Over the years, during my various teaching and training gigs, I have had a need to create tests and quizzes.  Using a standard text editor became a nuisance because of formatting issues and just didn’t seem cut out for the job.  What I really needed was an application that was specifically designed for this task.  More importantly, it needed to be free.

For the past couple of years, I have been using EasyTestMaker, which is an web-based application and does exactly what it’s name suggests:

EasyTestMaker allows you to create tests with a variety of questions types (T/F, Multiple Choice, Matching, Short Answer, Fill in the Blank) and then stores your tests on their servers for easy retrieval and editing.  You can also generate answer keys to your tests.  For an additional $15/year you can generate different versions of your tests to prevent cheating, but I have been more than happy with the basic features.  EasyTestMaker is also introducing a flash version of their GUI which appears to be a lot snazzier and provides additional features such as spell checking, improved formatting, and the ability to organize your tests. 

EasyTestMaker

Posted in Useful ~ 5 Comments

Ever need to call someone overseas and you’re not sure what time it is over there?  Is Karachi 9 or 10 hours ahead?  Do they do Daylight Saving in Thailand?  Microsoft Time Zone is a neat little free utility that sits in your system tray and tells you the current time for the cities that you choose.  Requires Windows XP and .NET 1.1 SP1. 

Posted in Tech, Useful ~ 30 Comments

Let’s say you want to change the reservation on your flight or you want to talk to a customer service rep about mysterious charges on your cell phone bill.  Most likely you’ll have to cycle through a dozen prompts, often being asked questions that you will be asked later by a customer service rep anyway.  After about 10 minutes of trying to talk to a computer you are finally get through to a real person.  Wouldn’t it be nice to how to talk to a human right away?  Well gethuman.com has a database of companies and how to get through to to a real life customer service representative.

Now if only there was a way to make sure you could connect to someone in the same hemisphere as you.

Posted in Cool, Useful ~ 1 Comment