Level 1 NCEA Results.

We have recently had to crunch the numbers at school for management to have an in depth look at the results of individual departments.
I am especially pleased with the Level 1 Design and Visual Communication results as this was the biggest group of students that I had last year.
I have taken a screen shot of the spread sheet that I kept all year so I could see where they were all up to. ( Dear Google, please let spreadsheets be embedded on blogs!!... :D )

There were a number of factors last year.

• This was the second year through for the new assessment standards, so I was more comfortable with them and better prepared.
• This was the first year that I had all of my planning, examples and assessment information on a Google site for the students to access at all times.
• This was the first year that the students were doing their work online on Google docs etc.

I can not in all honesty pin down any single reason why there was a big improvement in my level 1 results, but I am busy putting what I have learned from this into the 2nd year of the new level 2 standards and the brand new level 3 standards.

• Letting the students know as much as possible in advance.
• Sharing everything.
• 24 hour access to planning and instructions.
• Examples, links and exemplars on line for them to access.
• Clear instructions with illustrated examples.
• Multiple ways of working and presenting work.
• Feedback on work online.
• Use of the teacher dashboard to monitor activity.

I am continuing to increase the use of GAFE, with my students all making individual Google sites themselves this year to present all of their project work.

I continue to wrestle with the problem of combining our online work with the drawn work that is in sketch books.

Here is a link to the Level 1 section of my Google site.

Here is a link to a Level 1 workflow video that I made to show how the students go about creating a piece of work using the site and docs.

Update on Friday 8th March


In response to a question about which of the students were involved in the first netbook trial, I have looked at the results.
There were only 3 of my Level 1 students last year who were involved in the netbook trial when they were in year 10 ( this was 2 year 10 classes with netbooks ).
Here are their results.
They passed all of the credits that they were entered into in DVC.