[Andrew Field]

Following a brief discussion on Twitter earlier today, it is clear that more a a few people are interested in developing an effective way of tracking student progress in line with the new APP guidance.

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Linked Tweets from earlier - not comprehensive, but enough to get the general impression I hope:

[tobyholman] Getting ready to create complete KS3 tracking spreadsheet for ICT inc. APP criteria. Gonna be a monster!

[andyfield] @tobyholman May I do anything to help with your APP tracker? We plan to do a similar thing but haven't yet - looking to link to Moodle too

[mwclarkson] @tobyholman @andyfield How about a GDocs version, or some other collaborative form - Zoho DB? Have this to do myself

[andyfield] @tobyholman I was more thinking of showing students their current level, linked into criteria so students can see where to go next...

[tobyholman] @mwclarkson @andyfield Shall we collaborate? Plan ideas, plan structure etc? Would see a separate course for pupil KS3 tracking

[andyfield] @tobyholman @mwclarkson Sounds great to me - can use www.effectiveict.co.uk/forum to put ideas together if you like...

[tobyholman] @andyfield Ok, send through link once topic has been created. Could get quite a following / interest in the project

[tobyholman] @gideonwilliams @andyfield @mwclarkson Are we all moodlers? Do we need a moodle sandpit? More than happy to install

[gideonwilliams] @tobyholman more than happy to help out with tracker idea - key for me - where am I - where is next milestone - what do I need to get there

[misterel] @andyfield would also like to help if at all possible. We use GOAL assessment at mo, would love a way for pupils to track their own progress

[andyfield] @misterel Thanks for your interest -I'll put some ideas together and we can all contribute - KS3 ICT APP + any other letters we can think of

[tobyholman] KS3 ICT APP project gaining pace. Looking at putting together moodle course for assessment. Five on board

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My take on this:

I attended the APP (Assessing Pupil Progress) training session for Cambridgeshire Heads of ICT last week. It was really useful and actually provided us with some excellent support materials. The A3 tracking sheet, with clear assessment targets for all ICT levels, was particularly useful. My department plan to make use of the guidance immediately - no point waiting to being implementing it. We were also given exampla work - which is extremely useful as it provides a base indication of each level. It is a pity that it wasn't all the same task, i.e. examples of the same piece of work at different levels, but it was still very useful.

All the APP materails can be found on the standards website:
http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.g...sults/nav:49770

Training pack:
http://nationalstrat....uk/node/157533

A3 tracking sheet which was the most useful document:
http://nationalstrat....uk/node/157625

Currently we track student progress using a large spreadsheet developed by my colleague responsible for KS3. This works well as we track Yacapapca grades (which provide an excellent indication of 'levelness' i.e. an accurate suggestion towards what level a student is working at), formal assessment of work together with some student self assessment. The sheet tracks all the available data and then provides us with each student's ICT level.

As I've mentioned on this forum many times, I'm also very (very) keen to setup a situation in Moodle where the student logs in and it says "You are at Level 4c..." and then gives them a target or provides links to further guidance and help. I feel that the new APP materials will be extremely useful in this respect - the assessment targets could be used to help students identify what a student working at L6 really has to prove. Granted, they are watered down versions of Level descriptors, but if we share these with students they can pin down exactly what we are after.

So I've setup this topic so others who expressed an interest via Twitter earlier can collaborate and share ideas. If you're reading this and you're not a member of the forum, just register an account and you'll be in. I do manually approve initial posts (mainly because of all the recent spam) but as soon as I see a fellow ICT teacher registering you'll be in with full access.

There are really three aims with all this - firstly to share the burden of developing some form of spreadsheet / assessment tool based on the new APP, to see if something can be linked into Moodle (my previous topic about this can be found here: http://www.effective...?showtopic=2053 ) and to foster further collaboration around such issues.

[Gideon Williams]

The balance for me is between assessing individual student ICT skills and how they are used in wider aspect eg planning, independent research, overall project, cross curricular use etc. Whilst I dont want to go down the CLAIT route or just a tick box, we do need a way in which a lot of the stuff is done automatically.

I wonder if we are happy to post our current spreadsheets/databases in a location to then look at a best fit solution? Me also thinks that as Moodlers there might be value to existing tools therein - ILPs, Moodle database etc.

There is an interesting document which looks at the IT skills needed for the ICT tests with some progression. Here is the document here: http://www.naa.org.uk/naa_18654.aspx

Gid

PS Tried to upload the file but server was not too keen.

[Gideon Williams]

Looking at what has gone in previous discussions I wonder how much it would cost to pay someone to create a moodle block/template for us for assessment.

We use assignments a lot in Moodle and I would really like to select a template that I can fill out that students could see instead of that blank page eg with tick boxes, drop downs etc

[Andrew Field]

Thanks Gideon - apologies if forum hasn't allowed you to upload it - I've set security to high to prevent spammers. This is also why everyone's first post after my changes has to be manually approved - caught about 15 spammers in that trap so far, so it is working - but is a bit annoying. Once your post is approved, subsequent posts should be fine.

Could you e-mail the document to me and I'll upload or I'll tweak the allowed formats for uploads.

Great ideas though - thank you.

[Gideon Williams]

Wonder if combination of assignment rubric, outcomes, grade descriptor (the OCR add-on module - for traffic lighting) and ILPs might be the answer. Now to put it together

[Sarah]

Whilst it isn't Moodle based, we use a piece of software called JAS for assessing pupil progress, as all the student have to do is tick boxes against pre-defined criteria and it then tells the student what level they are on and how to improve. It is very easy to set up and update and our students find it simple to use. So in order to incorporate APP, we are just going to amend what we already do.

[Chris]

Hi
Wondering if it's really cheeky to ask how this topic / work is going? Wanting to ensure Moodle is our primary vehicle next year for KS3 courses ... this would be a fantastic argument ... hence the late arrival of interest?
Cheers, Chris

[jwilliams]

not moodle based, but at our subjects leaders meeting, the guy who created the ocr nationals database as recommended by the chief moderator http://www.ict-afl.org.uk/ is creating an APP database for students, we also think that the devon advisor is going to try and do a mass purchase and buy it for all devon schools. I know that Rick has not finished it yet, but it is something that looks useful for the future.

J

[James Potter]

Hi all,

I've been looking at developing APP at our school and I've been tinkering about with easy-ish ways of recording it. I've come up with the attached Excel sheet for KS3 for recording data. It looks a little on the large side, but the copy functions in Excel can speed the process of entering the data a little quicker. The idea is that it will calculate an APP level based on how many parts of each strand the student has covered. It should be fairly self explanitory, all you have to do is change the option box to 'yes' each time a student has covered a particular stand.

I'm probably going to be part of the team who has to sell APP to the staff so any comments on how to make this tracking sheet more user friendly (many members of staff are a little weak on the ICT front) would be great. It's all unlocked so you are all mroe than welcome to use it and change it as needed.

We also run a moodle site, so if anyone has any progress with getting this all online, please update!

JUST FOUND OUT that the forum won't allow me to upload Excel files. Maybe PM me if you want a copy and I'll see if I can send it there.

EDIT: Andrew has just changed a few setting which means that the file should be attached now.

Cheers,

James

Attached File(s)

•  APPKS3 template.xls (57.5K)
  Number of downloads: 10