Is your school going to continue with the KS3 ICT test?

[jumpinjamez]

What about a "Not Yet Decied yet" option?

cos SLT here have yet to decide what their doing about it

i am with Gatt.

I have ran it two years now and am still beefed about the wasted time.

[Geoff]

junked it. retooling the box to something more constructive.

[ticker]

We are going to run it again this year, had an interesting conversation with a guy from QCA at BETT who said it would be in our interest to continue running it because even though they have abolished it, it will be back in some form of assessment tool to let students be monitored through out the year rather than just at the end.
So they really haven't got rid of the tests they just realise this isn't the path to take, I think it will be something similar to the Edexcel adult basic skills and key skills onscreen tests. Which I feel is a lot better at tracking and assessing students.
I also let it slip that we had been using it to identify areas where staff would need training in by having them take the test, so they might put something in like that.

[DaveP]

We are still getting ready. ops: I have a stack of other work taking all my time, including a new implementation of Serco/Facility/ePortal. Nevertheless I still hope to have a new image for the stations ready for the Staff familiarisation process shortly.

[marco84]

In their wisdom the senior members of staff have decided that we will still go ahead with running the software for the whole year group.

[Ric_]

Is anybody else having to write a report on their opinion of the test process?

I have until 15:00 today to knock something up (minimum being who says that it isn't compulsory).

I am including the following aspects:
* Technical limitations
* Staff required for the test
* Pitfalls of teaching FOR the test (i.e. as opposed to teaching transferable skills)

Any ideas what else I could include? Possibly, alternatives the QCA test or ways of making better use of the ICT time?

All help much appreciated (the sooner the better)

[Midget]

Don't forget the amount of time you'd be needed for it, or they'd have to hire an IT literate exam officer, so it'll either cost more money, or result in less work being done.

[Ric_]

Don't forget the amount of time you'd be needed for it, or they'd have to hire an IT literate exam officer, so it'll either cost more money, or result in less work being done.

Included that, along with an estimate of time taken to install the test plus a note that anybody running the test would require training in the flightdeck thing.

[CyberNerd]

@Ric_

* lack of cross platform support (linux,osx,vista,98,64bit) is a fundemental design issue.
*how badly written it is esp in TS environment
*it's out of date
*teaching 'for the test'

*alternatives - Web2.0, serverbased jboss etc

[Midget]

What about the fact that whilst those tests are taking place, noone else is able to use those IT rooms which will greatly effect some curriculums (or the kids play time)

[Ric_]

@CyberNerd: The cross-platform support isn't a major issue for us since we are primarily a Citrix-based environment. The poor implementation for TS is an issue however, and one that we experienced first hand last year.

@Midget: During last year's trial we had to stop all but the testees from using the thin client machines (i.e. nobody in the school could do anythging while the tests took place!!!).

[Midget]

@Midget: During last year's trial we had to stop all but the testees from using the thin client machines (i.e. nobody in the school could do anythging while the tests took place!!!).

The inspectors will have a dim view of that.

[RoyG]

@Ric_
*alternatives - Web2.0, serverbased jboss etc

......NOTHING?!

RoyG

[beeswax]

I was told at the end of last week that we would be running it.

[User3204]

Yeah, we'll be running it,

According to the Head of IT, it will provide an introduction to "alternative GUIs". It's certainly easier than installing Linux as a dual boot on some machine.