Feeling more competent now thanks

Just to follow up on my last blog where I proposed using a Questionnaire as a means of gaining some measure of session success from students, I took the opportunity to apply the idea in two separate classes this week and you can see the results from the screen shot. Just to recap, the initial impression was taken at the introduction phase and the final impression during the plenary. The material covered in the session 1h 45m, for most represented their first exposure to the topic. From the numbers it would appear that the confidence / competence in each area had more than doubled during a single session, and so I feel this has been a good measure for me and in fact for students who collectively felt that it was of value to them.

Continuing on with with my quest to find useful resources,  I came across an interesting link the other day from TeachThought.com named ‘15 Free Learning Tools You’ve Probably Never Heard Of’. The posting describes the collection as ‘under-the-radar free learning sites’. I confess that there are many that I was not aware of and are certainly worth looking into, so do please take a look at this one, and feel free to share your own under the radar sites or apps.

Closing on a somewhat lighter note, are you pod casting your classes? Well I do, though not the whole session, instead I will record (audio only), those aspects of the material that experience tells me often seem to need reinforcing; so basically listen again. The casts themselves seldom exceed a three or four minutes, looking at the hits on the vle, they are ceratianly used. But are they useful? Well it seems from a recent report from one of my students they would certainly seem to be distracting. While driving home, he was listening to one such pod cast to such an extent that he missed the usual motorway turn-off, and instead of arriving home at 18:30, he arrived at 20:15, how engaging was that!

 

As usual please feel free to comment