Yacapaca

Doug pointed me to this discussion on wiki textbooks (MP3, 29MB). They are talking about interesting stuff, but it’s an hour long! In that hour, the three presenters could easily have created, edited and refined a really good wiki page that would have done the same page at least as well. I could have read that in five minutes, and learned as much.

But that’s teachers podcasting to teachers. The really rad thing these days is to get your students to produce them.

This is a fun and interesting experiment for the kids and I thoroughly applaud it. But…think about the implications of letting this be more than an occasional novelty. How are you going to assess such work? Whatever novel assessment methods you come up with, the bottom line is that you have to listen to all those podcasts. Yep, thirty students times one hour each.

And you thought marking essays was a pain!

Comments

Ian,

You are missing a massive trick here. You don’t listen to the podcasts at
all. Before the activity you get the students to develop their own marking
criteria. They then create the podcasts. You then get students to
self-assess (mark their own) and then peer-assess (mark each other’s)
podcasts and produce an evaluation. Thus the students listen to each
other’s podcasts and mark them.

You can then have a class discussion where the students share their views
about each others work – perhaps sharing the highlight and the lowlights.

Constructed carefully, podcasting ends up with less marking, not more. The
main problem comes when you first do it though – it is so amazing that you
want to listen to them all, not that you have to for assessment purposes.

Andrew Field

Until recently the majority of educational blogs have been aimed at HE. That’s starting to change, not before time. Ian Usher from Bucks LEA is now writing about his experiences with Moodle, Fronter and Think, amongst others, in Changing the Game. Looks like it will be a really useful read. Welcome to blogging, Ian!

From Ruth Kelly’s opening address to BETT

…one of the biggest challenges for technology to
support Personalised Learning will be increasing home access.
Yes, the ratio of computers to pupils continues to get better in
secondary and primary schools. Yes, the number of schools with
high speed broadband access is now up to 85%. And yes, over
80% of families now have access to ICT at home. But there are
still over 1 million children who don’t.

We have to move towards a position where we can genuinely say
that we have universal access for all learners. Today, I’m delighted
to reinforce our commitment to improve home access to
technology for our most disadvantaged pupils. (My emphases.)

From the Labour Party Manifesto

We will deliver our cross-government strategy for closing the digital divide and using ICT to further transform public services…

By 2006 every school [will be] supported to offer all pupils access to computers at home.

Oops! Well, what’s a million disheartened, disillusioned, dispossessed-of-their-future kids, here or there. The underclass can no longer be relied upon to vote Labour anyway.

In 2006 I will…

Understand users better
Having created something like Yacapaca, you would think we would know why and how people use it. But I am constantly surprised by what is, and is not, important to real users. In 2006 I shall ask more, watch more and listen more.

Build friendships
It’s amazing the number of customers who have turned into friends over the years. As well as making the job more satisfying for all of us, they also push the company forward by teaching us the potential of things we have created but do not always understand. In 2006 I shall be more diligent in creating new friendships and in looking after the friends I already have.

Nurture authors
Authors are the lifeblood of any publishing enterprise so in 2006 we will look after our Yacapaca authors with additional services and events.

Focus on learners
The ultimate aim of all of this is to enrich the lives of young people. But how do they really respond to all this? I need to see for myself. In 2005 I managed just four days of classroom observation. In 2006 I aim for one per month.

Embrace Web 2.0
I could write you pages and pages on what Web 2.0 is, and why it should be important to Chalkface. But I won’t. Read Tim O’Reilly’s explanation or, if you prefer put it in that box labelled “techy stuff” and wait for the consequences of the embrace to become apparent.