Yacapaca

Great teachers spend less time marking and more time teaching

recent posts

about

  • Yacapaca update details

    This weekend we completed a major update to Yacapaca. Most of it is “under the hood” stuff to help us cope with Yacapaca’s increasing popularity, but there are eight changes to the interface that you may need to know about. Here they are:

    1. Within each course, you can no longer select ‘standard’ or ‘extended’ timing. Not many people ever found that feature, so it had to go. I have split the popular ICT Baselines into two separate courses (called Standard and Extended) which achieves the same effect with less fuss.
    2. Quiz previews can now be shared in different ways – embedding, emailing to people, posting to Facebook, etc. Look for the ‘Share’ button at the bottom of the preview.
    3. Written tasks are simplified to just two types: short-text test, that works just with plain text and can be set up in minutes, and ePortfolios that have fully HTML, file attachments and all the trimmings.
    4. Teachers have always been able to comment on students’ ePortfolios; now students can comment back. So you can conduct a true conversation with your students, and keep it linked directly to the content you are talking about.
    5. It is now much easier to select just the results you want in the Markbook. We have replaced the calendar-style date filter with a dropdown of actual assignment dates. You can select any combination of assignment dates; note that the “Attempts” filter only works when you select a single assignment date.
    6. Authors of Checkbox and Drag & drop questions will be delighted to know that we have finally fixed the feedback. Easier to see than explain; please just try it!
    7. The multiple-choice-cloze question type now follows the same logic as the straight multiple choice.
    8. We have an all-new Help section, with its own tab. It is written in a wiki, and you are invited to help improve it. Contact me for a login.

  • Teacher vs. Educator

    I’m not in complete agreement with the definitions here, but I do broadly agree with the sentiments expressed. Look out for the lovely juxtaposition of the Socrates quote and the “Fire extinguisher inside building” sign.

    [Update: I found one source that attributes that quote to Plutarch, and another that says it was Plato. So it looks like it was really made up by someone who sussed it would get more credence if he claimed it came from a Greek philosopher, but he was a bit inconsistent about which one. Feel free to add your own theory in the comments, if you have a credible source.]

  • Yacapaca in an Australian primary school

    Thanks Krystie for pointing me to this fantastic 4-minute video from Yr 2 teacher Stacey Hibberson at Mount Beauty Primary School.

    If only I could explain Yacapaca that succinctly.

  • Swine flu arithmetic. Yes, you should still be afraid.

    Last month, I used swine flu as a test-case for Wolfram|Alpha. This month, with my next-door neighbour’s school already closed due to the ‘flu, I’m getting more concerned about the pandemic itself.

    Here are the charts. You can see from the shape that the previous straight line has now become an exponential.

    Notice how the two curves have about the same shape. The ratio of infections to deaths has remained approximately constant at 0.5%. Before you say “oh, that’s only in Mexico” let me give you the figures for the USA; 27,698 confirmed cases and 127 deaths. That’s 0.46%.

    In previous ‘flu pandemics, pretty much everyone in the world has been infected in the end. So, let’s do the arithmetic on what that means:

    • In a ‘bog standard’ comprehensive of 2,000 pupils, 10 pupils will die.
    • In the UK, (pop 60M), 30,000 will die.
    • In the world (pop 6Bn), 30 million people will die. This would make it the second-worst pandemic in history.

    What’s really bugging me is the complacency of the authorities, here in the UK and in many other countries. Because there have been relatively few deaths so far (Wolfram says 279 worldwide) the media is putting out the message that this is just a scare, and it will go away if we ignore it. Alternatively, the notion is promulgated that now the genii has escaped from its Mexican bottle, there is nothing we can do, so why worry?

    Neither is true. The Chinese government has shown that this major threat can be effectively countered. They are using mandatory quarantine to buy themselves time whilst a vaccine is developed. Even if they can only buy themselves six months, the vaccine should be ready, in bulk, before a significant death rate kicks in in China. At the cost of inconveniencing a few hundred people for week or so each, they may be saving as many as 5 million lives.

    So, what can you and I do to compensate for the incompetence of our elected representatives? We can insist on the maximum possible quarantine for any suspected case in school. Faced with clear evidence that one infected child in 200 is likely to die, fear of litigation may succeed where fear of infection failed.

  • A fantastic opportunity to improve literacy

    Nielsen (famous mainly for collating TV viewing stats) have just launched this interesting report (below, or pdf) on teenage media-usage habits.

    The report does a thorough job of debunking the ‘digital native’ myth, but the thing that really caught my attention is hidden away on page 7:

    Teens are prolific online publishers, too. Sixty-seven percent of teen social networkers say they update their page at least once a week.

    Here is a powerful social motivation that is driving our students to higher levels of literacy. And what are we doing to encourage this trend?

    Um, banning Facebook in school.