Differentiate between Text App and Lock App

Not sure when you should use the Text App and when you should use the Lock App (with Text answer)? Read on!

Text App

The Text App allows free-form response, meaning students can type in a response freely and will be allowed to move forward to the next activity without them knowing explicitly whether they have answered the question correctly. Other free-form response Slide Apps such as Draw, Placemarker, Quick Poll, Photo and Upload Apps typically do not require much (if any!) configuration to make it work. 

Lock App

The power of Deck.Toys is using Slide Apps that validate answers automatically, whereby the student will know immediately if they have submitted a correct or wrong answer. The Lock App takes it a step further, because the student must get the exact answer before they can pass this activity, thus is widely used as a breakout or escape room element. Within the Lock App, you can configure the response to be a Text, Number, Key, Direction, Voice or QR Code Lock. 

Thus the comparison we are making in this post is when do you use a Text App and when do you use a Lock App with Text answer.

Configuring the Text App

There are only 2 things you can amend in the Text App. Tick on the ‘Long text’ option if you need students to answer a longer free-form response. Also if you want to allow students to modify their answers after submitting their initial response, click on ‘Allow answer changes’.

Configuring the Lock App

The Lock App can be on the right side of your screen, or dragged into the Slide Area. The Lock App must be configured otherwise it becomes a redundant app on your lesson.

When you configure the Lock App, go to the Text tab of the lock, and key in the expected answer that you need the student to key in. 

You have the option to make the letters case-sensitive or not. Also if you have potentially multiple potential correct answers, put a vertical bar | between the answers. 

Remember – the student will not be able to pass through this activity (and thus the entire lesson) if they cannot unlock the Lock App, so your lesson plan must cater for this level of difficulty.

Check out the demo here, which also includes the Lock App with numbers for Mathematics.

https://deck.toys/a/X1940JQvK

Preview, Preview, Preview

No matter which App you use, always click on Preview Deck to test whether the Slide Apps that you have applied onto the Slide Activity is working the way you intended it to!

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