I am looking for practical advice on how to make my courses have more of a SC angle.
I have been moodling for over a year now but we recently rolled it out across all 7 year groups in the department this September gone. It is going great and I am very happy with our use of most of the modules but want to create more human interaction between students rather than just teacher / student. Peer Workshops is probably about the closest we have got.
Is any one from the UK using forums or other social techniques to support the delivery of the ICT national strategy or GCSE ICT courses?
Thanks in advance
Darren
We have just started to use Moodle. Our students don't know about it yet - we are still building our courses.
Although at present I don't see a use for forums - Moodle's life here is still young.
I have looked in the Course Exchange, but there is very little there. I am more than willing to exchange courses and resources once they are created.
Thanks for the reply.
I put 1 or 2 national strategy quizes in the course exchange but it doesn't seem to be an active area of this site
.
Is there anything in particular I can send you? We (I) tend to be making the course content as we go along so all courses are not complete and will need major revision next time round but if you are after a KS3 unit or GCSE project in particular to look at then let me know
. CAn't promise it would be useful but i think it's always nice to see what others are up to. I will be looking at AGCE in depth but that will be when the Y11 and Y13's have gone!
Darren
I put 1 or 2 national strategy quizes in the course exchange but it doesn't seem to be an active area of this site
. Is there anything in particular I can send you? We (I) tend to be making the course content as we go along so all courses are not complete and will need major revision next time round but if you are after a KS3 unit or GCSE project in particular to look at then let me know
. CAn't promise it would be useful but i think it's always nice to see what others are up to. I will be looking at AGCE in depth but that will be when the Y11 and Y13's have gone!Darren
Been working with Moodle for the past year but based in Wales so GCSE maps but we still don't have a national strategy - is that a good thing I ask, maybe
Looking to roll it out school wide after summer half term, but everyone is saying 'teacher workload'!!! What about mine!!!
Been working with Moodle for the past year but based in Wales soGCSE maps but we still don't have a national strategy - is that a goodthing I ask, maybe 
Depends. If you have an inovative dept then yes, it's a good thing you don't have it. If you have dept focussed on teaching skills then it's a bad thing you don't have it! That said, the pilot tests start in a coupla weeks so the jury is still out!
Looking to roll it out school wide after summer half term, but everyone is saying 'teacher workload'!!! What about mine!!!
Tell me about it.
I made an offer in another fourm - dunno if you saw it. In fact, dunno if you took me up on it (sooooo busy!)
If you want, I'll show you yours if you show me mine. I am happy to swap course zips to save us both some effort (although most of our stuff is based around the nat strat!!!)
are you the mark pelling from st martins school?
Darren, I have recently used the dfwiki, to get students to brainstorm ideas and share them with each other and the staff. In the A-level GCE applied ICT courses we use dfwiki the same way and also use forums for sharing the location of useful resources and ideas for inclusion in essays. These resources could be (for example) the location of interesting articles on the impact of ICT on society, the data Protection act, the whereabouts of independant learning resources eg tutorials for PaintShop Pro etc. Fidning good resrouces on the net takes time and I sell the idea through a collaboration saves time improves marks angle.
They seem to be working but it was slow start, students dont understand this way of working - a bit like doing group work with some classes - once they tried it a few times its no big deal and everybody gets stuck in. I tend to kick start the activity by demo and then getting every body in contribute in calss after sharing ideas with peer partners.
I know this is not nat strat but on the bases of lower school ICT stuff we are looking at more effective use of homeworks offered through our moodle site. These will be more exciting, challening and encourage Ind. Learnering rather than some of the more useless rubbish that can be thrown at pupils.
They seem to be working but it was slow start, students dont understand this way of working - a bit like doing group work with some classes - once they tried it a few times its no big deal and everybody gets stuck in. I tend to kick start the activity by demo and then getting every body in contribute in calss after sharing ideas with peer partners.
I know this is not nat strat but on the bases of lower school ICT stuff we are looking at more effective use of homeworks offered through our moodle site. These will be more exciting, challening and encourage Ind. Learnering rather than some of the more useless rubbish that can be thrown at pupils.
I have no idea what ICT is, so maybe my input is not worth much, but I use the forums in a very similar way to what Jon outlines. This is for a low-credit, college-level Basic Computer Skills course where the students choose from a list of questions every week. I write several questions which I house in the choice module. In this way I lead the content they cover each week. The weekly choice opens at midnight on Sunday, so they're amped up to get in and choose the easiest question. Then they do their research online and answer in the forum. I require citation of web site and accession date for all research, so they get some citation experience in the mix.
For my courses, the key to a good interactive forum has been to build a return to others' posts into the schedule of class activities (and also have a rubric for evaluating posts, to insure quality of thought). My students post the answer to their chosen question on Wednesday. By Saturday they must have responded to three other students' posts in the same forum. This insures that they return to the forum, and read what others have written, and interact with one another there. Perhaps its overly structured, but I find that for adult learners with schedules that were busy before they started college, it takes just such prodding to insure they return to the forum.
For my courses, the key to a good interactive forum has been to build a return to others' posts into the schedule of class activities (and also have a rubric for evaluating posts, to insure quality of thought). My students post the answer to their chosen question on Wednesday. By Saturday they must have responded to three other students' posts in the same forum. This insures that they return to the forum, and read what others have written, and interact with one another there. Perhaps its overly structured, but I find that for adult learners with schedules that were busy before they started college, it takes just such prodding to insure they return to the forum.
This is not specific to GCSE or KS3. I have two social constructivist suggestions to
make. I teach in an International School in Zürich. We do IB (International Baccalaureate) programme throughout the school.
Using student created glossaries. I have used them with KS3 aged children in science classes and older students 16 to 19 year olds) in International Bacc. Biology.
Basically student s research key technical vocabulary, then write their own glossary entries. We use GIMP to make graphics and animations (this is stunningly easy to produce good animated gif with layers dialogues. StarOffice to create flash swf from fairly simple StarImpress files. SC part then comes in with rating and comments before we move the best glossary entries up to the official course glossary. typical comments are related to level of language (we have a lot of non native speakers), referencing, use of multimedia overall clarity. We discuss the criteria of judgment. This is normal in our assessment system so this SC part ois of great general benefit.
Second SC type activity is students working as teams using eXe to create learning package websites or SCORMS to teach other usually younger students. So we are using IT as a tool and learning how to use some of the applications as we go. This is not yet fully integrated but we are getting there. Hope this might have helped. Of course MOODLE is the major path of delivery.
make. I teach in an International School in Zürich. We do IB (International Baccalaureate) programme throughout the school.
Using student created glossaries. I have used them with KS3 aged children in science classes and older students 16 to 19 year olds) in International Bacc. Biology.
Basically student s research key technical vocabulary, then write their own glossary entries. We use GIMP to make graphics and animations (this is stunningly easy to produce good animated gif with layers dialogues. StarOffice to create flash swf from fairly simple StarImpress files. SC part then comes in with rating and comments before we move the best glossary entries up to the official course glossary. typical comments are related to level of language (we have a lot of non native speakers), referencing, use of multimedia overall clarity. We discuss the criteria of judgment. This is normal in our assessment system so this SC part ois of great general benefit.
Second SC type activity is students working as teams using eXe to create learning package websites or SCORMS to teach other usually younger students. So we are using IT as a tool and learning how to use some of the applications as we go. This is not yet fully integrated but we are getting there. Hope this might have helped. Of course MOODLE is the major path of delivery.