I Should Be Marking

I had it all planned. I needed a citizenship lesson about crime and punishment and after 5 weeks of paper-based reources and activities my form were starting to revolt.

So, we’d watch a video from TrueTube, discuss alternatives to prison and then the pupils (in pairs or small groups) would choose a presentation method – from Slideshare, Mind42 or Museum Box.

Problem #1 – At first everyone loved the idea of a collaborative mindmap, or the fresh approach of Museum Box. 30 seconds later almost everyone had decided that creating a PowerPoint and uploading to Slideshare was the easier option. Harumph.

Problem #2 – Slideshare is blocked in school. Despite testing (my teacher’s account is slightly more open) and then editing the firewall policy I still couldn’t get it to work.

Problem #3 – If you’re using Museum Box and you accidentally close the window without having saved your work then you lose your work. Both pairs who chose that option made the same mistake.

Problem #4 – Once you;ve convinced the disheartened pupils from #3 to quickly knock together what they can, the box then has to be submitted for moderation which is likely to take days.

Problem #5 – Having decided to overcome #2 by uploading the PowerPoints myself, I find that most of them are half finished and not really of presentable quality. So do I upload them as they are? Don’t upload any? Upload just the ones that I approve of? Not an easy decision.

But take heart faithful readers! All is not lost. The class DID enjoy the lesson, certainly moreso than last week’s paper-based activities. And some learning did take place, even if the outcome is not what I had hoped.

A couple of things in one this morning.

Over the weekend I put quite a lot of time into making a World Book Day Quiz using Wordle, Prezi and Google Forms. You use Prezi to view 15 word clouds based on the text from some popular books – you have to guess the title and author of each one and enter it into the Google Form so that I can collate (and examine the data with my Y9 as part of their database unit).

The other thing is that I’ve started a more school-friendly blog on the local WPMU installation. The aim there is to model an example blog for the pupils and also to share some of the appropriate ICT links and resources I stumble across. So I’m currently actively involved with 3 forums, 2 blogs, Twitter, Facebook and a weekly Flashmeeting with EdTechRoundup. Thank God I don’t have a full time job or kids, otherwise I’d never manage it all!

The Quiz

My school blog