We've been working on a new feature (actually, it's more like two features, but they're related) that will help you study and learn, and we're ready to show it to you on a couple of quizzes:
For now, it's only available on the above two quizzes, and we'd love your feedback (at hello@lizardpoint.com). We're especially interested in any technical problems that might be related to devices/browsers we haven't tested.
Explore Button
The biggest change is the new Explore button which you'll find on the end of the row of buttons on the quiz:
When you click on the Explore button, you'll get an area (the Explore Box) to the right of the map that lists all the places the quiz asks about. Mouse over (or tap on) the map areas to see the name of the place.
In the screenshot below, I have clicked on the map on Austria. A text tip (or label) appears just above where I clicked that shows me the name of the location I clicked on, and as well, the name appears in the green bordered box on the right, just below the title, "Explore the locations". I've circled both of these in red to point them out here.
You can also click on any of the place names in the list in the Explore Box, and you will see them appear on the map the same way: highlighted, and a text tip.
Benefit: for students that are overwhelmed by all the place names on the Labeled Map, the Explore button gives them another way to learn or review the locations just on this quiz.
And the second (related) feature is....
You'll also see Text Tips when you use the Show Me button, as shown in the following screenshot of a UK cities quiz. Sometimes, it can be hard to notice what area was highlighted when you click the Show Me button... now it's more obvious. The label (text tip) will be just above the uppermost part of the highlighted area - a bit to the left or to the right depending on how far the highlighted area is from the edge of the image.
Benefit: it's easier to spot the area highlighted when using the Show Me button.
Please try the new feature on these two quizzes, and send any feedback to hello@lizardpoint.com. We'd like to launch this feature by the end of February, and we want to make sure there aren't any issues we aren't aware of.
We've just added a new feature to our Stamp program. Or should I say we've just added a new feature to the weekly trivia quizzes? Trivia quizzes are now eligible to earn motivational stamps in the stamp program that's part of the FREE Personalized Quiz Tracker.
The stamp program awards stamps (doh!) to signed in users for the completion of quizzes in certain categories (such as Africa, Europe, Bodies of Water, Cities and more). Now you can earn stamps for Trivia quizzes as well.
Your "My Stamps" page shows you all the stamps you have earned, and it looks something like this:
When you earn a new stamp, you'll get a notification when you complete a quiz, like this:
You can earn stamps for the completion of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, 100 and 200 trivia quizzes.
If you've been signing in when you do the trivia quizzes, we've given you credit for all your completions. So you don't have to start from scratch! If you want to see your stamps now, sign in, and look in your My Account menu for the My Stamps link.
Another great benefit of your free account is that we save your quiz results for all your quizzes, so you can always review your progress.
What's the opposite of clicking on a map to show where a country is? We'll show you the country on the map, and you type in its name.
This reverse activity will keep your brain fresh - you'll have to think in a different direction, plus you'll have to learn how to spell. It's funny the things you think you can spell until you actually have to do it!
Here's what it looks like:
Spelling counts. We can't check every possible name for a country, so for the most part, we are using the common short names used in English.
If you're in doubt as to what we'll accept for the answer, check the section near the top of the screen where it says: "This quiz asks about these places", followed by the list of names, in alphabetic order. This list to help you with your spelling will only be available in practice mode. In other test and strict test modes, you'll need to remember how to spell.
If we accept an alternative, it will be in parentheses - for example "Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast)". Good news - you don't have to type the accents. If you choose to use accents, we ignore them, so a correct answer doesn't necessarily mean you got the accents correct.
Another thing you can do in practice mode is get a HINT. Just click on the Hint button to see the first letter of the country name... keep clicking to reveal more letters. For now, you can ask for as many hints as you need.
Where to find these quizzes:
We've just launched 9 of these quizzes. Look for the Tt symbol on the menu:
Also, all of these quizzes are customizable, meaning you can choose which questions to test yourself or your students on. Some are customizable by anyone with a free account, and some are customizable by premium members only.
The new quiz is customizable - so you can pick the questions, change the title and description, force it into a particular mode, such as strict test mode, etc.
The old quiz asked about rivers and lakes. The new quiz adds in 8 more questions:
Teacher plus accounts can view all their student scores, including the date and time the quiz was completed. Until now, the completion time has always been stated in US/Canada Eastern time zone.
But you can now change your time zone setting - in either of two places.
Option 1 - right on the Student Scores Details screen, just click on "edit" in the timezone area, and you'll get a dropdown for you to select your timezone.
Option 2 - go to your My Account tab, and then to My Account Settings, and you'll get the same dropdown box to select your timezone.
And voilà... your students' times will be in your specified zone.
From this:
To this:
The timezone will also be applied to your score downloads.
It seems teachers love the customizable quizzes and I frequently get requests to convert some of the older quizzes to the customizable format. Quizzes that have recently been converted to the customizable format are:
The South Americas countries quiz
The US major cities quiz. Choose from the 158 cities to make your own quiz. We made a sample quiz of the cities where NHL teams play
The Africa physical features quiz is now customizable. Plus it has a couple of new water questions: the Mozambique Channel, the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian sea. Customize Africa Physical Features here.
Oceania capital cities. If you're like me, you need help with this one, and using customization to break the quiz down into smaller learning chunks really helps.
And continuing along with the tourist attractions quizzes to support post-secondary travel and tourism programs, we've recently added:
After researching the request, we found this set of questions to be one of the most popular world regions maps in use. We created our own maps for the quiz:
The quiz is customizable - so you can select the questions you want asked, or force it into a specific testing mode.
We are very grateful to the teachers who ask us for a specific quiz - it lets us know what's needed, and when a request seems like it would have wide usage, we try to fulfill that request.
We've had a handful of requests from teachers recently, who want the Start Over Button removed from strict test mode, because when students are taking a test, they might be inclined to Start Over when they see it isn't going so well...
To address this concern, we've created the new Super Strict Mode that has the following properties:
no Start Over (or Skip) button
no scoring information is shown until the quiz is over
no feedback whatsoever during the quiz... ie "Correct" and "Sorry, that's incorrect" are not shown
no list of places included in the quiz... you won't see what questions will be asked before the quiz starts
Some important notes about Super Strict mode:
It is only available on customizable quizzes, and only to Teacher Plus and Individual supporter accounts.
There is nothing to stop the student from reloading the page or re-navigating to the quiz in order to start again. But by removing all feedback on the results, the student will have less reason to suspect he is not doing well and want to start over.
When you try the sample quiz, take note of the following differences, which are circled in the screen capture:
screenshot showing the help that has been removed from the quiz
The list of places ("This quiz asks about...") is not shown. (But if you create the quiz, you and you alone will still see the list, because it will help you to see what you included in the quiz without having to either do the quiz or go back to edit mode.)
The usual scoring information is not displayed - you'll no longer see how many points you've earned as you do the quiz
There's no feedback. A superstrict quiz does NOT tell you "Correct", or "Sorry, that's incorrect".
How to create a Super Strict quiz
Just go to the "customize a quiz page", and look for the Quiz Mode buttons, and pick Force Super Strict mode:
screenshot showing the Quiz Mode options
As with all forced modes, forcing a quiz into Super Strict mode is only available to those with Teacher Plus accounts or Individual Supporter accounts. So, if you see the forced mode options but you can't click on them, it probably means you're not signed in, or your account isn't eligible for this feature.
screenshot showing the Quiz Mode options are not available
Where the results are saved
If you're looking at your own results, or the results of your students, please note that the scores for Super Strict mode are labeled as Strict scores. The strict score in the screenshot below is the score from the sample quiz of the Canada provinces and territories, in super strict mode.
screenshot showing the superstrict score in the Strict column
Why are the scores for Super Strict mode labeled as Strict mode? Because it's not really a new mode - it's more of a mode upgrade, like getting fancy rims on your car. We didn't want to FORCE everyone to use the new features of super strict, so we've left it as an option. At some point in the future, we may be asking our users, do you even want the old-style strict mode? Or should we make Super Strict the standard for strict testing?
Just a quick announcement - if you have a Teacher Plus account, we've added an easy way to share and assign quizzes to your Google Classroom.
Look for the Classroom Share icon on the share bar below the quiz question/answer area:
Google classroom is a great way to set up students, classes, calendars, discussions and keep them all organized. Now it's easier than ever before to integrate Lizard Point Quizzes into your class. We have added the Google Classroom Share button to all 500+ quizzes.
We've just launched a handful of new quizzes designed for Travel and Tourism students, but anyone can use them. The questions cover a variety of types of destinations: cities, popular sites, landmarks, national parks, resorts, beaches, natural wonders etc. Check the end of this post for a sample customization of a USA quiz that is more geography focused.
These quizzes require you to know the country, state or province where a destination is located. So, for example, in the USA tourism quiz, if you are asked "Where is the Empire State Building?", you would answer by clicking on the state of New York.
The tourism quizzes offer a feature we've never offered before - a destination can be in more than one place. So if we ask you where the Four Corners Monument is, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah are all acceptable answers. And we'll show you that in 2 ways:
1. When you click on the "show me" button, all acceptable answers are highlighted, as the following screen capture shows:
2. When you click on a correct answer, the answer response lists all the acceptable answers, as shown in the following screen capture. The user answered with Utah, and the response from the quiz was, "Correct, the Four Corners Monument is in Utah. (Multiple answers accepted: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah)"
So far, we've created tourist quizzes for Africa, the Middle East, Canada, the USA, the Caribbean, Central America and South America. Quizzes for Europe, Asia and Australia/Oceania will be coming soon. Look for the airplane icon in the navigation to easily spot these new quizzes. You can see 4 tourist quizzes in this screenshot from the Americas navigation:
sample navigation with airplane icons indicating the tourist quizzes
The destinations asked in the quizzes were based on the learning needs of a particular tourism program at a Canadian college. But all the tourist quizzes are customizable, so that you can select from just the destinations you need. If you are an instructor of a Travel and Tourism program and you'd like some destinations added to the quizzes, please send us an email. Eventually, we hope to make it easy to add destinations yourself, but in order to satisfy an immediate need, we had to launch the quizzes with a fixed set of questions.
We realize that Travel and Tourism students need to know a lot more than just where the destinations are, but these quizzes will help with the "where", and free your mind up to learn the rest of the details you need to know for your program.
And now, for the example I mentioned earlier - here's a customization of the USA tourist quiz on mountains, caves and natural wonders. It's just a quick 11 question quiz but it serves as an example of how you can create a geography quiz that isn't necessarily tourism related.
Customizing a quiz gives you the option of selecting whether a quiz is forced into Strict Test mode (with the other modes completely turned off). This is a great feature for testing your students - they don't get hints (like "No, that's France") and they can't click a button to see the labeled map. They also can't switch the mode, or misunderstand in what mode you wanted them to take the test.
At the request of a teacher, we now offer another option: to force the quiz into Test mode. Test mode is similar to Strict Test mode, except in Test mode, you still get three tries to answer - but still, no help or hints. This is a good testing option for younger students, beginners, or to prepare for the Strict test at a later date.
Forcing a quiz into test mode or strict test mode is done on the quiz customization screen. The following screenshot of customizing the US state capitals quiz shows, circled in red, where you would select the quiz mode you want.
Note: Forcing a quiz into test mode or strict test mode is only available to premium users (those with a Teacher Plus account or an Individual supporter account)
Screenshot of the quiz customization screen showing where you select a mode to force
For comparison of the options, have a look at these 3 US state capital quizzes that have been customized with different mode options:
If you come across a quiz that has a forced mode, you can see what mode it is in, as in the following screenshot. The Quiz mode below the buttons shows that it is test mode. If you hold your mouse over (or tap on) the question mark icon, you will see an explanation of test mode.
Example screenshot of a forced quiz with the mode displayed
We've recently enhanced some of the water quizzes to give you more water features to be tested on, as well as more water quizzes that are customizable.
the Southern Ocean, Weddell Sea, Gulf of Carpentaria, Great Australian Bight and the Coral Sea can be answered on the world map
the Panama Canal and the Great Salt Lake can be answered on the North America map
the Strait of Magellan can be answered on the South America map
the Suez Gulf and the Gulf of Aqaba can be answered on the Middle East map
That means there are now 225 water features on the World Water quiz... but this quiz can be customized to pick just the features you want to be tested on. The World Water quiz can currently be customized by anyone with a free account, but come September 1, 2018, you will need to have a premium account to customize this quiz.
Screenshot of the quiz showing the Weddell Sea, one of the recently added water features
There's a new and improved version of the North America water quiz which has the Great Salt Lake and the Panama Canal, along with many rivers in Canada and the US. And it can be customized.
The Middle East water quiz can now be customized, and the 2 new water features (Suez Gulf and Gulf of Aqaba) that were added to the world water quiz have also been added here.
A new quiz on Canada was just launched: Canada: physical features. It covers an assortment of bodies of water, mountains, arctic islands, and landforms. It's also customizable, if you have a premium account.
In July 2017, we launched a trial feature for Teacher Plus accounts: the ability to view all your students' scores (not just the best and most recent scores). The feedback from teachers has been extremely positive, and the extra data on our servers hasn't caused any issues, so we're happy to report that we will continue to offer this feature.
Here is an example of the old-style summary information you would get. You can see that the student has done the Central Africa: countries quiz 4 times, and you can see his best score for each mode (practice, test, and strict). You can also see the date and score of the last time he completed a quiz, which was in strict mode. But you can only see 3 scores, and that he tried 4 times.
Sample summary result for a quiz
With the new Student scores details feature, you get the results of every quiz your student completes. With the new details, you can clearly see that the student has done the quiz once in each of practice and test mode, and twice in strict mode. You also get the exact score (not just the percentage), and the date and time each quiz was completed.
Sample detail result for a quiz
You can also filter your results by class, quiz, test mode, and date range.
The options to filter your results
You can also download the scores to a CSV file.
Please visit the demo of how these features work if you would like to play around with the filter and the download.
Looking for a water quiz? We've got quizzes. We've got water. You've come to the right place.
We've just launched a customizable quiz with over 200 bodies of water (oceans, seas, bays, gulfs, straits, channels, lakes, rivers...) from all over the world. The base quiz (before customization) is a quiz that currently has 215 questions. We didn't think anyone would want to do a quiz with that many questions, so we didn't put it in the site menu, but you can try the full world water quiz here.
If you'd like to see a customized water quiz in action, I set up a short straits and channels quiz with just 14 questions. I realized afterwards that I missed the Strait of Magellan, but I'll try to get that added in later. Word of warning - just because it's short doesn't mean it's easy!
If you'd like to create your own customized water quiz with just the questions you want to include, we've set it up initially as an "everyone has access" feature - anyone with an account (free or premium) can customize the world water quiz.
If you're a teacher of students that are 13 years of age and older, and your students sign up for accounts themselves, you might find our new account type of interest: Student-owned accounts that are connected to a teacher account.
A quick review of Teacher accounts and their student accounts
Until now, if a teacher wants to monitor their students' activity, the teacher must create generated accounts and hand them out to the students. And give everyone the same password. And keep track of whose account is whose. This is an ideal solution for maintaining the privacy and safety of children under 13 on the internet. But it may not be ideal for teachers of a large number of students in higher grades.
Introducing... Student-owned accounts connected to your teacher account
With student-owned accounts, students can sign up for their own accounts, and maintain their own passwords. Sounds like just a regular account that has always been available? Not quite - now anyone with a regular (non-teacher) account will see a new option in their My Account menu: Join or Leave Class.
If you, the teacher, have one or more classes set up in your account, you can instruct your students to use the Join a Class option to connect their account to yours. When they do that, they will be prompted to fill in the alias/nickname and give you permission to access their results. The alias/nickname will be what you see on your class results listing (thus saving you some work figuring out who's who).
This option is available for both Teacher Basic and Teacher Plus accounts , but please note that you need a Teacher Plus account to view your student scores (Teacher Basic will just show you that the student completed the quiz - not the score).
We've just introduced a new feature that has been requested by some of our teachers: you can now force a quiz to go into strict test mode (with the other modes disabled).
If you've ever given your students a test, and and asked them to use strict test mode, you might have been frustrated by the one or two students who missed following your instructions. Problem solved! You can now set up a customized quiz that goes directly into strict test mode, with no mode change options on the screen at all. Note: this feature is only available to Premium users (Teacher Plus accounts, and Individual Supporter accounts)
Here is what you'll end up with: notice in the screenshot below that the quiz is in strict test mode - 1 point per question ie only one guess, no map or show me buttons, and no buttons to change the quiz to practice mode or test mode.
screenshot of a quiz forced to strict test mode
How to set up a quiz like this yourself
First, you must be signed in (to either a Teacher Plus account, or an Individual Supporter account), and select a quiz from the customize a quiz page.
On the customize screen you will see a new set of options, Quiz Mode Options, just below the options for coloring the map. Here's a screenshot of a customize screen, with a red circle around the new options:
Screenshot of where to find the mode options
The default option is that the Practice, test and strict test options are all available - this is the the standard quiz behavior that you're all familiar with. Select the second option, Force strict test mode, as shown in this little screen shot:
Force strict test radio button
After entering your title, description, selecting your locations, and your mode option, hit the save button, and you are done! You've got yourself a quiz that behaves ONLY in strict mode. This is a great option to set up a quiz to use just for testing. You can continue to use standard quizzes, or customize quizzes without this option, for your students to be able to practice and prepare for their tests.
Try this Demo quiz in Strict Test Mode
I've set up a Demo Quiz of 16 countries in Europe so you can try out what it's like when you use this feature.
Here's a quick run-through of the new feature: Favorite A Quiz.
If you're a teacher, and you want to put quizzes for your students on your (soon to be released) blackboard, this feature is going to help you get your quizzes there.
If you're a learner, favoriting a quiz is a way to keep all your favorite quizzes bookmarked in one spot. You might want to do this if you've got several quizzes you're studying for, or are frequently practicing. You can remove a quiz from your favorites just as easily.
Here's how it works...
Every quiz in the geography section has (or will soon have) a star just above the Question and Answer box. You just click on the star to mark the quiz as a favorite. It will turn from an outline to a solid star to show that it has been saved as a favorite.
Screenshot of how to save a quiz as a favorite
Screenshot of a quiz that has been saved as a favorite
If you want to remove the quiz from your favorites, just click the solid star, and it will revert back to the original outline (unfavorited) star.
When you want to see your favorites, go to your My Account menu (yes, you have to be signed in for your favorites to be saved and viewed) and select My Favorite Quizzes.
Screenshot of navigation to My Favorites screen
Below is a screenshot of what the My Favorite Quizzes screen looks like. As you can see, you can also remove quizzes from your favorites here.
Screenshot of My Favorites screen
Favoriting a quiz is available to Individual Supporters, those with a Teacher Plus account, and students of a Teacher Plus.
Stay tuned for a blog post on how this fits in with the new blackboard feature.
We recently created two new flag/map quizzes to help test your combined flag and country location knowledge. They were initially available to our supporters first, but they are now available to everyone!
We've just launched two new quizzes to test your country flag knowledge. We'll show you a flag, you have to find the country on the map. The Africa and Europe versions have been around a long time: now we've got an Americas flag quiz as well as an Asia flag quiz.
As promised, our supporters get early access to new quizzes and features. For everyone else, the new quizzes will open up to you on February 1, 2016.
When we implemented custom quizzes a few months back, all custom quizzes had the same behavior: if a country, France for example, isn't included in the customized version of the Europe quiz, it is coloured differently (a very light white-grey) to make it plainly obvious that it is not in the quiz. And if you click on it, the response is "France is not included in this quiz. No points lost. Try again", and you still have the same number of tries left - that is, it does NOT count as a guess.
This set-up works out quite well when you're trying to learn a smaller chunk of what might otherwise be an overwhelming quiz: it lets you focus on just what you need to learn.
But when it comes to test time, your teacher probably isn't going to cross out the countries you don't need to know. So we're now offering a choice of 2 options when you set up your custom quizzes:
colour the excluded areas normally (and scoring penalty for any wrong answer)
colour the excluded areas grey (and guesses to excluded areas do not count as a guess)
I've set up 2 sample quizzes so you can see the difference. Each quiz has the exact same set of 5 questions: United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Portugal. One quiz has the all the excluded areas coloured normally, and the other quiz has excluded areas coloured grey. Go ahead and try them out and see the difference... click on France to see the difference. (If you're not sure where France is, use the labels on button and look for France).
When you create a custom quiz, the way you select which option you want is just above the list of places you can choose, as shown in this screenshot:
When you are selecting your countries to include in your custom quiz, you will not see the difference on the map - you won't see the effect of it until you save the quiz.
If you don't like the option you chose, you can always, at any time, edit your quiz and switch options.
Need a reminder of what the options mean? Hold your mouse over the question mark icons (or tap on your touch screen) to see the explanation:
Hate remembering passwords? Or do you ever get frustrated after you've worked hard to score well on a quiz - only to find that you weren't signed in and your score wasn't recorded? This actually happens quite a bit. It could be that you took a break and got timed out (sessions time out after 90 minutes of inactivity), or it might simply be that you forgot to sign in at all. We've created a 'stay signed in' solution to this problem.
All you need to do is check the box on the sign in page that says, 'Keep me signed in'. This will ensure you never have to sign in again from that device. It works by creating a small cookie in your browser that links your computer/laptop/tablet/phone with your account. After you sign-in with this selected, you will always be connected on that device. Anytime you visit Lizard Point, for up to a year later, you will be automatically connected to your account. However, there are a few important points to remember:
Don't use this on a shared device. Anyone else accessing that device can connect to Lizard Point - as you - and perhaps mess up your account. It's even possible for someone to copy your cookie and use it later on a different device to impersonate you.
You can't stay signed in to your account from two different devices. If you have selected 'keep me signed in' from one device, and then select it from a second device, your first device will no longer be able to automatically sign in. (But you can have one device automatically sign in and have another sign in the normal way).
If you ever want to disable the 'stay signed in' feature - just click Sign out. This will invalidate the cookie on your device. You will have to sign in with your password to reset it if you wish.
And, of course, if you clean out your cookies for whatever reason, or switch to a different browser - you will have to re-sign in and check the box again.
We're hoping this feature is useful for you, and encourages you to do even more quizzes.
We announced a quiz of the whole world the other day (see our Oct 19 blog post), and feedback told us, there were just too many navigation clicks required to answer the questions. So we put together a new quiz - based on work we had already done for that one as well as the much older one with the slider bar - and we came up with what we hope is finally a solid solution.
In our latest quiz, you can answer many of the questions without leaving the world map. And if you can't answer on the world map, you can click a magnifier to get to an enlarged continent or region map.
As with the previous version, once in a continent map, you can use one of 3 ways to return to the world map, and there are no points lost for moving around.
Since we started Lizard Point Quizzes, teachers have continually requested the ability to customize quizzes of their own to match their lesson plans. And we know some learners would prefer to focus on those few countries in a map that are giving them difficulty. So, voila....
