Oops! I've not posted for some time - lots of reasons, which I'll not go into now, but I'd not noticed just how much time has slipped by.
Of course, much has been happening, some good, some bad and some.........interesting. My current group of students who are about to take exams are struggling. I'm not sure how best to help them through this crucial time before they take their real exams. I had hoped to be able to concentrate on theory, but their practical mock exam yesterday was grim as well, so they obviously need more practise there too. I must devote more time to planning their revision lessons if they are to stand a reasonable chance of passing.
I've spent a good deal of time over the past 2 weeks reading about Moodle 2.0 and how to use Moodle in Science teaching. As a result of that and the thinking time I've finally managed to spend, I've begun a complete overhaul of my "Study Smart" course.
I have decided to try to make that course more user-friendly. A student who was late arriving to my January class asked me how to catch up the work she had missed, commenting that she was confused about whether to use Study Smart or read her textbook. So, I've started adding text to the front page of Study Smart to let my students know what they should be doing and when. I've tried to direct them to read certain pages of the textbook at times and to try various activities in Study Smart at other times.
The intention is to end up with a blended course, incorporating the textbook, activities, resources, homework tasks, forums and all the rest, which will provide variety and interest whilst being educationally sound and easier to follow. I just hope I'm in time to help my September starters classes.
Something I want to try with the other class - the January starters - is to make a class video blog. We have a flip camera on the campus now, so I talked about the possibility of making a class blog, with the January group. Most of the students looked horrified at the prospect, terrified even! They started to come around to the idea as we talked it through and when they realised I was not going to force them to make individual presentations. Once we had established that they could have control over the blog, they could be videoed in pairs, chatting about their Physics lessons, they became more relaxed about it. Well, most of them - a few still seem terrified.
I'm hoping the exercise will help them to express their Physics ideas in English in a slightly less formal way, once they have become used to the camera. It should be interesting to see their progression throughout the year and to hear what they think of their Physics lessons. I hope it will be a positive experience for all of us, though I could be setting myself up for a huge disappointment!
