Chalkface Blog

The best teaching materials in the most practical format.

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  • 31 New courses on Yacapaca during May

    That’s the most ever in one month. I am not going to be too hasty to claim a trend, though. Several of these are actually quite old, but have only just hit ‘maturity’ i.e. the requisite level of real usage to become eligible for publication. I’m not sure if this is artificially inflating the figures or not.

    I have been noticing for some time that some teachers prefer to write their own assessments, even when near-identical ones are already available. Nothing at all wrong with that, but it does create a problem of duplicate public content. In fact, one teacher has even been complaining about it in the TES Staffroom. Olivero said

    I can see Yacapaca has potential – the trouble is finding the good, relevant quizzes as there is so much there.

    So, to keep this list within bounds, I have eliminated all the courses on spreadsheets, Microsoft Office icons, etc, and focused on the more innovative material. Following the links requires you to have Yacapaca membership – but as that is free, it should not be too much of an inhibition for you.

    • Business GCSE Business
      Seven GCSE quizzes labeled ‘pilot’. Good mix of question types to keep interest.
    • Business Mr Howard’s Business
      Two versions of the same test – choose your template!
    • Chemistry Common Entrance 13+ Chemistry
      This section of Common Entrance 13+ covers the three Chemistry topics of Classifying Materials, Changing Materials and Pattens of Behaviour.
    • Chemistry Edexcel
      Chemistry GCSE assessments.
    • Chemistry year 8
      Chemistry & Geology quizzes.
    • Chemistry Year 8 Chemistry
      A selection of quizzes based around National Curriculum chemistry topics (8E, 8F, 8G, 8H)
    • Citizenship Communities
      (no further information)
    • D&T Design Technology
      Short D&T student voice survey
    • D&T KS3 DT – North Walsham High
      (no further information)
    • D&T summer test
      Some really great questions, but the giant image files and large number of questions make these quizzes slow to load.
    • History AQA GCSE History 9 – The Cuban Missile Crisis
      The usual thorough coverage we have come to expect from this author.
    • ICT Expert Systems
      (no further information)
    • ICT OCR Nationals Survey
      The survey canvases student opinion of OCR Nationals.
    • ICT Potential VLE access
      Survey on students’ access to ICT, including mobile and gaming devices.
    • ICT Python Development
      Python is probably the single most useful programming language to learn right now, and it is surprisingly easy to get started with.
    • ICT 12 more ICT courses
      Too many to list in detail, and largely repeating work that has already been done.
    • Maths Recurring Decimals
      Grade A/A* practice
    • PE GCSE PE (number 2)
      Includes some very useful-looking short text exercises for BTEC.
    • Physics Common Entrance 13+ Physics
      This section of Common Entrance 13+ covers the five physics topics of Electricity & Magnetism, Forces and Motion, Light and Sound, The Earth and Beyond and Energy Resources & Energy Transfer
    • Science Mr. Riordan’s Tests
      Two copies of a quiz on electricity with excellent diagrams. Not clear what the difference between the two copies is.

  • Author of the Year Nominations

    Of course this was photoshopped!

    Over 1,000 teachers have now authored educational resources in Yacapaca. The best of those resources are really quite staggeringly good, as we see from the rave reviews they get from users.

    It is long past time to honour our best authors, so I am delighted to announce the 2008 Author of the Year Awards.

    The seven nominees have been selected from the most popular subjects in Yacapaca. They are each very different; what they have in common is excellence as teaching and assessment resources.

    The nominees are:

    The judging panel are experienced Yacapaca users, authors and moderators. More importantly, they are all teachers:

    • Aidan McCanny, Assistant Advisory Officer for eLearning and ICT, Southern Education and Library Board (SELB).
    • Gill Chesney-Green, Drama Teacher, John Flamsteed Community School, Derbyshire & author of several popular Drama resources including Foundation Drama.
    • Jerome Thompson, Alderman Peel High School, Norfolk & moderator of the Year 7 ICT authoring group.
    • Helen Barnes, teacher of Mathematics, Priory School, Portsmouth & author of the HBR Maths assessments.
    • Julie Mason, Wellingborough School and moderator of the Design & Technology authoring group.
    • John Boyle, teacher of Businesss and Enterprise, Grace Academy, Solihul & moderator of the Business authoring group.

    The winner will be announced on June 16th on this blog, and will win an Apple iPod Touch. Both the winner and the runner-up will receive Yacapaca trophies.

  • Today…

    …is my wedding day. Wish me luck.

    [Update: photos & slideshow.]

  • How to cheat in exams

    A whole page of “how to…” videos, courtesy of Tony Vincent. Ah, brings back happy memories. Only kidding.

    I found these via Glen Moses’s rant about how “mobile phones can be used for cheating” is a really naff excuse for banning them.

    Anyway, here’s my favourite, both for the elegance of the method and the congruence of the presenter.

     

     

    And here by way of contrast is the James Bond fear fantasy of exam cheating you are being sold by equipment suppliers. I would give long odds that for every SMERSH agent in your exam room there are 100 rubber-banders.

    In 2002, I sat on the committee that wrote British Standard BS7988: Code of practice for the use of information technology (IT) in the delivery of assessments, which subsequently morphed into ISO/IEC 23988 Information technology — A code of practice for the use of information technology (IT) in the delivery of assessments. In retrospect I think we, too, over-focused on the technical aspects, and largely ignored the way that many problems (not just cheating) carry over from paper to electronic means of assessment.

  • Funniest powerpoint presentation ever

    Next time someone makes you sit through a Powerpoint presentation you’d rather not suffer, you will remember this and be unable to suppress a giggle, I promise.

    Via Ewan

    Update April 2017: I first published this nine years ago, and since then nothing has improved in the way presentations are typically made. Tragically funny.