Today the very popular website wordle, was not available. Some bloke decided that using the name was a copyright infringement see freetech4teachers , #savewordle and pheinblog: Wordle is in Trouble to see the back story. Now, I like using wordle, it has created some excellent posters for my class. However, the world of twitter seems very quick to react to events now rather than reflect. I remember a ‘reaction’ a while ago about the injustice of a chap who got arrested for handing in a gun to the police that he had ‘found’. Twitter was in uproar, tweets were flying all over the place about how ridiculous that was… eventually the full facts came out and they weren’t as they were first portrayed. The same, albeit less dramatic happened with wordle. As you can see from the #savewordle link people (even now – 21.20) are tweeting about saving wordle, when if you click on this link you’ll see it is back up and running.
Now don’t get me wrong, I applaud the support that has been given to Jonathan Feinberg in supporting wordle, but aren’t we in danger of jumping on bandwagons too quickly without a bit of reflection first. Twitter, is very instantaneous, and when you have tweeted, it is very difficult to ‘untweet’. Maybe its just me, but a little reflection is probably worth it in the long run.
misterel Generic, Resources worldle
I am at an impasse. DiDA has been my KS4 life for the past 3 years. I like the course. I like the way it is developing pupils abilities to think independently. I like the eportfolios and the fact that it is virtually paper free….. However, DiDA is an optional subject so I am therefore left with very mixed ability groups. For those not aware of the DiDA structure you can take up to 4 units and each unit is worth 1 GCSE. Each unit is either taught at a foundation(C-G) or higher level(A*-C). This means that in a mixed ability class I can end up teaching both courses.
This is where all my problems begin. The foundation and higher units follow a similar theme but the end results are different. This means that you therefore become a schizophrenic teacher and at some point one or both groups get a bum deal. Then there is the fact that DiDA is run by Edexcel. For some reason (profit???), it becomes a financial nightmare trying to do their exam submissions and by the end of year 11 neither you, your exams officer or headteacher have aclue how much it has cost you and what the pupils are likely to get.
The main reason that I am now in a world of indecision is that I have been offered (for £300) a complete scheme of work that will cover 6 units of the OCR nationals and will almost certainly guarantee, if the pupils follow it properly and can demonstrate their learning, a decent grade at GCSE, and the potential for more than one GCSE. The units offered are diverse and interesting and the administration seems a lot easier. With the benefit of having your own moderator coming down and telling you whether you are doing it right. On the downside, OCR is perceived to be a lot easier, less interesting and motivating for the kids.
So now I don’t know what to do….
- ditch DiDA and the admin and teaching hell it gives me
- adopt OCR Nationals, get good results, but potentially teach a boring course….
If by any fluke of the magic of the web, someone out there reads this and can give me some advice it would be vey welcome.
misterel Generic, Teaching & Learning DiDA, GCSE, indecision, motivation, OCR Nationals, teaching
I have dabbled in the world of blogging, but have so far been unsuccessful… I think it might be a character trait as I fail to keep abreast of my blog and suddenly realise that weeks have gone by and I haven’t blogged a word. This, however is the first time that i have decided to blog in the educational sphere. Hopefully teaching all day will give me enough material and insights to allow me to be a more frequent blogger.
One of the main reasons for starting this blog, is because I have become sucked into the world of twitter and have found it a very useful source of info and simple to use. I am also ‘blogging’ on our school website, although that is more a sharing of info and resources for other teachers and parents.
Going to post this now and then check out all the features available on this blog.
misterel Generic blog, blogging, education, ICT, Resources, sharing, twitter