Understanding Evolution

Free Academic Podcasts

Teachers’ plan to beat the cheats

Today's Herald has a story on cheating and reports that the SSTA wants all coursework to be done under teacher supervision. This follows a recent report from QCA entitled Digital Technologies & Dishonesty in Examinations.

Assessment 2.0 revisited

My previous post about Assessment 2.0 generated some feedback, which encouraged me to develop the idea a little further. So I've worked-up a short paper on how Web 2.0 can be used for assessment.

It highlights some of the challenges facing education with the advent of this open, democratic and interactive web. There is a particular debate to be had about how VLEs measure up to Web 2.0 - and which one we should use within education. There is a similar debate to be had about assessment. It's been argued that the choice of online assessment system is moot since students were increasingly using the assessment system that came as part of the school/college/university VLE. But does Web 2.0 make the VLE obsolete?

SQA's December E-zine

Comparing UK and Irish qualifications

Survey on e-learning

The Internet Safety blog has a post about a new survey relating to e-learning and e-assessment. We're looking for as many people as possible to complete the survey so if you have 10 minutes to spare, your input would be appreciated. The results will be used by SQA to determine the way that we develop qualifications in the future.

Glow and Sharepoint

There has been an interesting discussion about Glow's use of Microsoft's SharePoint technology (SharePoint is the technology behind Glow). Some have argued that SharePoint is not a good platform while others have pointed out the importance of having a stable environment on which to build Glow.

I see both arguments. My limited use of SharePoint doesn't fill me with excitement in the same way that some Web 2 technologies do - but I appreciate that Glow needs to be built on firm foundations (even if they are a little bland).

My real worry about Glow isn't so much the underlying technology but the danger that it becomes a sort of "pretend internet" - with so many restrictions on what young people can do that they can't wait to ditch it the second they walk out the school gates.