Boom Cards

Boom Cards are by far my (and my learners') favorite practice tool.  Here's a video (designed for learners) demonstrating six different types of activities that I do with Boom Cards.  You can also embed short YouTube videos into Boom Card decks.  

For homework, I generally give students one or two Boom Card decks with a short video to introduce vocabulary or grammar that we will cover in the next class, and then a few activities that they do based on what they saw in the video.  (See more on the Absorb-Do sequence of practice activities here.)

Some learners with older phones report that Boom Card decks freeze if the video is longer than about 2 minutes or if the deck includes a video plus more than about 5 cards.  To mitigate this, I typically make two Boom Card decks per class, each with a short video and 5 Boom Cards, or I do a single Boom Card deck without a video and with up to 10 cards.

Pros:

• The activities are very flexible, and include matching, fill-in-the-blank, and multiple choice (including the ability to choose audio, text, or images).  

• It's easy to incorporate YouTube videos, your own audio, any images, and text.

• Learners get instant feedback on each card, with unlimited opportunities to correct errors.

• I can share a link with students that gives them instant access, without requiring a user account or password (but see below).

Cons: 

• You can get a free account, but you're limited to creating 5 decks and you can't add your own audio.   This is fine to play around with, but you'll probably need a paid account if you're going to use Boom Cards regularly. For the ability to add your own audio (very useful for beginning English learners) and the ability to create unlimited decks, you need a Premium level account, which costs $40 per year.  Since I use 1-2 Boom Card decks in every class, the $40 annual cost is well worth it for me.

• It's clunky to copy cards from one deck to another.  I have a workaround (involving creating master decks and cloning the decks) -- contact me if you decide to start creating Boom Cards and I'll show you the tricks.

• The "fast-pin" links that allow learners to access Boom Cards without a student account or password expire after 14 days.  (The links are easy to re-generate.)  For persistent links, you need to set up a "classroom" and assign user names/passwords to learners (similar to a Google Classroom or Canvas set-up).  For the entry-level learners that I work with, managing a separate user name and password for Boom Cards is a barrier, so I use the 14-day fast-pin links.

If you are interested in exploring Boom Cards, contact me and I'll send you a link to try them out.  If you decide to get an account, I'll happily clone and transfer some decks to you, to get you started.  (Although the Boom Cards website allows members with the highest membership level to sell their decks, I don't sell mine but I share them freely.)