With Test Designer, creating tests and worksheets to fit your needs has just become easier - and more fun! Choose from existing questions or create your own, print tests and answer keys separately, and arrange the layout as you prefer. You’re able to create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true or false, or open-ended questions, and you can mix and match as you like.

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Challis Thasall is the mom of four wonderful, witty children, and wife to one stubborn, wonderful husband. Currently homeschooling her two young children, she homeschooled her older children through graduation and is a homeschool graduate herself. She enjoys using free resources to spark her children’s interest and imagination, meeting their needs and keeping learning fun. The special needs, found throughout her immediate and extended families, add to the adventure and give further proof that every child learns in their own way.

Name of Product: Test Designer

Link to Product/website: http://testdesigner.com/

Description of Product: “Printable tests and worksheets made easy with Test Designer!”

Challis’ Description of Product: With Test Designer, creating tests and worksheets to fit your needs has just become easier - and more fun! Choose from existing questions or create your own, print tests and answer keys separately, and arrange the layout as you prefer. You’re able to create multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true or false, or open-ended questions, and you can mix and match as you like.

When browsing the existing questions, they list over 9,000 subjects to choose from, all of which are easy to navigate with subcategories for most subjects. Test Designer offers questions designed for Pre-K through grade 12, and on into College level, Graduate and Continuing Education. If you’d like to share your test with someone, simply enter their email address and Test Designer will send them a link to the test. They don’t have to be a member and they won’t be able to see your answer key (great for sharing with students!).

Test Designer’s Basic membership is FREE and includes all functions except the ability to add images to your tests. To add images (theirs or your own), Test Designer Pro^TM is available for an annual membership fee of $9.95 (a free 1-month trial is offered). With either membership, you can access your questions and tests any time you sign in.

Homeschool Uses: With the freedom to create your pages as you wish, anything is possible with Test Designer. You can create tests, quizzes and worksheets based on each child or group of children, focusing on what pertains to them specifically or in general. You’re able to address each student’s individual needs, their strengths and weaknesses, how they learn and how they express themselves best.

Go beyond tests and worksheets and begin creating book reports, journal formats, and summaries of field trips or vacations. Work on sequencing, social skills, cooking and even chores (your children will love that!). You have the flexibility to mix subjects, grade levels and question formatting. Maybe you’ll want to personalize your tests for each student, have fun with the questions and answers, or keep it very serious. Students could use Test Designer to create their own study guides (the site is not available to anyone under 13 years of age).

Test Designer’s existing questions cover a wide variety of subjects, including the standard subjects you’d expect to see (i.e.: math, science, language arts) as well as those you might not (i.e.; foreign languages, sports, pop culture). You’re also able to browse questions based on level of education or include all levels.

Content and Safety: Using their search option, I checked several terms which might be of concern to some parents. A few came up, as one might expect on a site of this nature, with topics including health and biology, though none were vulgar or out-of-line. Test Designer’s Terms of Use makes it clear that offensive or objectionable materials are not permitted. When registering, in addition to providing a valid email address, you’re asked to create a Member Name. Test Designer discourages using a real name or identifiable information and, in their Privacy Policy, they state “The Member Name is the only identifier that is public and that will be displayed when you log in…”.

Challis’ Experience Using the Product: I often create worksheets, quizzes, for-fun pages, etc., for my children and Test Designer has simplified that process greatly! Creating questions and tests was easy, especially with the step-by-step process. Taking a question created earlier and adding it to a new test was just as easy (you can add a question or group to as many tests as you‘d like). When logging into the site later, I quickly found the tests I’d created in My Content and could pick up where I left off or start a new project.

Test Designer lets you import questions you’ve written in other programs, though I can’t see the need when this tool does so much. In their Browse Questions section, I found questions to add to my tests, as well as ideas for creating my own questions. The list of subjects is impressive, right down to Business, Technology, Religion and Music.

I didn’t find their search function or their Question Index (an alphabetical listing of tags) as useful. Not every subject includes questions for each level of education, though I find the greatest benefit to this site is being able to create and customize materials for each of my children. I would have enjoyed such a tool while I was in college, using it as I studied for tests. Those homemade study cards were pretty on their colored paper, but this sure would have been nice to have!

Tutorial or Promotional Video of the Product: In addition to explaining how to perform various functions in their FAQ/Help, Test Designer provides a How To section, which includes tutorials on How To Write Math Equations and tips on How To Write Good Test Questions.

Summary: An easy to use, inexpensive tool that allows the creation of individualized tests, worksheets and more, Test Designer is a great product for any educator. The creators of this website clearly seem to understand the varying needs of both educators and students. They have done well in helping us meet those needs.

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