May 28 2008
Chalkface
Its time has come … Last week, while complaining about how long I was taking to produce a booklet on Hinduism for my Year 8s, one of my D&T colleagues pointed me in the direction of Chalkface. This website has links to a variety of resources in many different subjects, some free, some that you can pay for. I’ve downloaded some free RE ones to try out next half term if necessary, as cover lessons – they look as if they could be quite useful.
Then this morning, Ian, who runs the Chalkface blog, left a comment on one of my older posts about Yacapaca, so I have been scouting around on there in more detail. As Ian points out in his comment, Yacapaca can be used to produce assessments that can be auto-marked by the computer. I have just spent some time playing around testing myself on the RE tests, and have fortunately done quite well on most of them! (I just pressed the wrong button once, honestly!) I was also impressed by the “pupil perception” questionnaires that students can complete. Obviously, if you already have a VLE, like we do, you might wonder why you should use another VLE-type website. Well, my VLE doesn’t have any pre-set up RE questions on it, as far as I can see. So here is a place where you can share your tests and assessments with other teachers, and see how your students are getting on, and it’s all free. Let me know how you get on!
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
Thanks for the nice writeup of Yacapaca!
> Obviously, if you already have a VLE, like we do, you might wonder why
Actually, Yacapaca integrates very nicely with your existing VLE, using the Assignment Permalink feature. This way you get all the benefits of Yacapaca’s powerful and detailed results analysis, whilst keeping the student workflow within your VLE.
Aha! When I get back to school I’ll need to look into all that! Thank you! And congratulations – great photos on your blog!