Monthly Archives: March 2014

Why Question Level Analysis (QLA) is some data you should be bothered with

Pedagogy, , , , , , ,

In this age of accountability and proving you are doing all you say you are data appears to god. If we look at what we get bombarded with and what we are asked to produce, many of it is not useful for everyday teaching. This can lead us to run and scream when we see a table of data of overly formatted chart. Whilst I am one who advocates knowing your students, focusing on them as individuals and taking data with a pinch of salt I have recently come across a set of data that can be easily created and is really useful in classroom practice. I am one of those people who find data rather frustrating so for me to tell you to create more must be a big deal!

The data in question is Question Level Analysis or QLA. If you have not come across this before then it is as simple as setting a threshold mark for an answer on an exam paper. If students get over that mark they have done well, if they are below it then it is an area where improvement is needed. Popping the data into a spreadsheet with a few formulas and a bit of conditional formatting, it is clear to see where both individuals and the whole class needs to improve. You can then focus on the topics around those questions during lesson time and intervention sessions. For instance if a question on data collection came up on a mock test and was worth six marks you might expect students to do well so set a threshold of four marks. If the majority of students got less than four when you marked the test you would know that was an area for a revision session. If all bar two got four or over you could individually target those students.

On that basis, it makes QLA a great tool for focusing revision in and out of lessons. However, in subjects such as ICT, Business and Computing we do not always get the same time as some core subjects. This means we may need to wait for mock exams weeks. A Maths teacher at my school, however, has a different approach which I have used to focus revision. Rather than waiting for mock exams, she sets different questions for a starter activity. These are based on question that are likely to come up in the exam. She can then do the QLA on these to find misconceptions and move revision forward.

Recently I tried this technique out and it has worked wonders for understanding where students are. Some areas I thought the students were strong on they struggled with. In home learning and in class tasks they have all the support so can write good answers, take the support away and the holes in their knowledge can be seen. How I went about the starter activity QLA was to give students twenty minutes to answer eight questions. This was for the Cambridge Nationals in ICT at Level 2, so I asked questions based around the case study we have been given for their examination. The questions were on areas I expect to come up. Once complete, I took the questions in and gave students marks out of two for each question…

  • Zero for questions not attempted or no clear understanding
  • One for limited ideas or bullet points on the topic
  • Two for answers that had a clear understanding of the topic
Students were given questions for the starter activity then these were used with QLA to work out revision topics
Students were given questions for the starter activity then these were used with QLA to work out revision topics

From here I created a simple spreadsheet that used conditional formatting to show the zeros in red, ones in yellow and twos in green. I added every student’s score to the spreadsheet and thus can see at a glance what each student understands. From here I added up all the scores for each question and again conditionally formatted the totals. This time less than ten was red and a concern, ten to twenty five yellow and needs recapping, and finally over twenty five green showing the students understand the concepts so we do not need to touch on it whole class. What is concerning is that I have no topics in the green overall, this may be because we have moved onto a different unit and thus need to go back and recap knowledge from the examination unit. What was interesting was that it was not only the two areas of acceptable use policies and archiving that I expected to be misunderstood that came in low. We have covered databases to death, however students are still not able to pick up the concepts behind them. It is clear that whilst my whole class revision sessions need to focus on these topics I once again need to look at how I deliver databases. A positive aspect of the data was that students were unclear of Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) the previous time we took the exam but now seem to have a good understanding.

What the QLA has now done is allowed me to look closely at an area I thought students understood and spend less time on an area I presumed they did not have good knowledge in. In this way QLA has allowed me to focus on students needs, it is not data that I will be picked up on and asked about, it may not be used to prove that I have done a specific intervention but it has changed the way I teach so the students get the best possible support and, quite frankly, that is what data should be used for.

It’s all in the game….and it’s pretty much free!

Curriculum Developments, , , , , , , , , , , ,

The new Computing Curriculum states clearly that we need to look at programming. For years Scratch has been a bit of a godsend, allowing users to drag code together like a jigsaw puzzle. As we move forward, however, some limitations are being seen. Many of the children we encounter today are big gamers and want to create their own games. In fact the two most asked questions I get are, ‘when are we going to find out how to build a computer?’ and, ‘how do you make a computer game?’

Whilst Scratch is fantastic at putting lists of commands together and editing these, it is much harder to create a game in. Many students do not understand variables and cannot get their heads around loops and functions. Despite being a jigsaw puzzle it is not as intuitive as other programs as it is trying to be an all in one. Whilst teaching the Cambridge Technicals at Level 3 I had been on the lookout for a piece of gaming software that can produce 3D gaming whilst allowing a high level of challenge. Oh yeah, and it needed to be cheap. I stumbled across Unreal Development Kit (UDK), a free development environment that allows a student to load in premade characters (either from the library already there or ones they had created in 3D design software) and set up rules for games using a visual programming language called Kismet. Although this is quite a large step for some students that have done little programming lower down the school it is keeping them focused and the results so far are looking good. It can be a little bug ridden and if you do not want to do a first person shooter then it takes a bit of fiddling around. Also it can be quite memory intensive.

My choice of free games creation programs to use across all key stages
My choice of free games creation programs to use across all key stages

Using UDK was a steep learning curve for myself as well as the students but does lead them towards university courses on games design. From here I thought about setting up a games creation club to allow students to play with UDK so as to get an idea of the challenges posed when introducing it to KS3. One concern was the level of challenge but another was that I would be promoting shooting games, in fact an engine based around a game for sixteen year olds and older. However, in every documentation on gaming at school I have found one word kept popping up, Kodu. I decided to bite the bullet and have a go, a brief download and a quick play and I was astonished. This is a fully realised 3D environment with a simple interface where students can create a range of games from racing, dodging mines and defend the castle to a top down shooter where more than one player can play at the same time. I managed to master the basics in less than an hour without even looking at any tutorials or guides. This is perfect I thought, in fact it is a miracle, a Microsoft program that I actually love! I headed down to the network manager to ask for an install, letting him know it was free early on so I didn’t hit the staple ‘there’s no money in the budget’ response. It turns out that as it is made by Microsoft it is insanely easy to remotely install over the network. A two week turn around turned out to be completed in two days. So here I sit, tasked with writing a five week scheme of learning to test on the Year 9s before we roll it out properly next year.

The story aside, I am starting to see how we can move students forward in games design and games programming using free software. So here are my plans for the future…

  • KS3: Year 7 look at game making in Scratch to produce basic 2D games before moving on to 3D gaming using Kodu in Years 8 and 9.
  • KS4: We currently teach Cambridge Nationals and there are no gaming units, I would like to introduce some gaming elements here. Maybe use Touch Develop as this is a lot less visual and more about the code behind the game.
  • KS5: The games development unit will use UDK to enable students to use some more industry standard software and allow students to push their games creation skills further in a 3D environment.

These programs will not allow students to meet the visual programming side of the curriculum but should keep them engaged and allow them to understand the principles of programming as well as creating something stimulating that moves their thinking forward. So what advice would I give to anyone wanting to implement gaming units at KS3? Look out for free educational games making software, however, you can’t go far wrong with Scratch and Kodu, just make sure students are not just following guides but understand the principles behind what they are doing. Hopefully you have enjoyed this post and will head back sometime as I plan to add more posts updating you of my progress with games design and creation units. Let’s hope I have some amazing examples of games the students have created to show you as well.

Group work – give them all a pen!

Pedagogy, , ,

Group work is often seen as something we do not do in ICT and Computing. Computers themselves are seen as machines that isolate people, remove them from the real world to instead engage with bit and bytes rather than people and conversations. Yes there is the social side but this is still a little disengaging from the world around us, we can put on a new persona and hide behind the blinking lights. For a teacher this can cause some stress, there is a lot of theory that needs to be covered and we really want students discussing and coming up with their own ideas. Collaborative working can be easily achieved over the Internet but getting students together in the same room can appear much harder, they actively want to be at their machine working and we cannot move desks like many other subjects can. When ICT students do work in groups, you tend to have the dominant one at the machine or writing on the paper you have given out. There is not much room for the rest of the group so they sit behind, physically and mentally pushed out.

Students worked in groups of three with different coloured pens to analyse leaflets
Students worked in groups of three with different coloured pens to analyse leaflets

Recently, working as part of a Teacher Learning Community (TLC) looking at collaborative working, I hit upon a great idea. It is so simple and has probably be done so many times before in so many other lessons. Sometimes I think ICT is so different to other subjects that we forget the basics, or maybe that is just me. The idea is a simple as giving groups more than one different coloured pen, in fact give everyone in the group a different coloured pen. From there make each coloured pen represent a different focus, each individual can discuss points with their group but can only write with their coloured pen. This means that all group members need to be involved and it is easy for the teacher to see who has written what. We can assess the success of the group work quickly, analyse the contribution of each member and move thinking forward. I tried this with my Year 12 Cambridge Technicals group and it worked a treat. Students who often sat back were required to engage their brain and at the very least write something down. I quickly scanned the room to see all on task and what is more, discussion had improved. The task was centred around leaflet design and groups needed to look at good features of a leaflet, how features affect communication and how leaflets could be improved. It was as simple to set up as gathering screenshots of a few different leaflets, printing them on A3 paper and having a selection of green, black and blue pens. After the group activity I took feedback and we came up with a list of success criteria that students could take forward when designing their own leaflets. It was most definitely a success and something I will try to embed in group work throughout each year group I teach.