Online Learning rises above the ashes

It is always interesting to see how teachers and students unable to get to school have found ways to continue learning. There was an interesting story on the BBC Website about a teacher who used an Internet Cafe and Skype to continue his A Level revision lessons whilst stranded in Spain due to the ash crisis.

Here is a link to that story.

I couldn’t help thinking that with access to Studywiz, he could have done even more: work could have been set up and marked with feedback given, forums could have been set up to discuss revision topics when  access to the Internet was available and tests could have been created and marked with the teacher being able to check the results. Add this to the ability to access Studywiz from a mobile device and you can see the true benefits of a Learning Platform for all situations that have students and teachers away from School.

A number of schools have been using Studywiz during this crisis. One school had over 100 students stuck in the Far East and Studywiz was being used to communicate and provide work for the students stranded.

As with the snow earlier in the year in the UK, this ash incident has highlighted how important it is to have a Learning Platform that allows access to learning from anywhere. At this time of year, when students are preparing for exams, finishing coursework and maybe going on Study Leave, Studywiz can provide another tool for revision. From setting up a Gallery of past papers that students can download to discussion forums on revision topics, Studywiz enables teachers to keep in contact and provide support for all those preparing for exams.

Studywiz Tutorials from the Maine DOE

THe Maine Department of Education has released a series of very useful Studywiz tutorials which can be viewed, downloaded and subscribed to, from iTunes. Here’s the link.

The videos cover the Studywiz learning environment interface.

It is also worth taking the time to check out some of the other podcasts that are published by the DOE - you’ll find some fantastic gems in there.

Go Compare …

We have a GTP student in school who when she saw Studywiz said how easy it was to use. She has come from a Moodle school and although she said it has some nice features it was not easy to navigate and took ages to put resources up for the children. The comment went on to look at other platforms such as uniservity which looks a bit like moodle and it was twice as many clicks of a mouse to get a homework resource up.

It is interesting that LPs these days have developed considerably but with flashy front end graphics but the core functionality and easy of use must out way the glossy cover. If it is not totally user friendly teachers will not use it. One example of a LP I came across recently was they had a nice testing feature where you could add multiple choice, multiple answers and compare words type questions but there was no facility to let the children know what questions they got right or wrong. They only got a mark! Where is the learning power behind that - pah!

LPs are all about extending, enhancing, enabling learning 24/7 in a flexible way. The hint is in the title.

Still continuing to develop our use of this and embed in best practice. We still need a generation of teachers who think learning and enable technology to assist. Not sure what others think?

Studywiz Parent - Webinar

Parental engagement, whether it’s to meet UK government requirements or it’s simply something that a school knows they need to promote, is something that a lot of people are looking at right now.

Studywiz has always provided the tools to involve parents, through features such as free parent accounts and dynamic user groups.

Next week we are running a live webinar to give you the opportunity to find out more about our latest development supporting parental reporting - Studywiz Parent. (Date: 11th February, Time: 4pm)

More details, and a sign up form, can be found here on our website.

Students Engaged

Hello. This is Regina again, updating information about my iPod/Studywiz study. After one week, we asked our students what they thought about the iPod. Did they see it as a study tool, or was it honestly, just a bit of a fun toy and status symbol? Did they find it useful or was it just one more device to carry around besides their phone. Was it just one more thing to remember in the evenings, getting it charged up and ready to go?

I expected a balanced response to these questions but I was really surprised at the overwhelming enthusiasm the students shared. One student claimed she felt really confident that her vocabulary, understanding and pronunciation had become better in just one week because she was playing with a whole variety of educational tools on the iPod. Another felt his translation and vocabulary was massively better because he sheepishly admitted that he was addicted to one of the Spanish Vocabulary games. Another felt her understanding of the text was better because she was listening to the audio over and over again and she was watching the video with the same audio and this also helped her understanding of the lesson passage.

Students in this photo are working together on verb tenses and translations.