Do you admit you are "red", and don't understand your revision topic and need help; "amber", and have a couple of queries; or "green", and know the subject thoroughly with time on your hands to help struggling classmates? These are key questions being asked of this summer's exam students at John Cabot academy in Bristol, where technology is being used to encourage students to revise far more effectively than simply being left to "read your own notes".
Five years ago current assistant head Chris Hall became John Cabot's first leader of e-learning to develop the school's virtual learning environment (VLE). He came up with a simple premise – if only students could indicate which learning objectives in each subject they were not so good at, and all subjects were in one place, teachers could then make revision much easier by attaching the necessary materials to help that student understand a particular objective.
From this grew Deep Assessment for Learning (AfL), a student self-assessment "traffic light" system now used throughout the year across the school – a far cry from the summative, end-of-term assessments, undertaken by many schools today, which often appear well after students have taken exams.
John Cabot offers a wide range of choices in AfL. First, students can change their whole screen – or a small block at the bottom edge – to red, amber, or green at the end of a revision task in class to show how much they understand a topic. "If I look around the room and all screens are red, even though my lesson plan says move on, nobody understands this so I say let's start again," says Chris Baker, current leader of e-learning at John Cabot and West of England winner of the 2009 Becta Award for Next Generation Learning.
Does peer pressure affect pupils' honesty about their level of understanding? "We worked really hard at the beginning to instil a no-blame culture," says Baker. "We try to encourage the pupils to find things they don't know, to 'get stuck'. We call it 'HIT it': H is for help – ask people opposite you; I is for internet (search on Google); and T is for teacher [help if you are really struggling]. The students understand that if they want to help they need to use the amber or red options."
Baker finds AfL particularly useful in planning revision sessions. If the whole class signals green, he says, the topic is not a priority, but if red appears, some teachers will go one step further and do new seating plans so students on green can help out their peers on red. "The pupils who colour their task early with green go round and help others."
He is surprised how often so many in his class signal red. But the pupil response depends on the attitude of individual teachers, he says. He personally reflects on the red screens as a question of "I haven't taught you well enough" rather than "Why don't you understand?"
The second choice is the more discreet "deep" AfL. Students go into a web program on the school VLE that links subjects and learning objectives. They colour each objective red, amber or green when studying the subject over the year. Then, during revision time, teachers searching through pupil records will attach appropriate learning resources to any red or amber self-assessments they find.
Chris Hall says the system is so powerful because a teacher can be saying they have taught a subject and yet the pupils are still saying they don't understand – they are setting out themselves what they can and can't do. "I built a database engine and then worked on a load of webpages using database technology called cold fusion – Adobe technology," says Hall. "You get a web page to talk to a data page and provide you with intelligent information."
The online version came about four years ago and now the school is taking
its ideas further by seeing if it can produce a similar program using a
commercial solution called Smart Assess.
Three clicks away
Self-assessment is only part of revision strategy at John Cabot, where quick, clear navigation is a priority. "Students and teachers should not be further than three clicks away from the material they want. If it's hidden any deeper they will lose interest," says Chris Baker. "They may find it once but then not go back. We structure our VLE by subject area, level of study and the resource – science, GCSE, resource – bang, just three clicks away."
Last month, the school introduced the first of a series of short video clips (see examples on this site's homepage) recorded by teachers for revision in various subjects and accessible via the school VLE. In test versions, students picked out the clips with humour and in feedback said they much preferred to revise by watching and listening rather than reading, says Baker. The science department has even added an antique effect and "Charlie Chaplin" music to a video on how to mind-map, reduce a page of notes, and compose poems or songs of key words.
"We want more students talking about what works for them," says Chris Hall. "It's nice having teachers talk about revision but it's much better coming from the students."
Podcasting offers the chance of anywhere, anytime revision. Students are given a website and they then subscribe, say, to a GCSE PE revision podcast to get the first instalment. Once they have subscribed, every time they use iTunes or a similar program at home or on a mobile device, they get every future episode automatically downloaded, without the need constantly to revisit the original site.
Finally, John Cabot has formed a federation with two other academies in the area and produced the online resource, cabotlearningfederation.net/toolbox, an index of useful websites for general study and revision from teachers across all three schools. It is being updated constantly.
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