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By robert, February 14, 2010 5:52 pm

I’d had a chemical on backorder for a while.  It finally arrived this week – all 1g of it.  This is how it arrived in a box (about 10” high).

This is what was inside the box (as well as brown paper packaging).

And this is what was inside the white plastic container.

Perhaps a padded envelope would have been a better way of shipping it! Packaging #fail

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By robert, February 10, 2010 9:00 pm

Last year I co-wrote some BTEC resources.  They were a huge success – I’ve had emails from schools all over the country about them.   These images show the stats from the TES site and the follow through clicks to my resources site over the same period.

The popularity could have something to do with being the near the top of the Google search results for BTEC Applied Science resources.

Good news.  I’ve continued working with Wheldon School in Carlton, Nottingham.  Working together with Helen Cawthorne we’ve looked at the changes from September 2010 and written a biology module, complete with assignment briefs and a full set of resources.  As with other resources we have shared them with the hope of raising the bar in science teaching across many schools.  Please treat these resources as a work in progress – they haven’t been tested with students yet! (The module could also be used with current specs with some tinkering).

This is our interpretation of the changes and implications for schools.

Please leave feedback if you find these resources useful – hearing from others is a good motivator both for myself and the other teachers involved.

Click here for BTEC biology resources.

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By robert, February 9, 2010 9:51 pm

Having taught almost three of the new format Wikid year 8 units I had to post an update on my progress with Wikid, and my thoughts about the scheme.

In terms of organisation the new year 8 modules are a huge leap forward.  Lessons are organised into folders by lesson which makes a huge amount of difference when it comes to locating resources and lesson plans.  The content of the lessons is much the same, although they aren’t as heavily dependent on the power points to make them work which is a relief because the novelty of showing presentations soon wore off, both with myself and the pupils! The new modules have supporting video from Teachers.tv (anyone can download these from the teachers.tv website) which the Wikid team have skilfully woven into their topics, helping maintain the theme that runs through each.

The structure of the topics and activities makes it easy to add APP criteria to an activity turning it into an APP assessment with the minimum of effort.  Hot off the press is their mapping grid which helps you see which topics relate to which strand of APP, proving the Wikid team are listening to customer requests).

All is not perfect with the Wikid scheme though, and it still requires some work to use it well, and many schools may not feel confident adopting it lock, stock and barrel. 

To improve the scheme I would like to see Wikid:

• Reduce the content in the scheme and flag lessons as core lessons and lessons that can be skipped
• Less detail on lesson plans – they take ages to read!
• Lesson plans in one place (ideally one document) so you can see the progression from lesson to lesson and how they flow together.
• More AfL linked to APP built into the scheme – and not the absolutely ghastly Apprend scheme they are flogging like a dead horse.
• More support for SEN and lower achieving pupils.  Many of the activities are too wordy or too complicated and require extensive adaptation.  Not all pupils achieve level 4 – yet this seems to be the starting point for many of the assessment activities.  (And remember that many of these pupils have poor literacy skills – expecting them to write more than a few words is not an option).
• Fewer resources to photocopy – and in black and white please.  I haven’t seen a school yet that colour photocopies or prints whole class sets of colour worksheets.
• Promote the Wiki that the whole scheme is named after and encourage participation by ALL teachers who deliver the course.  At the moment the Wiki is difficult to navigate and is further let down by the lack of participation.
• Remove the Upd8 forums since Wikid staff never bother to reply to questions in there anymore.  If it’s obsolete, take it down!

Would I recommend Wikid to others? Yes.  In fact I’ve had science teachers come from out of county and within county to see it in action.  Wikid science shows enormous potential, and most students are engaged and achieving well on the course.  Of course the scheme isn’t perfect – but show me a scheme that is!

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By Rob, February 9, 2010 8:57 am

My friends ask me why I blog, and why I make the time for blogging.  Sometimes I wonder myself why I blog.  I’ve posted blog posts that have hundreds of hits, and ones that hardly register.  Sometimes I get an email or message about a blog post, but usually I don’t.   I carry on blogging, even when I don’t get any feedback, because I know somebody, somewhere will read what I have to say.

This is a collection of extracts from my logs over the last few months showing some of the more interesting visitors to my site (I’ve removed the IP addresses myself).  The bottom image shows visits from Microsoft and Google following an Outlook web access vs Google rant I had (#GoneGoogle).