Yacapaca

Great teachers spend less time marking and more time teaching

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Category: Commentary

  • We’ve been censored

    A teacher I’d better not name just told me that Yacapaca was blocked in his school because a student submitted an assignment about internet safety that included the phrase “child porn”. The student solved the problem by editing his assignment on his iPhone and resubmitting it. Score 1 for mobile technology and -5000 for misguided…

  • The Yacapaca philosophy (in 3 lines)

    Teachers’ time is too valuable to be wasted grading assignments… …so let computers do the mundane work, and just give you the results. Students’ time is too valuable to be wasted on summative assessments… …so turn every assessment into a formative learning experience as well. Let’s all work together… …so anything one person does will…

  • A look back on 2009

    The new blog comes with better blog stats than the old one – it’s easier to see which posts have been popular, and which not. Here are a few that seem to deserve a special mention: Why have VLEs not succeeded? Funniest Powerpoint presentation ever Publishing is Dead Google ChromeOS will kill textbooks stone dead…

  • New blog host, design

    I have moved this blog to wordpress.com so that it gets hosted for us. In the process, I am experimenting with new designs to match the much greater focus on Yacapaca that it has now. The old blog had become the target of regular ddos (distributed-denial-of-service) attacks which prevented normal users accessing either the blog…

  • Google ChromeOS will kill textbooks stone dead next year

    I have been predicting for some time that a class set of computers will soon be cheaper than the equivalent pile of textbooks. Now I’ll put a date on it. Christmas 2010. Today Google announced ChromeOS, an operating system for netbooks and other small, cheap devices. They are showing it off now, but make it…