree drag and drop dialogue cards would be one of the the most time consuming ones to create as you basically have to create it from scratch.
I tried about 5 of the H5P contents as they were very straight forward. Which one do you think would be the best to communicate information to the students while being the most interactive and fun?
Thanks,
Becky