Minor change in naming convention on KS3 resources

This won't really affect anyone but me. I've just changed the naming convention on the KS3 resources starting in unit 7C. Instead of naming them by page number with title I have uploaded the resources with the sheet number.

This is a little easier for me to cope with the volume as Adobe PDF Reader can take in the text directly, and it saves me having to look for the page number, which may be different across a single worksheet (i.e. when a worksheet is 2 pages long)

The ability to reference the sheet with regards to the physical hard copy resources file is unaffected.

KS3 resources being moved from Los Alamos to live site

I have begun the process of making the KS3 resources live. This has so far taken me all night and I've completed the Year 7 resources. Any assistance labelling them much appreciated.

Oh. My. God. I've solved it! It's REAL!

I just mentioned in passing this morning to a friend that I had been up late last night trying to work out how to download videos and she said that she had worked it out last night herself, totally independently.

Get this.

It's THIS easy....

Download the latest version of Realplayer, install it, and go to youtube.

In youtube, once you've found a video that you want to see like this one



or this one



just hover over the video and realplayer gives you the option to download the video!!!!!!!!!

and just for effect....

!!!!!!!!!

and you know what's even cooler?

You don't even have to go to youtube, it works on the embedded videos like erm... this one



Try it!

It's only 10:30 on saturday morning and I already feel like I've solved a small amount of the worlds problems.

Video Library issues - legal and technical issues

The first concern is legal, but I have covered this by mentioning that the site is only going to be for teachers to access the videos, and perhaps to make them available to the pupils to download for learning. I believe that this shouldn't cause too much trouble.

Technically I have already encountered the first issue with the use of a video library. The maximum upload is set by default at 8mb and the server I currently have is not going to be big enough if we start to upload a lot of videos. For a real video library to work I will need to splash a bit more cash out and go for the package one or two steps up from the one I have.

I can change the maximum upload size and retain the maximum upload size for pupils as is, so that isn't a problem. I will change the maximum upload size on Los Alamos now to try and accomodate the extra space needed for video and we'll see if this works.

NOTE TO SELF FOR LATER: Ensure that the setting for the main site is changed to accomodate files larger than the present 8mb limit.

Well bite me - I've nearly worked out how to get around our youtube issue!

I've been poking around on the net for a way to circumvent our 1985 mytube system. A simple search done by typing in "Youtube Downloader" into The Answer Machine turned up this little beauty

http://vixy.net/

Yes it DOES deserve it's own line. In theory, this little baby does exactly what we've been after all year. It takes a youtube video and converts it into a MP4 for playback on Windows Media Player and I-pods!!!!! I have had trouble with the AVI converter, and MP4 doesn't play as standard on windows media player I think, so we'll have to check it out on the school computers before we can safely say that we have kicked the arse of this particular beast, so there are still some gaps that need to be filled before we can go into a class and not f*ck around waiting for 40 minutes for that precious 50 second video in class while the class sits laughing at your apparent IT incompetence.

I've been trying it out with this tasty guitar solo piece by the little Korean Funtwo and now my ears ache after having converted this to MP4, MP3 and various other formats and blasting my brains out with guitar madness!!!

Enjoy...

A video archive

It struck me today on the way home that we have a massive issue with the videos in the department and I thought that, on top of giving myself the whole of KS3 Quizstar to do I might as well set up another major digitisation project/computing shiftover.

The issue is this: At present the science department has a bunch of videos on VHS (Yes it IS 1985) and we have this really quaint cabinet that gets wheeled around. The kids laugh their heads off when we get this thing out and some of us get a nice retro feeling (embarrassment actually) in our stomachs.

The solution? Well erm...we have these bloody huge white boards in the front of every classroom. You might have seen them. Apparently they replaced blackboards some time in the future. And APPARENTLY they are interactive! *Gasp* It's like the mythical "Answer Machine" that was predicted on paleo-future!



Now call me naive but I see a glaring solution here. Rather than having to wheel around this big fuck-off TV and VHS thing, I think it's time we did away with the whole thing, digitised the lot and put it on...yes you guessed it... moodle!

The benefits are obvious. No more lost/knackered out tapes, everyone can use the resource at once and download the video directly to the local computer before the lesson, the pupils can watch the video at home, etc etc, I don't even need to go on.

So erm.. onto the "how" bit. Well I'm happy to do it on one condition.

The school coughs up the money for the kit and I get to take it home and run it.

There, I've said it. Finally some money should change hands for a change.

If this is done that is a HUGE benefit for the school and a MASSIVE investment in the future. Will they stump up? Let's see...

Major trouble with year 10 to year 10 cross course importing

Any ideas on how to resolve import issues from one live year 10 course to another would be greatly appreciated.

It's getting as far as zipping the file for export then stopping, Is starting to annoy me a bit now.

One for the chemistry types

Here's a list of pretty much every question ever written in multi-choice for chemsistry types. I'm going to start putting some into a hot potatoes format.

Any suggestions on multi-choice banks of physics questions much appreciated

Glitchey import

Just writing my first course for year 10 for the next unit (well actually as a revision of this unit and practice for me and have found that the library import creates a few ghost modules which need to be deleted. Even though the library does save a lot of time it does need to be double checked after import to ensure that the right stuff has been copied over. Also there's an issue that, unless you know your materials there's no way of knowing (except by feel) which resource will appear in each chapter. It's not a major glitch, just ensure you double check all resources when imported.

Hot Potatoes as an introduction to e-learning assessment

Thinking about further expansion into the department I am going to suggest to the biologists, and also Nick that they download the Hot Potatoes application and make some quizzes using that.

This way they can get used to making some quizzes for electronic use and they will be able to add them as soon as we allow them to go live so it's not wasted time. I think that Hot Potatoes provides the perfect intermediary between fully online and offline quiz making.

In the meantime I will upload some resources into a biology bank for the next units for them to use when they do come online.

I say this because there has been a bit of interest coming in from biology about the VLE and I would love to feed on the enthusiasm while it's still there. I think we'll be about ready to let them loose on it after we've done this first unit, so perhaps in December?

Training moodle explicitly

One recent issue that has arisen is that some pupils are finding the moodle interface more difficult to use than anticipated. Rafa has suggested that perhaps we need to spend a few lessons actually explicitly explaining the use of moodle before we move into the topic.

We are lucky in that the science department has this year adopted the teaching of IT as well, so we are in the computer room anyway once a week with some of our classes and I would probably make use of some of these lessons to teach the use of moodle as an IT skill.

On top of this I am currently looking for some ready made tutorials on the use of moodle for secondary level students. I may have to make them myself.

I think that the opening page course page will be a decent place to put these so they are accesible immediately

Journals

I've added a journal to the year 11 and year 10 teachers libraries for the coruses we're teaching this time. I want to experiment with this this unit.

Nerves!

Holy crap I thought I had just deleted all my files in chemistry year 10!

Be very careful when importing assignment uploads, as I tried to import an advanced assignment upload from the teachers library into my year 10 chemistry course and very nearly killed the whole thing!

I'm not yet sure what happened, but it created a backup copy and I can now breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe it's safer to just make an assignment upload locally, loathe as I am to do so.

Progress report - glitch

Just a note for the records about the groupings.

We're having a little trouble with separating classes between me and Rafa as each class has needed an entirely independent set of resources and quizzes and other things.

Although we initially had the idea that we were going to run the same course between us using groupings, this hasn't worked and hence we have settled for a template course, which contains shared resources. These are then copied to each course of our own using moodle's import function within the area of the class that we are teaching.

Planning ahead I would ideally like to find a way that all resources are put into this template class (we are calling them meta-classes at the moment but we're not sure if this term is quite correct) so that resources would be shared rather than developed independently by teachers in their own course and not seen by anyone else.

I see one of the strengths of moodle is it's ability to do act as a shared resource bank on which teachers can share and develop ideas and simultaneously test them in class, but if a strict template system is not adhered to there will be disarray with resources scattered far and wide.

Any ideas on this Rafa? Is it worth forcing import of resources at the expense of individual course development? I think that in a 2 person system our present system works fine, but looking ahead I worry that importing resources from a central bank may prove a little too complex, but I do think it's necessary, especially as teachers may not have access to each others courses directly

Year 10 course uploaded

Alright so it took a while, but the year 10 next course library is up and ready to use.

Now you can access any worksheet you like and add to the course for distribution to the pupils.

It takes ages to do, but eventually this job should really be in the hands of a course creator who sits above the teacher in the course creation hierarchy, providing resources ready to use. At the moment I have uploaded these to demonstrate how moodle (or any other VLE) can be used as a mobile resource bank for both teachers and students)

So let's see if it works then huh...

Zipped files of chapters

Discovered this week that it is much easier jsut to upload a zipped file of resources for a whole chapter and unzip it on the site then assign the files when they're on there. Yippee! Time-saver!

The library of worksheets is coming along nicely so far, in the background/teachers (meta-)courses and, at least in my eyes this helps me to see what there is available to us to help inform my (virtual) lesson planning.

More year 10 lessons to follow, I will be unleashing this on them in 2 weeks time, I am a bit behind schedule, due to slow start when settling in at the start of term, so I am playing catch-up now.

How do we use the VLE?

Linked to the previous post is the discussion as to what level we want to use the VLE.

Our main drawback at the moment is the lack of computers in our lessons - even if each lab was equipped with a teacher's PC, there would be no way for students to log in to the VLE during a lesson, and booking the IT Rooms is not always possible.

Therefore, I believe that the contents of the VLE should support the students' individual learning at home, and the teacher's monitoring and assessment of a student's progress. Here are some ideas of what the VLE could include:

• Revision sheets with the highlights of each unit (possibly compiled by students?)


• Links to external sites providing support material, or interesting connections to the topic.


• Quizzes or other self-assessment material, especially at the end of a unit


• Homework assignments to be submitted online - hence testing ICT skills


• Students' self-reflection of their progress (possibly by means of a learning diary/blog)

However, I don't think it is necessary to have:

• Worksheets or questions to be done in class - unless an IT room is available


• Experiments

Any further thoughts? Over to you, pal!

Upload of resources for next year 11 course complete

Year 11 P2.10 resources completed on teachers resources site and ready for importing into your own sites for next course. We need to work on some quizzes and put more websites and interactive stuff on in support.

Grouping by category

Due to the total breakdown/failure of the group system it's clear that we'll have to find a way around this and I propose subdividing the categories into teacher categories below the year category.

So this will thus lead to
Year 11 > Mr Hoang > P2.10 - Blah blah blah
and
Year 11 > Mr Ribas > P2.10 - Blah blah blah

Both of these should be sourced from the Teachers area course, which I guess would be some sort of "meta"-course, insofar as it will not be a TAUGHT course as such but merely a store that will function to hold every resource you could possibly use for each topic/page, filed in the correct places.

Also Rafa you should have a crack at making quizzes - I found the drop down cloze exercises a great laugh to develop!

Naming for worksheets uploaded

I'm giving them the page number first, followed by the name a the top of the worksheet if in the 360 folder - this means that we can refer to them ourselves from the folder.

For example the first sheet from P2.10 is called "Doing Work" and is from page 306 so I have called it

306 - Doing Work

This gives each page a unique reference number as well and distinguishes from resources that come from 360 and elsewhere.

Wooo-hoo! Shine on you crazy diamond!