Crossword |
Declarative knowledge is often the first rung on that ladder that leads to higher-order thinking skills. Web-based instruction frequently leads students to the sophisticated activities of research and problem-solving but too often treats fundamental facts in a banal fashion.
The Crossword Star Interaction® offers teachers the opportunity of ‘mixing’ it up a little – offering the presentation of simple facts in an immediately recognizable way.
Students enjoy completing crossword puzzles. Moreover, with this version of crossword, students can immediately judge if they’ve solved a word correctly.
The Crossword Star Interactionü presents students with a puzzle. The hints to solving the puzzle appear on the right. If a student clicks on the hint, the corresponding squares of the puzzle are selected. The student, then, types in his or her answer. The student may use an optional link to help them solve a particular crossword. The check button offers immediate evaluation.
Teachers can provide as few or as many words as they wish. A limit, however, does exist to how many words the compiler can fit. Too many or too few words present the compiler with challenges to fitting in all of the words.
Teachers supply the crossword hints and, optionally, they supply a web link that serves as additional information to help students solve the crossword.
Training guides, online tutorials, demos and update information for this interaction are available on our website.
This link will open the Crosswords support page.
The first page of the interaction refers to the Reference Link Options. This option defines the behavior of the reference link that can be made available to the user. There are three options to choose from:
- No Links
This option will prevent any links from appearing next to the hint.
- Auto Link
When the reference button is clicked, this option will open the link specified in the Link Reference URL field, dynamically passing the word as part of the link. In the example shown below, the Link Reference URL is:
http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/**word**
If the word for that item was “Lion”, then the dynamic link would be:
http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Lion
- Only If Specified
If this option is selected, the Link Reference URL is ignored and a reference link will only appear if a URL is specified when the item is created (see Step Two).
On the next page in lodeStar, you can replace the crossword and hint that you will find there as an example.
Word: The word is the word that will appear in the puzzle. lodeStar will automatically create squares for each letter, including spaces.
Hint: This is the phrase that will appear to the student. For example, for the word 'Tallahassee', you might write the hint 'Capital city of Florida'.
Link: This is a link to a web site that might give a student relevant information to help him/her solve the word. Please note that the link will appear with the hint, so please don't just give away the answer.
To create additional crossword items, click on the “Add” button. The Add button is found at the top left corner of the page.
Repeat Step Two until you have entered all the items needed.
Once you have filled in all of your words, its time to compile your puzzle.
Please note: On the last page, you should see a compiler similar to the one picture below. The compiler has a 'Start' button. If, instead, you see a blank page, this means that lodeStar wasn't installed properly and is not displaying lodeStar extensions. The crossword compiler is a lodeStar extension. If you see a blank page, you should uninstall and reinstall lodeStar.
Click on the 'Start' button. The compiler will now assemble the best crossword that it can. The compiler may leave some words out. The compiler was designed to create a crossword with fewer intersections than normal, so that students would need to work harder to solve the puzzle.
You will know that the compiler has completed its work when it stops creating new pages. The puzzle that uses the most words will be displayed on the last page. The navigator provides arrows to view earlier pages in case you prefer their layout.
When the compiler has done its job, click on the "Choose this Crossword" button to select the desired layout then save or preview your project.