One day in the holidays..

It is Thursday of the first week of the holidays. Last week the students asked me if I was coming in to do classes in the holidays. To be honest, I laughed in their faces. 90% of them are not the most focussed bunnies during the normal lesson time and I live much further away from school than I used to, so the answer was quite a firm no.
I had a slight change of heart though, as I was planning on coming in to school on both Thursdays to do the Community coding course that has been running for the last 12 weeks. I told the students I would do classes on both Thursdays if they wanted. I'm too soft.

2 things came up as topics of conversation today. NZQA and penis drawings.

NZQA came up as a topic of conversation while I was helping the students put their work onto their portfolio websites.
I have been getting my students to put their project portfolios together using Google Sites for quite a while now. I have put a sheet on the front of their sketchbooks with a link to the student's site, so the drawings were still in the sketchbooks which are sent away in November and all they had to do was type in the link to the student websites to see all their notes and research.
Last year was the first year that I had made a bitly.com account so I could personalise the shortened url links to the websites.
This is when I realised that there was a problem. With an account on bit.ly, you can see how many clicks you get on the URLs that you make.

As you can see from this screenshot, there were no clicks on the links to last year's project portfolios.



This makes me REALLY MAD...... NZQA are all for "going digital" for the exams but can't get markers to click on links that are sent to them as evidence of project work?
Surely they have a computer in front of them to input marks as they are doing them so why can't they type in a VERY SIMPLE url to look at student's online work?
I went and had a chat with our SLT member who is the principals nominee. We decided that we would do a two pronged attack this year. The site and I am currently busy printing out the research that the students have done online to stick into their sketch books. I thought I was over doing this nonsense!
Here are the girls who were in today cutting out stuff to put in their sketch books that is quite happily sitting on a Google Site that no one at NZQA will see. Ridiculous.



What with this and the moderation debacle over the last couple of years, NZQA is becoming a swear word in my head.

The second topic of conversation came up as the students asked me if the examiners looked at all the blank pages in the sketchbooks. I confirmed this as they regularly come back with the "nzqa assessed" stamp on all the blank pages too. This is to make sure that they don't miss any work hiding in the middle of the book.
I have this conversation with the class at the start of the year when I give the sketch books out. I ask THE BOYS not to draw anything (like penises) on any of the blank pages, as it will give the examiner a bit of a shock! I say the boys, as I have taught in two countries now and it is always the boys who feel the uncontrollable urge to draw penises everywhere they go! I tell them I have scrap paper at the front of the room of they are feeling the need to draw them. It gives them a laugh at the start of the course.
The girls offered to go through the books to check them (to save me doing it this year). So armed with a roll of white sticky labels, they checked through all the pages in all the sketch books.
They only found a couple which is not too bad. They have been covered over with white labels.
 Teenage Boys!!

External Submission Deadline

These last two days have been extremely busy. The pick up for my Design and Visual Communication NCEA Level 1, 2 and 3 is on Wednesday morning and all the work needed collating and bagging up. It is always a very stressful time as I always have to mark the last project as it is going into the bag!
I prepare the sketchbooks by sticking information on the front of it. There is an example here. I put a shortened link to their portfolio Google Site as this contains all of the research they have done for their projects. It is much smoother sending the research this way as I used to have to print it all and that was ridiculous.
I used Bitly this year because if you make an account, you can personalise the links instead of them being a random selection of letters and numbers.
An example is here:-

School - Tamaki College

No - 57

Level 1 DVC Project Links

Name - Kayle XXX

NSN - XXXXXXXX

Link to site

bit.ly/KayleLevel1

(Please ensure to type capitals and small letters when entering the url address)

I then lay out all the folders onto their plastic bags and make sure they are ticked off on the check list. The whole check list process was different this year so that meant reading the instruction booklet and underlining the important bits to make sure i was doing everything correctly.

Another difference is that I don't have to email or fax the check lists through. They go into a bright yellow bag so it is easy to see in the posting bags with all the projects.

It had a sign on the bag saying that it was degradable. While I appreciate them starting to use degradable plastic, I think it should last for the life of the job it has to do. This is the state of it when it arrived!

Big Thumbs Up for Online Moderation ....

This year was the first year that I have submitted work for moderation that is totally online.

This is the standard form for submitting moderation - link here - and this has normally had to be sent along with physical copies of everything - the student's drawings, printouts of research and printouts of everything they have completed. This had to be put together with a paper copy of the planning for each standard being moderated.  It was a LOT of paper to send away and printing off my planning, which was all on a Google site with links to all sorts of resources, was just messy.

So in February this year, the first all online moderation was sent for DVC.
On the moderation form, the planning on my site was linked to from the standard description and the student work was all on their own Google sites, so this could be linked to from their names listed on the form. The assessment sheets were linked to from the grades listed on the sheet.
A quick check to make sure all the links worked and it was all open to the public and the forms were shared with NZQA.

This was so much easier and went really smoothly.

I received the feedback today, which was also online. This is a change too as they used to send the sheets back to us in the post.

Here is the feedback from the two Level 1 standards that were moderated for DVC this year.

Needless to say, I am absolutely delighted with the feedback, especially this bit ....

Happy Dance !!!