Has anyone used ThingLink?

I've just come across ThingLink, which looks potentially very interesting. Has anyone out there used it? Do share your experience.

Study Day Evaluations; 9 November

From Carol:

Here is the feedback from the second year study day.  Overall, this is really positive, particularly as it is a second year event ..... and the verbal feedback we received at the SSCC suggests that they liked the format.

General Comments

• " Just what I needed some inspiration and something to reinforce I am doing it right!"
• "Sometimes it needed to be more interactive"
• "Really enjoyed the workshops, just wished they were longer"
• "You should make it compulsory not to eat lunch in college groups"
• "Hot food in the cold weather would be nice" (lots of Leicester College students)
• "Quality of catering was excellent"

Comments about the first lecture (Victor Allen)

• "Motivational, very interesting"
• "Liked him but wanted more links"
• "Engaging and relevant"
• "Fantastic"

Comments about the second lecture (Andy Kirkpatrick)

• "Bizarre" (many)
• "Inspirational" (many)
• "Hilarious, cried with laughter"
• "Couldn't see the point"
• "A bit risque for me" (two people)

Overall, the feedback about the workshops was really positive and for those of you who like to see a few numbers:

• 83  evaluations were returned
• 89% were aware of the content prior to the day (only one student said 'not at all')
• Victor Allen - 98%  said excellent or good and most comments were positive.
• Andy Kirkpatrick - reviews a little more mixed but 90% still said good or excellent.

And for the workshops themselves................

• Dyslexia - 71% said excellent or good.
• The power of language - 90% said excellent or good.
• Embedding maths ....89% said excellent or good.
• and .............. lost in differentiation got 100% score!
• The slight disappointment was the QTLS workshop which scored 68%.... but then again, this is still important.

A  few comments about the workshops:

• "Mark is excellent really enjoyed this"
• "I really wanted to go to this one - can we have a bigger room next time?""I loved this workshop - the two presenters were really well informed"
• "Thank you, I wanted more!"
• "What was delivered was excellent"

and the comments about the QTLS session:

• "Good but maybe better in the centres"
• "I have read all of the information online"

Overall, the day got a score of 96% excellent or good!  This is probably the best year two result we have had and it makes the effort worthwhile (almost).  Thank you again to everyone who helped things to run smoothly.

More from the Study Day...

The video from Mark's session is now available in two parts because of space limitations:

• Here is part 1: 

• Part 2 is here

You'll note that I have put it on TeacherTube rather than YouTube, just to introduce that site if you don't know it: there are lots of great resources on the site.

There will shortly be a better-quality version, in one part, on the VLE; I had to drop some of the quality because of limitations of file size on the open site.

Evaluations

From Peter: The headlines:

1.   We had 115 evaluations returned.
2.   95% thought that the day was good or excellent
3.   96% thought Sue Cowley was excellent (2% said she was average......)
4.   91% thought Mark B's differentiation session was good or excellent (60% said excellent)
5.   89% thought Mark T's ICT session was good or excellent (64% said excellent)
6.   73% thought the library session was good or excellent (29% said excellent)
7.   96% said that they were aware of the content of the study days prior to the event (58% very well informed)

Discussion Groups

Peter has been busy setting up discussion groups based on the requests you made on the Study Day, which  fell into the following groups. 

1. Behaviour Management 
2. Child Protection and Dealing With Self Harm 
3. Creativity in the Classroom 
4. Designing creative assignments and resources 
5. The General Moans and Groans about teaching thread
6. Learners with additional needs 
7. Religion in the classroom 
8. Session Planning 
9. Teaching Art and Design
10. Teaching criminology
11. Teaching ESOL 
12. Teaching Functional Skills 
13. Teaching Maths 
14. Teaching outside the mainstream 
15. Teaching practical subjects 
16. Teaching Travel and Tourism 
17.  Using social networking in education 
18. Course specific issues - a tutor will respond to you as soon as possible.

Of course their success does depend on you! To get to them, log on to BREO and scroll down the left hand panel, past all the individual centres to "Discussion Boards".

Year 1 Study Day 5 October.

Welcome to the course! 

This blog is on open access, so that it can be consulted by yourselves (who also of course have access to BREO) but also by mentors and colleagues who don't. The website itself also holds paperwork and forms which you may wish to download, and information for mentors--who might like to look at it before their training session at the Year 2 Study Day on 9 November.

We hope that you enjoyed the first Study Day and found it useful--we shall post a summary of the evaluation results shortly.


Mark Tinney has promised to post details of the sites he visited--what follows is taken from his write-up of his session in March, so it's not totally up-to-date, but we'll up-date when further information becomes available. Of course, he did his session four times, and they varied slightly. The video will appear on the VLE and also here shortly.

Mark wrote:

"Here is a list of the websites we looked at, each with a little description:

• We began the session by playing a game called Hungry Bat, which is available at this address http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Lightnin/1659457

• Ted.com – I have talked about TED several times at these events, in part because it is that good.  The site is full of great talks from experts in several fields and even better they also post some of the best and most inspiring videos from across the web.  As if the site needed to get even better, it has.  TED has added ed.TED: this is a portion of the site that allows you to create learning materials from any TED talk or YouTube video.  Students can create a free account and you can track their results.

• PollEverywhere.com – This is another website I have mentioned in several sessions, it is awesome and allows you to create quiz or poll questions that learners can respond to via text, or a unique web address you can create through the site, they can even respond via twitter.

• QRStuff.com – This is the website I use to create QR codes, you know those funny –looking codes that you can scan with your phone and then pull up a website or a body of text of virtually any bit of information you want learners to have.

• Sporcle.com - This is a quiz website, completely free and full of loads of brilliant prebuilt content and you can build your own.  This is great for just a bit of fun as well as some serious learning.

• Showbie.com – we didn’t get to look at this one, but it is certainly worth a look.  This is a website with an apple app that allows teachers to set up classes and set assignments.  The learners can submit their assignments online and the lecturer can download them, mark them digitally and post them back up for the learner to see, but the way feedback can be done is what really makes it.  Teachers can even leave audio feedback for learners.  Assessment, in my mind is only as useful as the feedback that comes out of it and this makes it easy for teachers to give really powerful feedback easily.

Thank you for your time and warm welcome on Saturday, I hope you found the session useful.  The key is to try something new, and see if it works.  Not everything will work with every group, but I think if we allow learners to complete assessment tasks that allow them to be creative and have some fun along the way, the impact will be significant."

Year 1; Study Day 2; 23 March evaluation

From Carol...

 

"Thank you all for your help at the study day on Saturday.  It was good to see a reasonable turn out despite the weather conditions and it seems that the students enjoyed the day.  Peter has analysed the evaluations and the following represents a summary of the feedback:

 

56% were well prepared for the Study Day (only 2% said "not at all")
- 90% were very/quite pleased with the topic
- 89% found Kathryn's lecture at least quite interesting
- 97% found Mark's lecture at least quite interesting (84% very interesting!)
- 87% found the interest group briefing very clear
- 71% said the timing of the Interest Groups was about right
- 49% thought the SIG work was quite useful....
- 65% would attend the Study Day if it was optional...

The feedback from the [Student Consultative Committee] was also very positive and I will send this as soon as it is typed up."

Mark Tinney's notes from the Study Day; 23 March

As a quick write up of Saturday’s presentation, let me start by apologising that my demonstration of Google Drive failed miserably, in an effort to make amends, here is a  link to a little video I have done and posted on YouTube to show you how it works: http://youtu.be/p50GiJnW9HE.

Here is a list of the websites we looked at, each with a little description:

Ted.com – I have talked about TED several times at these events, in part because it is that good.  The site is full of great talks from experts in several fields and even better they also post some of the best and most inspiring videos from across the web.  As if the site needed to get even better, it has.  Ted has added ed.TED: this is a portion of the site that allows you to create learning materials from any TED talk or YouTube video.  Students can create a free account and you can track their results.

PollEverywhere.com – This is another website I have mentioned in several sessions, it is awesome and allows you to create quiz or poll questions that learners can respond to via text, or a unique web address you can create through the site, they can even respond via twitter.

QRStuff.com – This is the website I use to create QR codes, you know those funny –looking codes that you can scan with your phone and then pull up a website or a body of text of virtually any bit of information you want learners to have.

We also took a look at Morfo Booth, this is an Apple app that allows you to take any picture of someone, that is face front and animate it, adding sound and even making your own video.  This is great for learner projects, mini biographies or just a fun way to present information.  My learners love it.

Sporcle.com - This is a quiz website as well, completely free and full of loads of brilliant prebuilt content and you can build your own.  This is great for just a bit of fun as well as some serious learning.

WeFeelfine.org – This is just a bit of fun that can be used in some very creative ways in the classroom, it is a display of the way the world feels at any given time, and you can explore discuss or even write about those feelings.

Showbie.com – we didn’t get to look at this one, but it is certainly worth a look.  This is a website with an apple app that allows teachers to set up classes and set assignments.  The learners can submit their assignments online and the lecturer can download them, mark them digitally and post them back up for the learner to see, but the way feedback can be done is what really makes it.  Teachers can even leave audio feedback for learners.  Assessment, in my mind is only as useful as the feedback that comes out of it and this makes it easy for teachers to give really powerful feedback easily.

We began the session by playing a game called hungry bat, which is available at this address
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Lightnin/1659457

Thank you for your time and warm welcome on Saturday, I hope you found the session useful.  The key is to try something new, and see if it works.  Not everything will work with every group, but I think if we allow learners to complete assessment tasks that allow them to be creative and have some fun along the way, the impact will be significant.

Information for Year 1 Study Day, 23 March

From Carol;

Study Day Interest Groups

The purpose of the study day interest groups is to provide a structured opportunity for you to network with other teachers within your subject specialism.  This task has been created to provide an incentive for discussion relating to assessment in your subject area.  The aim of the task is to initiate discussion, however, it is expected that this dicusssion will continue outside of the study days and you will utilise this opportunity to share ideas and good practice with colleagues across the network.   This can be done through the discussion boards which are set up on BREO.

Interest Group Task

Discuss the uses of assessment in your subject area including formal and informal strategies.

Produce information for other teachers on the topic of assessment by producing either:

·         A presentation

·         or

·         A document with the title '20 Top Tips for Assessment'.

This information should be posted onto BREO in the discussion board area.  You will also need to keep a copy of it for your Unit 4 portfolios.

Mark’s bundle of coolness – ILT session (2 March Study Day)

from Mark Tinney:

PowToon.com – This is a new online presentation tool which allows you to create navigable animated presentations or videos up to about 5 minutes in length (for the free version).  There is a bit of a learning curve to getting used to them, but there are a number of templates which make the basics very easy.  You can even publish them straight to youtube.

TED.com – I have talked about TED several times at these events, in part because it is that good.  The site is full of great talks from experts in several fields and even better they also post some of the best and most inspiring videos from across the web.  As if the site needed to get even better, it has.  Ted has added TEded this is a portion of the site that allows you to create learning materials from any TED talk or YouTube video.  Students can create a free account and you can track their results.

PollEverywhere.com – This is another website I have mentioned in several session, it is awesome and allows you to create quiz or poll questions that learners can respond to via text, or a unique web address you can create through the site, they can even respond via twitter.

QRStuff.com – This is the website I use to create QR codes, you know those funny –looking codes that you can scan with your phone and then pull up a website or a body of text of virtually any bit of information you want learners to have.

In one group I was able to look at Morfo Booth, this is an Apple app that allows you to take any picture of someone, that is face front and animate it, adding sound and even making your own video.  This is great for learner projects, mini biographies or just a fun way to present information.  My learners love it. (Also available for Android but possibly not yet in the UK --James)

Playbrighter.com – This is a quiz website (a game website really) that allows you to create groups of learners and quizzes (called missions on the site) for the learners to complete.  Grades are kept, as is your question bank for the next time you want to use it.  It is free to try, although after 10 quizzes it is a fee based site, but it is worth it I promise.

Sporcle.com - We didn’t look at this in either session, but I have done so in previous sessions, this is a quiz website as well, completely free and full of loads of brilliant prebuilt content and you can build your own.  This is great for just a bit of fun as well as some serious learning.

We began each session by playing a game called hungry bat, which is available at this address
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Lightnin/1659457

Thank you for your time and warm welcome on Saturday, I hope you found the session useful.  The key is try something new, and see if it works.

Year 2 Study Day--2 March

No usual evaluation report this time, I'm afraid. I can only apologise for not having organised the collection of the forms efficiently enough, and the 24 forms we did collect were not sufficient to have any claim to be representative.

However, you can still read the contributions to the Question Time slot via Twitter (#pce2) and add any write-in comments you wish.

In particular, Shane tweeted thus with the information you were requesting about QTS/QTLS and IfL;

Links for #PCE2: QTS/QTLS advice http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/careers/traininganddevelopment/qts/a00205922/qlts-guidance … & @IFL_Members membership http://www.ifl.ac.uk/membership/renew-now …

 ...but as promised, we shall be circulating everyone with that information shortly.

Thanks to everyone for their contributions to the day, and we hope you took away useful information and ideas for Unit 7.