Spanish poem / conditional resources - Instantes

One of the many improvements in TaskMagic3 (compared with previous versions) is the fact that you can make exercises based on text on separate lines, such as poems, letters, songs, paragraphs etc., rather than just a continuous chunk of text.

The resources on this page are based on the poem Instantes, widely attributed to Jorge Luis Borges, but apparently not by him. The same approach can be used for any poem, short story, nursery rhyme, song etc. You can even add a sound file to the interactive exercises.

The resources below were created using the Mix and Gap component of TaskMagic3. Below you will find screenshots of TaskMagic3 interactive exercises interpsersed with example worksheets, which you can view, download, print etc.

Read more »

Converting your old TaskMagic files to the new TaskMagic3 format

In TaskMagic3, files save as binary rather than text files.

Images and sounds are embedded in the file rather than being kept in a separate folder.

This makes it much easier to use all TaskMagic files over an internet connection, over a VLE etc, whatever the user’s browser.

Files can also be transported, emailed etc without zipping, and you don't have to remember to always copy extra 'pics' or 'sounds' folders along with your exercise file.

TaskMagic3 has a built in batch-convert facility, so that you convert multiple files to the new format. And it converts all file types at once - TextMatch, PicMatch, SoundMatch, Pic-Sound, GridMatch, Mix&Gap, Dialogues and Multi-Choice

It's dead easy to do.

All you do is open the file browser in TaskMagicCreate (TM3) and browse to a folder containing older style TM files. (These are the ones with an uppercase extension and no number 3 at the end: MDL, MDP, MTX etc)

If you browse to a folder containing these older file types (and where no TaskMagic3 equivalent exists) you will see a button with "TM2 > TM3" on it.

Click this, and it automatically converts them all (and keeps a copy of the original file.)

See this quick video which demonstrates how it is done. (NB. There's no audio.)

Everybody knows TaskMagic, right?

TaskMagic has actually been around for a LONG time (about 10 years) in its various forms.

The consequence of this is that often, when people talk about TaskMagic, they're not necessarily all thinking of the same thing.

There are lots of schools still happily using older versions of TaskMagic. Loads of teachers are using or have used TM2 or even TM1, and they are not aware of just how much better TM3 is than previous versions - more exercise types, easier to use, looks much better, better functionality, better worksheet printing etc.

There are lots of additions, improvements and extra features in TaskMagic3. This page on the TaskMagic website lists them all, with some links to blog posts with examples etc: http://www.mdlsoft.co.uk/TMUpdate.htm#TM3

This pdf document on the TaskMagic blog lists all of the improvements and additions, broken down into categories, and it can be printed on one side of A4: http://taskmagic.posthaven.com/whats-new-in-taskmagic3

So why haven't some schools upgraded? Maybe they don't know about TM3 (possible, I guess). Maybe they're not happy with the earlier versions of TM, so whenever they hear someone mention TaskMagic, they immediately think of the version that they've seen... "TaskMagic? Yeah, I remember seeing that years ago..."

Or maybe they were too happy with the earlier versions and didn't see the need to upgrade.  Schools are continuing to upgrade to TM3 that have been happily using TM1 for about 10 years. I get emails from schools saying things like "We've been using TaskMagic1/2 for years and we love it! We've just found out there's a version 3..." (!)

In case you're interested, upgrades to the latest version of TaskMagic (from TM1 or TM2) are priced at 50% of the usual price. (And that's a one-off payment, not an annual subscription.)



Splitting TaskMagic3 files into individual games and activities.

When you create a TaskMagic3 file, remember that, in most cases, you are creating lots of different exercises.

Similarly, when you see a link to download a TaskMagic3 file, remember that this one file provides access to lots of different games and exercises. It's not just one game or activity.

It's easy to forget this. I sometimes come across

Read more »

French poem / passé composé resources - Déjeuner du matin (Jacques Prévert)

One of the many improvements in TaskMagic3 is the fact that you can make exercises based on text on separate lines, such as poems, letters, songs, paragraphs etc., rather than just a continuous chunk of text.

The resources on this page are based on the poem Déjeuner du matin by Jacques Prévert. The same approach can be used for any poem, short story, nursery rhyme, song etc. You can even add a sound file to the interactive exercises.

The resources below were created using

Read more »

Working with longer lists of vocab in Text Match

One of the many improvements in TaskMagic3 is the removal of the 16 item limit for matching exercises. TaskMagic files can now have hundreds (in fact up to 10,000) items in one file. This means you can now import entire vocab lists into one Text Match file (see this post for more details), but you can also input lists of more than 16 items manually.

The same principle

applies to

Read more »