H5P, an interesting tool for blended learning

 Blended learning (a combination of face-to-face and online learning) has been a popular mode of learning in the context of Covid 19, where physical interactions  among people were discouraged to reduce the spread of the pandemic. Due to the lockdown that was imposed in most parts of the world, most schools opted to teach online. Even when the social contact restrictions were eased, schools have adopted blended learning to help teachers and learners get familiar with this mode of learning to be able to cope with similar crises in the future.

For blended learning to be effective, an number of ICT tools are needed especially for teachers to create online materials to engage their learners. Today, I am talking about H5P short for Html-5-Package, an interesting tool that can help you create interactive activities for your English language online classes.

Image from H5P.org

As shown in this image, you can create varied interactive activities including drag and drop, gap filling, matching, word puzzles, flash cards, multiple choice questions etc. You can also create presentations and interactive videos. You can have a look at samples of created activities here to have an idea of how the tool works.

To use H5P, you need to integrate it with a Learning Management System (LMS) such as Moodle, Edmodo etc. Please note that this is a commercial tool and can't be used for free. But you can create a 30-days free acount to experience how it works.

Here is an example of an interactive gap filling activity that I created with my H5P free account to help students practice jobs vocabulary.

This is how it looks like if a student attempts to answer the questions.

One of the drawbacks of H5P is that it might take some time for teachers to create activities. Again, the fact that it requires  LMSs to use it might be a limitation for some teachers who don't have access to these platforms. Moreover, it might be expensinve for low resourced contexts because not everyone can afford to pay $57/month for the basic package.

Would you like to create your own interactive activities? Follow this link, create an account and explore the tool on your own pace.

Please don't forget to leave a comment to say what you think about H5P.