KS3 ICT Pilot

[broc]

teaching ICT should be about giving the students the ability and confidence to use computers as everyday tools. They should understand what a spreadsheet does, what word processors do, when to use vector graphics, bitmap graphics, macros etc, not how to use specific Microsoft, Lotus or Open source products.

Sadly the constraints of the curriculum and 'league tables' pressures on schools force a very prescriptive style of teaching these days so that students don't have the time (or motivation) in many cases to learn & find out for themselves. The ones that do are the ones who give us (ICT tehcnical support in schools) the most grief.......

 

My biggest issue with the KS3 test environment is that it is contrived, unresponsive, and artificial in the way it imposes its interface on the student taking the test. I can cope with the irritating problems with documentation, code errors, flakyness of installation routines; after all that is what I am paid to deal with as a network manager.

 

I feel sorry for the students who are struggling with a late 1980s interface.

 

If you look at how most people work with a PC, depending upon screen 'real estate' they will have multiple windows open at once, resized, tiled, or minimised simultaneously; they may have pieces of paper in front of them, like task lists, hardcopies of emails, faxes.

This test environment adds to the pressures students have to face taking tests or exams already by denying them the ability to work in a style they now take for granted using computers.

[webman]

Bring back Thomas telford GNVQ ICT - all is forgiven!

 

Well... not really, as that was awful, too. And as a technically-minded pupil when I took that course, and passed with a C (it was mind-numbingly boring producing screenshot, after screenshot, after paragraphs of exaplaining how I clicked Start, opened Word and so on, after screenshot...) it doesn't say much about actual ICT knowledge. As it has been said many times before, the tests in schools show much of the curriculum can be re-gourgiated by pupils, not what they actually know.

[kingswood]

Good points again. After I said too much I looked at Word for Mac OS X. Mmmmm. Completely different interface. And then I thought again about what MS are doing with their new release of Office. Interface change. This time a radical one too. So I understand everything that Tony was saying and even think he has a very good point.

 

What the hack.

 

Make them sweat :-)

[GrumbleDook]

Lol ... at last ... another convert to making them work hard.

 

Although there are many about that say nasty things about the various CTCs and academies around, I have to admit that I loved the whole dual platform that was around at Brooke Weston CTC when I started there ... most of the machine were Macs and certain rooms were PC so that specific software could be taught, but the students started on Macs mainly and got their head around general principles using non-M$ software ... they adapted to M$ software *really* quick when needed and that was a big success in my book.

 

When I see students that mainly use M$ applications now and have to use a different system they do struggle at first ...

 

Thankfully we mainly have them use Apple stuff as well and they adapt quickly. The number of kids that ask why we don't have the proper version office on the PCs is silly ... they think that the Mac version is the newest and best ... and that we just don't want to spend the money getting the same version for the PC. ;-)

 

But I digress ... this is now an "apple rules" thread ;-)

[linuxgirlie]

Well, we will have to bring it back round to a Linux rulez thread!! lol

 

Basically being a school who is moving towards a Linux system (servers and 2 classrooms so far) I was shocked (ok maybe not seeing that it was RM) that a so-called 'crossed-platform' system wouldn't work on Linux clients, and that they would only support Red Hat (even though I think that it would probably work on all RPM based distros)

 

Like said before, the response was Buy a Microsoft Server and run Citrix clients...urmmm no thanks, I didn't save this school £60,000 moving aways from RM and Microsoft to go and spend it on them again

 

My 2p!!

 

Jo

[GrumbleDook]

Yep ... and I think the work that you and other SchoolForge members are doing to argue this case may be the saving grace in all of this.

 

...

 

But Apples still rule ;-)

[CyberNerd]

and that they would only support Red Hat (even though I think that it would probably work on all RPM based distros)

 

The lack of linux client does suck, however the linux server installs quite nicely -I tried Centos (RHEL) first and had no problem that wasn't documented (yet). Edit the postgres config and add a tomcat user was all I needed to do, the installer looks like it should work on pretty much any distro.

By default it sets up the Postgresql database and installs locally into /usr/local/aps/ no package management needed.

[kestrel1]

I think u8dmtm is in the minority. This software is rubbish. It would be far better if it was run over the internet on dedicated servers.

[Sylv3r]

I must admit I wasn't a fan with the installation stages, but after seeing it in action today with no problems at all running 60+ students Im starting to sway towards "its not as bad as I first thought".

[glensc]

I think u8dmtm is in the minority. This software is rubbish. It would be far better if it was run over the internet on dedicated servers.

 

Given its bandwidth requiremants I can't see that hapening unless schools get given cheap/free high capacity conections and even then probably not.

[Chafftech]

I think u8dmtm is in the minority. This software is rubbish. It would be far better if it was run over the internet on dedicated servers.

 

Given its bandwidth requiremants I can't see that hapening unless schools get given cheap/free high capacity conections and even then probably not.

 

No way will it be able to run over the web. We have 10mb connection and it is slow to upload the results.

 

The software is not great, but it is a pilot. The only way to make it better is to get onboard and put your feedback in. The more feedback they have the better it gets. This year the DPS was a lot better than last years for us so it is slowly getting there.

[CyberNerd]

No way will it be able to run over the web. We have 10mb connection and it is slow to upload the results.

 

As the implementation of software is, this would not be possible.

RM could have chosed to implement the software differently - they could host it on their own Citrix servers and this would require only 20Kb/s bandwidth per user.

RM could have used web2 technologies such as AJAX to deliver this.

IMO Either of these option would have been preferable to how thay actually implemented it.

Its just badly though through - thats all.

[Richie1972]

We're finding this QCA software to be slow and unreliable.

We have to often restart the postgres and tomcat services. The tests sometimes run like snails - even though the PCs are all celeron 2.66Ghz, the server is a P3.2GHz Xeon and the network is running at 100mb (1gb between server and switches)

I'm sure it could have been designed better - maybe with a web based front end too - but i'd just settle for better running speed and less flakiness.

I feel sorry for the kids trialling this software

[CyberNerd]

I feel sorry for the kids trialling this software

 

And i'm fed up with alpha testing RM's latest **** up.

If this was actually a pilot then it would have already been stopped as unfeasible - so many schools cannot run this.

[Richie1972]

Our school's just decided to scrap running this pilot as the software's so crap and unreliable. Hopefully if enough others do the same then they'll have to either pull the plug on it or do some major repairs to it

[russdev]

Hate to tell you this plug is not being pulled it is going ahead as dfes, tony blair and others want it to...

 

So scapping tests why any school would do this is beyond me as in two years time your results are reported this means you yes you have to explain to head why test didnt work and kids got bad results, in 2008 cant pull out so why anybody would do it know just beyond belief rubbish test or not...

[kingswood]

I agree- the test will move on regardless of the technical perspective from NMs and technicians. I would also say though that that we ran four very successful sessions this past week with two groups of students and found it quite good.

 

Feedback was taken by myself and teachers during the test and recorded- with that information and the technical monitoring of the test I carried out whilst it ran we hope to be even more prepared than the two months I had to prepare this year! Students thought the test interface was complicated and that the questions were obscure in the first part of the summative test (Test 1); however, in test 2 they finished on average with 20 minutes on the clock left (there are only two tasks in that one) and told us that they found this one "too easy" and some even said it was "boring".

 

We had problems with one student account that refused to restart the test even when we logged him on to another system (we made sure that there were four systems spare in case...), and apart from that the APS ran very well and all DPS systems uploaded their results without much problem (some slowdown as the test ended at the same time as other students througout the building also logged off their machines).

 

It's not *that* bad really. A lot less than I thought it would be anyway.

 

Paul

[Ric_]

The thin client implementation of the test **sucks** at the moment and the RM engineer that observed our trial (and indeed it was a trial!) can vouch for that.

 

I understand that the tests will be going ahead and that the trials must take place to improve the software but at the moment it is unusable - we got 14 kids through the 2 summative tests in two days!!!

[RoyG]

So scrapping tests why any school would do this is beyond me as in two years time your results are reported this means you yes you have to explain to head why test didnt work and kids got bad results, in 2008 cant pull out so why anybody would do it know just beyond belief rubbish test or not...

 

Does it actually matter?!

 

The main reason I hope these tests die the death (unlikely as some believe this may be) is that the tests themselves are so completely crap! They have no educational benefit whatsoever and the only schools which will show up well on whatever dodgy statistics that happen to be in vogue (League Tables, Value Added, Contextual Value Added or whatever) are those schools which choose to "teach to the test" - for which schools have been recently slated by Ofsted!!

 

There is no way that techies on their own will have any influence on whether these ill-conceived tests go ahead. But, if everyone involved makes their views and feelings known, there is an outside chance that some sense might prevail.

 

Check out http://www.tes.co.uk/section/staffroom/thread.aspx?story_id=2216616&path=/ict/&threadPage=4&messagePage=1 to see how teachers feel about the tests. Talk to your teaching colleagues, talk to SMT, talk to your Head. Make them all take a long, objective look at what's proposed and maybe, just maybe, these views might be taken seriously.

 

But please, please - for the sake of the kids - don't just accept that this heap of junk must go ahead.

 

RoyG

[loopy]

another one here that has done it for the last 2 years.