Chalkface Blog

The best teaching materials in the most practical format.

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  • It doesn't feel like Google any more

    It feels like the end of an era. Google has become so dominant in our lives, that you may need reminding that when it first appeared its spartan looks were quite shocking. Now, white backgrounds are almost de rigueur. Or they were until today!

    Look at this skin that just appeared on my Google Mail! There are 20-odd skins to choose from, some looking suspiciously inspired by our wilder ePortfolio themes. If you’re a Gmail user, check out Graffiti, for instance.

    All of a sudden I feel vindicated in my holding out for black backgrounds!

  • Tricks-of-the-trade that boost student motivation

    I received a long and very thoughtful email yesterday from Calum Munro, who teaches IT in Melbourne, Australia. Calum said

    Yacapaca is not … a resource to ‘over use’ as the students have a low concentration/interest span and if they use a quiz a lot (even with the shuffling that the program does) they just start to (more…)

  • Data Protection Issues

    Over on the TES R.E. Forum, user fpno asked

    Are there any data protection issues with inserting the names of our students into [Yacapaca]?

    It’s a question that (quite rightly) comes up regularly, so I thought it worthwhile to reflect here the answer I gave in the forum:

    Under the Data Protection Act, you have a general responsibility to store and use your students’ data safely so, yes, there is an issue. You have to be sure that Yacapaca is at least as safe as the conventional alternative, and preferably safer. Here is what Yacapaca does to give you that reassurance:

    • Yacapaca’s digital site security is better than that of most banks’ online banking sites. See this report for details of how that is measured.
    • The site is hosted at Interxion London, one of the highest-security data centers in the UK. Here is their safety/security page.
    • And if somebody did get through all of that, there isn’t much they could do with the data. Yacapaca does not store students’ email addresses, so there is no way to contact your students other than through you.

    Now let’s consider the alternative you are moving from. Most teachers are moving to Yacapaca from paper notebooks and worksheets. How secure are they? Do you ever leave a pile of notebooks in the back of the car whilst you pop into the shop? Probably. If you take them home, do keep them in a safe overnight? Of course not. I have never known students’ notebooks be treated as a security risk, but in fact they contain the exact same type of data that Yacapaca does.

  • Spanish resources revisited

    A conversation with established Yacapaca author Nick Verney reminded me that about 16 months ago I overviewed the very nascent state of Spanish language resources. There were seven groups, of which five were public. None had really got off the starting blocks. Here is what they looked like:

    Spanish 1

    I predicted a shakeout and offered tips for those who wanted to run the most successful group. A year and a half later, this is the result:

    What a difference! In total, we’ve seen 2,400% growth in that time. I am not sure if some of the old groups have disappeared or been renamed, but either way there are clearly two groups that have succeeded (out of a total of 15 now; the rest are so small they don’t appear in the list).

    The top group is Nick’s (no surprise there). So, Did he follow my advice? Well, partly. The group certainly is well named and described, with a good colophon. But Nick has restricted membership to his own department, rather than keeping it open as I recommended. I’m beginning to think he may be right about this; a tight authoring team is hard to build remotely.

    I also recommended that authors produce a range of objective and subjective (free text) material. Nick and his group have ignored free text altogether, but they have worked hard to introduce variety into the quizzes. They use the full range of question types, with lots of images and sounds. They also integrate them with resources from elsewhere, which I think is excellent practice.

    So Nick scores 10/10 for a great group which produces excellent, and popular, Spanish resources. I think I’ll give myself a 5 and a “must try harder”.

  • New Guy Fawkes resources

    Inspired by this video and its associated commentary, I have updated our Guy Fawkes resources. Take a look, and let me know what you think.