CN4C’s blog...

I've been using Google Drive for a number of years for storage purposes - principally backing up teaching documents. 2 years ago I switched to DropBox which, for storage, is far more user friendly/practical, I love DropBox & have clocked up about 34Gb of free space some of which came with my phone contract. Both systems are usefully cross-platform & multi-device friendly. However, I continue to use Google Drive to upload ITQ courses for Internal & External Verification. We have a dedicated Google account for this. I can compile & upload the courses at my convenience from any location & the verifiers can immediately access them from where ever they are. There's no paper, so the sustainability-in-education people like it.

I've been using Google Docs, recently, as a learning tool for new ICT users who don't own computers, they can be digitally included without the expense of buying a computer. They've set up a Google account which gives them an email address, storage space & access to free software (particularly word processing). Google Docs is good visually, easy to navigate, has editing tools that are similar to gmail text editing tools & a good stepping stone for progression to Microsoft Word with which it is compatible. My learners have been creating CVs which they can then update & email off, from any computer. My only concern is that now they've discovered the templates they may not find Microsoft Word (more formal) as fun!

My Level 2s started blogging last week - they each created a post but were less interested in writing content & more interested in the design facilities, this is the 1st time they've experienced blogging or being able to affect the 'look' of software. So it was interesting to see them exploring & being unafraid to be adventurous - good for learning!. 

My youngster learner is setting up a Raspberry Pi so I uploaded a picture of it to Picasa & discovered the others had found it when it appeared in their blogs.

A learner's perpective on the toolbox.

Access to the website, and first look at the Toolbox.

Negatives

·         Arrows in the boxes are a big distraction, and take up space

·         Brighter background colours on the “steps” would help

·         Recruiting Learners, Teaching and learning, Reviewing learners' progress, Boxes — be better if all search results were on one page

Neutral points

·         Boxes and writing is pretty small  through my IPhone, however you can make it bigger if you know how.

·         *Second time had a bit of a problem loading page and buttons however this could just be my internet

Positives

·         Easy to see with white writing on coloured background

·         All information together

·         Easy to navigate and find information needed

·         All information needed but in individual points so not overloaded with info

·         All boxes load quickly

·         Looks neat

Overall I like the website, I think it's easy for people who are not as Internet savvy as me (like my mum) to be able to look around without getting lost or over faced by information.

I’ll review the “tools” later. - Jodie

BOX, OR IS THERE SOMETHING BETTER?

A member of teacher staff came to me this week after half her students didn't attend her lesson because of the snow.  Her comment was "I wish we had moodle, I could have just added all my handout, typed some extra notes and had a virtual lesson instead". 

I have sent her off to explore the BOX resource - but am asking the questions - is there something better out there that I don't know about?  Any suggestions greatfully received. 

Thanks

Sharron in snowy Cumbria. 

Practical Aptitude Tests
Each year our Engineering Dept assess the practical abilities of students wanting to access our Engineering courses. They tried the Practical Aptitude Tests on our current level three cohort to see if they would be suitable to use.  Staff and students quickly established that the questions were too difficult for our learners but the principle of the tests are perfect for our needs.  If anyone uses or knows of a simplified version of this please let me know.  Thanks.

13th March 2013

Our "toolbox" meeting this afternoon received inputs from teaching staff, admin staff and a learner. It was interesting to hear the differing views on some of the tools that we have selected to try out, and further interesting to get feedback from a learner who agreed to access the toolbox using her IPhone. I'll be collating the inputs through tomorrow morning, and I will publish the findings in the blog, tomorrow.

We have decided to try out Go!Animate, Animoto, Morguefile and Google Forms with a view to completing our deliberations by the middle of next week. We have two staff using Tablet technology, two staff using "ordinary" PC technology, and a second learner who will use Tablet technology, to access the toolbox.

Terry McHale   

12th March 2013

We would, ideally, like to find some mechanism for improving our "Reviewing learners' progress", as I am sure we all have differing systems and procedures for collecting and analysing this sort of information. In Utopia, I would like to find a "tool" that could measure learners’ progress from one step of the journey, to the next. And, of course, this tool would then benchmark the improvement, or progress, within each step against each step for each learner, cohort, group, or curriculum area. Thus enabling an identification of any "weaknesses", or good practice.  Hmmmm.

Inter-Action MK are in!

Many thanks to Andrew for help with the tricky bit of getting in here. First thing we'll try is to see what we can do with Picasa. I've got a pile of great photos of our offices and we're in a lovely setting so that's going to be a useful job and may attract more people to come and see what we do.