This link (ICT Strategy) is my quick thoughts on what Moodle, Mahara and SLG gives our school. This is stage 1 of sorting out a strategy to present to SLT to try and get the ball rolling again. If you have a look at it and think there are any obvious mistakes, omissions or you have any thing else to add, please do so via comments. Many thanks in advance.
I have a few Y13 students who are resiting their Unit 2 (G041) paper in January (OCR Applied GCE ICT). They have been panicking a bit and wanted to do some past papers. The issue is that Section A is based on a case study and changes everytime, so lack of time means that’s out of the window. Therefore they can only practice the section B which is generic info about ICT and business. I have set up a small Edmodo group for them and have been sharing hints and tips for passing the exam as well as how to write the three main pre-release task. I also decided to create interactive past papers. These papers would enable them to answer different section B questions from past papers and click a submit via email button and I’d get their answers.
Having recently got from school a licenced copy of Adobe CS3 Master suite I had noticed a function called create form. Using Adobe lifecycle design I have managed to create a very simple and rustic interactive past paper. The video below will hopefully show how its done (although it seems to take an age to load! – was my first attempt at jing and think I made it too big – got carried away with my widescreen – updated now – used Camstudio and uploaded to youtube):
When the results are emailed back they come in an xml format. There have been a couple of issues with this…
If you have a solution to either it’d be much appreciated… I’ll probably work it out if I RTFM but haven’t got around to that yet. Here is an example of a past paper that I have created. Jun07questionpaper
Having read Tomaz Lasic’s blog post on ‘Grow a moodle‘ I decided to have a go myself with Year 12 students who are back in school preparing to start their Y13 Applied ICT course. However, due to the fact that I didn’t think my kids would leap at the chance to teach teachers straight away I decided to adopt a slightly different tactic.
The students are following the OCR Applied ICT course and will be doing the Publishing Unit, the Web Design unit and the compulsory Working to a Brief unit. Due to a cut in teaching time this year I had decided to combine the Web design and Brief units. The students, were slightly aprehensive and also seem to have a ‘fear’ of web design. This is due to the fact that their experience of web design so far has been a tad hit and miss and their knowledge of the mechanics behind webpages was lacking. (As ICT Coordinator, I hold my hands up and admit that this shouldn’t have been the case!).
I therefore needed a way to get the students understanding of web design, xhtml and css up to a higher enough standard to enable them to confidently complete the course. They also needed to learn how to use Openmind BE (matchwares fantastic project management software). So I decided to set them a task that would meet all their needs.
The task I devised was quite simple:
‘You need to design a course(topic) in moodle for year 7 students to show them how to create a website using html.
You will need to do the following:
You are in the ideal position to create a course that will work as you experience lots of different types of lessons….
Have fun, enjoy yourself and don’t be afraid to experiment.‘
Once the task was introduced I gave them all teacher status in a moodle course. They were then all told that they had control of one topic box and were shown some of the basics in moodle – how to turn editing on, the resources and the activities menus. (Handy tip – assign the topic boxes to students first before they overwrite each others and my topic box). Once they get over the joy of typing silly comments in their own box and re-ordering their postion within the course, they then started to have a play.
Their next lesson, then needed them to start mind mapping what they actually were going to do. This included research, planning, designing, creating etc. They have now completed a mind map and are in the process of preparing their gantt chart. They have been very enthusiastic about the whole process and I think they like the fact that they have been given ‘control’ of part of moodle. At the end of lesson 2 I also mentioned that once they have got to grips with moodle they will then be used to teach other teachers how to use moodle. I was quietly pleased with their positive response.
Now I have to wait and see how creative they become with moodle and also whether this has also meant that their confidence for web design has increased and that they can be up and running when I give them the ‘brief’ in September.
I would like to say that I will update as this develops, but I am rather useless as setting time aside to write up posts so it maybe a tad hit and miss.
Functional skills are a fantastic idea. The need to pass a functional skills test in order to get a diploma is a great idea. The need to pass level 2 functional skills test in English, Maths and ICT to get a coresponding A*-C at GCSE is quite scary. The premise is (as far as I have worked out) that for a pupil to get a GCSE in any of the three ‘tool’ subjects (Maths, English or ICT) then they must have passed a functional skills test.
I’m not sure on the impact of this on the two core subjects, but for ICT it all depends on what you deliver at KS4 and whether you are offering a Diploma. OCR Nationals & DiDA are not ‘true’ GCSEs so are therefore exempt from the need to have functional skills… Therefore I can foresee a massive increase in the number of schools offering those 2 options and ditching the GCSE.
However, back to my first statement…’Functional skills are a fantastic idea’. I believe this to be the case. The reason being is that our kids are, in general spoon fed. They get help with coursework, how to write exam answers, essays etc… But, when they try to transfer skills from one subject area to another there seems to be issues. Many a time I have seen pupils using PowerPoint inappropriately in an English lesson and I am quite sure that our pupils fail to write ‘persuasively’ in an ICT lesson…
What to do next is my next dilema. Having been on a recent launch for functional skills and seen the amount of money the government is throwing at it, functional skills look like they are here to stay. Having had a few chats with our Deputy Head I reckon our best bet is to get all pupils to take the functional skills test in Yr 9. This will mean that any pupils doing ICT GCSE or a diploma will already have deomonstrated their ICT functionality before starting their new courses. Also think we will go with the Welsh board, have heard good things about their assessment… will trial it next year.
Have just been re-reading my posts and have realised that twitter has been mentioned, linked to, but not really explained… Also I think I am a visual learner… Twitter is the biggest word in the tag cloud I added!!! So I’ll try and explain how I use Twitter and the benefits you can get from it.
In simple terms Twitter is a micro blog. You can only post 140 characters at a time. I’m guessing originally people were just posting day to day activities, thoughts etc that they felt like posting. However, because you can follow and be followed by anyone, twitter has developed unofficial networks of people that share resources, ideas etc. In surfing terms I’m still a bit of a ‘grommet’ when it comes to twitter. I’m following more people than follow me and I’m still getting to grips with the whole process.
To be honest though, twitter has become my first port of call for info and the response time from other users has been fantastic. The big question is, can it be used in education. I have started to dabble with this idea and so far I’m still undecided. I introduced the concept of twitter to my sixth form ICT students, they have all made accounts and now follow each other and a generic ICT twitter account that I set up. I use this to post useful links and info about the lessons. The beauty of it is, I can’t write to much and neither can they.
There are some teething problems… Although I may think that ICT innovation and new ideas are in the realm of the next generation, none of my pupils had heard of twitter and it therefore took them a while to understand the concept. Secondly, they have to actively check their twitter account for new tweets… They seem to be a tad lazy at this. So, will wait and see how well they get on with it and will post here accordingly. In the grand scheme of things it would be fantastic if the school could have its own generic twitter account and every parent followed it…. one day.
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.