Yacapaca

New York’s School of One: good or evil?

yacapaca — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:32:59 +0000

I met Christina Jenkins at a Futurelab event last week, and she pointed me to the School of One pilot project:

School of One encapsulates a lot of the stuff I’ve been ranting about for years – freeing teachers up to actually teach, breaking out of the class-of-30 mindset, using computers to do what they are good at. So thumbs up, right?

Well, mabye not. Christina, who is certainly no Luddite, strongly disagrees with the programme. She told me

The trouble I have with [School of One] is that it seems to me to be an extremely efficient way of delivering math worksheets. It doesn’t have much in common with authentic problem solving, mathematical thinking, etc; I don’t know that it possibly can, given the algorithm’s need for very precise, measurable indicators of understanding. I did a program called Kumon when I was growing up because my parents wanted me to have a more solid foundation in math; I can now multiply very quickly, but I’m not sure that it did anything else for me.

I think the So1 is great for certain things (perhaps multiplying quickly, or converting fractions to decimals), but I think it places the computer/algorithm at the center of a student’s learning, and in so doing 1) limits his/her possibilities (what if he/she wants/needs to go further than the program allows?) and 2) kind of ‘solidifies’ this idea that math instruction should look like worksheets instead of building/making things, as I think students in all subjects ought to be doing.

It seems that Christina and So1′s progentinors are starting from different formulations of the issue. Is our aim to to have a society in which a high level of numeracy (and other core skills) can be taken for granted, or one in which we maximise the number of creative problem-solvers?

Would you welcome School of One in your school?

Justin Bieber brings elearing into your classroom, even if you don’t have computers

yacapaca — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 13:18:36 +0000

Three years ago, I predicted that the iPhone, and phones like it, would soon become everyday educational tools. Where are we up to with that? Having spotted this on the Orange website, I’d say we are now only a year away.

If Justin Bieber is endorsing a phone, then it must be cheap enough to appeal to the teenage demographic. Where this gets interesting is that this phone has a nice big touch screen and runs the iPhone’s open-source cousin, Android.

From September, then, you can expect an increasing proportion of your students to be carrying these powerful, permanently-connected computers in their pockets.

How will you respond?

Will you feel threatened and try to suppress their use?
Or will you see a great way to get around the resource limitation of not enough computers in the school, and embrace the possibilities?

More on controlled assessments

yacapaca — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:32:54 +0000

Following Aidan’s excellent instructions on how to manage your controlled assessments through Yacapaca, Daniel Needlestone has written a very thorough and well-contextualised overview of different ways to skin the same cat. Recommended reading.

Good riddance to “Building Schools of the Future”

yacapaca — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 11:55:46 +0000

So the Schools of the Future building programme has its head on the block. Good. It was a total misallocation of educational funds, that actually aimed to build 19th Century schools dressed up to look vaguely modern. Like a horse and cart with go-faster stripes. The really frustrating thing is that the real educational needs of the 21st Century could have been addressed for a small proportion of what has already been spent. For reference, the total cost of building Yacapaca has been of the order of 70p per registered member.

I have been kicking this idiotic programme since 2004. If you are interested in my view of why it would have been actively bad for the nation’s children, you could read:

Schools of the Future: don’t forget your jetpack (2004)
Home access – is the glass 80% full or 20% empty? (2006)
Gordon muffs it again (2007)

Update: the axe has fallen. Here’s the list, from the Grauniad.

Quite close for a five-year prediction

yacapaca — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:48:24 +0000

In the end it was called the iPad, not the iPrint. But I think I pretty much nailed it.

The iPrint leads to paperless schools (13/07/2005)

Beautiful Economics animation

yacapaca — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:15:45 +0000

I absolutely love the work of Cognitive Media. This is their latest: an explanation of the financial crisis produced for the RSA. I would love for someone to build some Yacapaca quizzes around this reinforce the learning. Anyone know if there is a copy of this hosted on a site not normally blocked in schools?

Easily manage teams in your classroom

yacapaca — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 19:40:06 +0000

Team competitions have been the most popular new feature on Yacapaca so far this year, so we have been developing them further. This enhancement addresses the most common request: “let me tweak who is in which team.” Sasha, our Flash guru, has come up with a great interface that allows you to drag and drop students between teams, on the whiteboard where all the students can see which teams they are in. As a bonus, you can rename the teams there and then as well.

Once created, these teams will stay with the student set until you decide to re-form them. This gives a chance for essential rivalries to build up between the teams, and strong bonds to form within them.

Yacapaca Teams Whiteboard, posted with vodpod

Yacapaca on Prezi

yacapaca — Sun, 23 May 2010 12:15:46 +0000

Thanks Andria Johnson for this fun interactive introduction. After pressing the “>” button, give it a minute to load; it’s well worth the wait.

more about "Yacapaca on Prezi", posted with vodpod

We’ve been censored

yacapaca — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:14:08 +0000

A teacher I’d better not name just told me that Yacapaca was blocked in his school because a student submitted an assignment about internet safety that included the phrase “child porn”.

The student solved the problem by editing his assignment on his iPhone and resubmitting it. Score 1 for mobile technology and -5000 for misguided censorship.

When students find that in order to continue their education, they must subvert the school’s systems, they will increasingly ask why exactly they are supposed to be going to school in the first place.

Maximising your students’ motivation

yacapaca — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:18:47 +0000

How come the PE department can get students to turn out on a cold, wet Saturday afternoon to do their subject, when you find it hard to get them to even turn in their homework on time?

Part of the answer is that the PE department have harnessed the power of teams. Teams create a context for celebrating victory, and for commiserating defeat. They also exert a strong peer pressure to not let your mates down. Team sports are more popular than individual sports because they hook into that very human desire to be part of something.

You can now use Yacapaca to turn any test or assignment into a team competition with a single click. Here’s how.

To really maximise team motivation, steal some techniques from the PE Department’s playbook, and…

offer a prize, even if it’s nominal.
keep the same teams over several quizzes (the system does this by default).
set the teams in advance, and give teams time to study together.
engage each team in a debate about the best strategy for winning. It
is preferred that they work out for themselves that actively coaching
their weaker members will result in the biggest lift in points.
encourage rivalry.