Ketlane

One of the good things I've seen is responsive exams - as the candidate answers, the software assesses them and - it they are doing well - increases the difficulty of the next question; or reduces the challenge. The candidates emerge having answered different questions, possibly in a different order, but all of them have been challenged. They all say that it was difficult but they thought they'd done well. No need to romp through loads of dead easy questions before you get to the meat of the exam; or no need to stare in despair at the harder questions you haven't a hope of answering. This is a much improved version of Foundation and Higher papers!

Looking at it from the candidates' point of view, so many of them now do almost all their writing electronically, so sitting an exam of 2 hours or so with pen and paper is a very unusual experience. We can see the quality of writing decline as you go through the question paper from Q1 to the end at Q10 or wherever. From the examiner's point of view you would avoid difficulties of reading handwriting - some has to be seen to be believed. Some marking could be automated - at a trivial level examiners wouldn't have to check blank answers, but also one-word answers or simple maths answers could be automated easily, leaving examiners to do the difficult (and more interesting) bit. I agree with the general view that the devices have to be in plentiful supply, utterly reliable; that the underlying software has to be bomb-proof; and that the connectivity and server end has to be failsafe too. Electronic assessment allows all sorts of ways to make exams better at measuring candidates' knowledge and skills - just making what we do now work on-screen is only a start. IB has been looking at it - see https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/assessment-and-exams/onscreen-examinations/ Declaration of interest here - I'm marking on a GCSE which has over 800,000 scanned responses to mark. That's just one paper. Multiply up by the different subjects, the multiple papers, the different boards (someone will tell me off - they are Awarding Bodies and don't like being called boards), the different exams (GCSE, A Level, BTEC,....) and it's a mountain of data.

Getting into placename pronunciation is a minefield. In the (very) old days when you needed an operator to connect some long distance calls I regularly had difficulty with operators and the Kirkcudbright exchange - the only solution was to deliberately mispronounce it.....

Two signs on the M6 southbound... you'd think they would either both be right or both wrong, but instead there's a compromise....

I was on a First Aid course years back which offered sustificates....

My latest instructions for attending a meeting......

Had one of these - would go to places Land Rovers were too big and heavy for. 800cc engine.

I has a Citroen GS. Suspension definitely weird; car was known among friends as The Inflatable. But the suspension system meant that you didn't need to jack the car up to change a wheel , the car did the work for you. Radio panel installed lengthwise between the front seats. And typical Citroen one-spoke steering wheel.

Perhaps this answers the question about McD? Can anybody translate (found in a hotel in France)?

History (and why I want to find out) - my mother worked for Ferranti as a physicist in quality control in about 1942-45. This came home with her, almost certainly against the Official Secrets Act. She said the components she worked on were used in bombers - so there has to be someone out there who is the expert on Ferranti valves! Was this used in Gee, or H2S, or what?

This is from a much earlier vintage - and actually a genuine question too. I believe 1940s and airborne electronics. There might just be someone on Edugeek who can recognise this......

Maestro. Can be standalone, integrates with SchoolBase.

My trick is to print an A4 sheet for each child with name and their roll number. Line the pupils up in alpha order, or roll number order, whichever works for your processing of the folder. Photo once with the A4 held up in front of them as in a police mughshot Photo again without A4 sheet. Bin the A4 sheets after each picture. You now have a pile of A4 sheets listing the ones you missed out. And your photo folder has the pictures in the right order and with clear ID. Easy also to delete the mugshot pictures from the folder. Just beware of the identical twins. We had a pair, one of whom had a T shirt with the slogan "I am not James" and the other "I am not Ian" though it wasn't clear which was wearing which (or indeed if there were two of each shirt as well.......)

Just had a stunningly incompetent Amazon spam call. Surely even a scammer with the brains of a dead fish knows that they would need to start by establishing the identity of the person picking up the phone?

Not at all sure whether I'm in the right forum but it seems the best match so far..... [mods, please move this if you think it's better elsewhere] Foolishly admitted in church that I used to be involved in running a school MIS. Now I've been 'volunteered' to do the same for church, which is currently in the quill pen and parchment era; our new vicar is enthusiastic about Churchsuite as a solution; it looks OK and I've had a bit of a play with it; he says it's worked well in his previous parish. On the off-chance that some people on here have experience of church MIS, and Churchsuite in particular, I'd welcome any comments and advice. Thank you all

Oops! Now enabled.......

My guess is somewhere in the £5 range, sent a bigger and significantly heavier parcel for £8.50 the other day. PM me your address and I'll pop them in the post.

My Dell C1765NF printer has died. I have one black, one yellow and one magenta toner - compatible from Stinkyink - free to a good home (would be grateful for postage) Stinkyink ref D1250K, ST1250YL, D1250M

There are some interesting possibilities here which may dodge some of the problems that we can foresee. I've used adaptive admission testing software - it doesn't give the same questions to everybody, instead it responds to their answers - so if the candidate does well on a question, the next one set is of a slightly higher level; conversely if they struggle, the next one served up will be easier. Software adjusts as it goes along. So looking at your neighbour's screen won't help much as they'll have different questions. With a big enough question bank the testing could be on demand, so making an end to everyone doing GCSE Maths Paper 1 on Thursday at 9 a.m. I can see this working with relatively closed questions; how it could possibly handle an A Level Shakespeare essay I'm not so sure! I think this will come eventually, possibly quite soon - if everything else goes digital, exams must follow.

I wonder why they aren't repair's????

Heard this on the R4 You & Yours programme. The frightening bit was that the Land Registry record is, in law, absolutely definitive - if you are on there, you are the owner. Seems most likely to happen if you are not in occupation of the house for whatever reason.

I don't think they mean that kind of user.....

Used one in a village in Scotland recently. Card only. Not even an unattended kiosk or anything. Worked fine.

No comment....

As a schoolboy was taken on a visit to Parliament. We were parked in a side room, can't remember why, most of us sitting on the floor, and I was nearest the door. Prime Minister of the time came through and trod on me. I've been one of the downtrodden masses ever since.