David Rogers

Have been thinking about wordle and its potential uses in the classroom. Thanks to Noel , Alan and Tony for initially pointing this out and the SLN thread with some examples. I've been thinking if this can be used as a tool for AfL. Can an A Grade piece of work be distinguished from a D? Below is the word cloud for my geography department. Although inadequate overall if I had shown this cloud in the feedback session there is a positive message as 'Good' and 'Satisfactory' come out more prominent than 'inadequate'. Got me thinking - without any electronic pupil work to hand I used the Ofsted reports for two random schools. Which one is better? The first cloud is from a 'Good' school while the second is from a 'satisfactory' (how I hate that term!) school. Could you spot that without reading the whole report? This application could also be a good way of prioritising action points for departments or in identifying key messages from surveys. C...

After reading a few Blogs about slideshare I managed to use it in a class situation today. The circumstances came about as Hampshire County Council had blocked the ability to leave comments on blogspot blogs. Some quick thinking later (well for me anyway) I adjusted the water saving project outcome to a PowerPoint. This time I got pupils to sign up for their own account then use the 'share slideshow' feature to email them to me at askmygeographyteacher@hotmail.co.uk I was pleased with the result, especially considering this was a rather crude use of the technology. All members of the class were able to send their work to me. This would be a great way to check that work has been done, especially as it is very difficult to check each computer in such a lesson. To develop the idea further I have set up an account using my school email address. All I have to do is investigate whether slideshare allows multiple logins to the same account. This would allow pupils to upload directly ...