It is interesting to see that the book is quite different from the Edexcel one.  Note that I say different, not better.  How you rate the book will depend on for what you intend to use the book, and the teaching styles of the department.  The emphasis of the book is more of a teaching resource than a reference resource.  As a result there is less factual information and content in the book, but more ideas of assignments.  For those that are serious about the vocational aspect of BTEC, the book also links topics with appropriate science careers, and is probably worth keeping a single copy in the department for this reason alone.  I’d rate the quality of the assessment tasks more highly than Edexcel book (especially P1,M1,D1 of the core physics module! If you’ve got the Edexcel book you’ll know what I mean!)

As I said above, how useful this book is will depend on how you deliver BTEC within the department.  The Edexcel was more of a traditional text book matched to BTEC, almost with assessment material added as an afterthought.  The Hodder book feels much more like a teaching resources, and has more teaching sequences that you could use with students, or that students could follow independently.  Of course using the text book as the primary teaching method could mean significant investment in a resource that could be out of date as soon as the specifications change again.

Would I buy the book?  I think in my last review I made my dislike of text books obvious.  Whilst they are useful for cover lessons or occasional use, I can’t imagine a modern and forward thinking department using text books as the primary teaching method.  I’d recommend science departments to check out both of the BTEC books and buy a set that most suits the use to which they will be put (e.g. cover lessons)

A while ago I blogged that I used Windows Live Mesh (beta) for syncing files between home and work.  I’d recently got fed up of the huge wait on boot up while live mesh indexed files on my hard drive and I decided to try some alternatives.  These are my thoughts on the software products I tried:

So which did I choose?  There was little difference in transfer speed and overall functionality between products.  Live Mesh took an age to start up (whether from boot or resuming from hibernation) but the other two pieces of software made little noticeable difference to start up times.

At the moment I’m using Jungledisk (I’m on an old plan and only pay the storage fees, not the monthly fee) and I feel safer knowing my documents are securely encrypted in the cloud.  The only catch is the lack of conflict resolution which has to be checked manually at regular intervals.

There are many cloud-based file sync products out there, and I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has tried one of the products above or one similar (e.g. sugarsync) for use by teachers.

Update:  I’ve moved to Dropbox because of the relaunch of Microsoft Live Mesh (with corresponding moving goal posts), and I kept getting file conflicts in Jungledisk.  I found Dropbox was extremely reliable and I’ve got my storage limit up to 6Gb with referrals.  Dropbox also links with other services like PixelPipe, providing alternative ways of getting content into your Dropbox.  Remember to follow my referral link to DropBox if you haven’t got an account already – you get extra storage space!

I bought a copy of this text book having co-developed a scheme of work for the new BTEC specifications.  I was interested to see what the book looked like, and how it covered the BTEC assessment criteria.

The book provides a useful but not essential resource to support the teaching of BTEC Applied Science.  The book is printed in colour and the content is matched to the requirements of the course, giving it an advantage over generic text books.  Activities are matched to the content, but there tends to be very little in the way of activities apart from the assessment tasks.  The assessment materials don’t include scenarios or assignment briefs, but do provide a useful illustration of what level of work would be required for each of the assessment criteria.

Are they worth buying?  I’ve spent 15 years teaching without using text books, I passionately believe that there are many more engaging and stimulating ways to teach students than referring to text books.

I would however recommend having a copy of this on the shelf so that teachers can refer to it when they aren’t sure of the content, or when setting/marking assessments.   Teachers new to BTEC would benefit most from this resource and the security it brings.  It might also be worth having a class set of these to use for cover work, or for occasional use as a reference material.

One point I’ve not made is the unfair advantage that Pearson holds over other publishers as owner of Edexcel.  Is it right that the exam board also publishes text books and teaching materials to accompany the course? (Some might think that they already make quite enough money from getting teachers to do all their marking and work for them!)

Have a look at the samples available from Pearson and leave a comment telling me what you think of these materials.

For several years I’ve used level assessed tasks as one of my peer assessment tools in science lessons. I’ve used them with a range of students of different abilities from foundation tier GCSE to Entry level and below. Usually I’ve used them part way through a topic to check understanding and highlight opportunities to develop through the rest of the topic.

I was recently contacted by Dr Mark Evans (co-author of Badger APP materials) regarding a post on my blog I had made about APP in science (and why teachers don’t get it). Mark kindly gave me access to his Webquest APP tasks and I decided to try them out with one of my groups as an AfL activity.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with these Webquests, you are given a structured task supported by online reference materials (including updated links to other sites). These materials do not rely on text books, and the materials can be uploaded onto your VLE, making them suitable for homework and cover lessons as well as for use in class.

The lesson I had chosen wasn’t ideal because I had to leave half way through, but that still gave me 40 minutes to start my students off. I had chosen a task titled “Invisibility cloaks” in which students accessed reference materials about how light travels and reflection/refraction of light. Students were then asked to apply this knowledge to describe a model and see if it could be used to explain how to make an invisibility cloak (Harry Potter style).

My students struggled with this task, not because of the task itself, but because of their low literacy and independence levels. Less able students struggled with reading information off of the web sites, and text-to-speech tools aren’t very popular with our students. This is the first barrier to success for my students.

Some students who could access the information struggled with its application to a near identical diagram, and were unable to take in the short presentations on reflection/refraction. Even when an adult sat down with them and explained the content, many students were unable to apply this knowledge and identify which scientific evidence would support their ideas.

All students needed lots of guidance as they worked through the task and none were able to access it independently. This is not a criticism of the Webquests, in fact as I marked the tasks I was impressed by the structured way in which the student worksheet led the students to gather the required information and apply it to a given situation that could be assessed. I would have no hesitation in recommending these activities for use with more able and more literate students than my own (as part of a balanced and varied diet of AfL and APP activities).

An example of a completed activity is given here (page 1, page 2) complete with annotations to help me make sense of the levels before we follow up with a peer assessment/target setting lesson.  Unfotunately it wasn’t possible to capture  the good quality science discussion that also took place in this lesson.

So how could I make this task work better for my students?

• Reduce the literacy requirements of the task still further by using more narrated animations or video so that students could use the web materials as a reference material independently.
• Provide a little more structure to the writing frame to support students with lower literacy, maybe as sub-headings or more diagrammatical work.
• Add level information to each step of the writing frame so that students can more easily check their levels as most were unable to access the level ladder, even when it was presented in pupil speak.
• Use tasks like this more regularly so that students become used to finding things out for themselves and less reliant on an adult feeding them instructions or information (training)
• Refer to APP criteria and next steps more frequently so that students become better at identifying ways forward. Not all APP activities need to be written or recorded, it is possible to use APP criteria in ordinary AfL activities (rather than slotting in off-the-shelf tasks in the way you would do a test).
• Use a task better suited to the topic/material my students were most familiar with rather than use an off the shelf task.

Remember that there isn’t a proper way to use APP.  Tasks like the one above are only one example from a number of ways that APP can be used in schools.  Good AfL is key to good quality science teaching and in turn to embedding APP and making it work.

Have you used APP tasks with students of low ability or with low literacy levels?  What obstacles did you come across and how did you overcome them?

I have had to delete a selection of worksheets from my site.  The worksheets in question all featured a small number of symbols to which the copyright was owned by Widgit.  Unfortunately due to their restrictive and inflexible licensing policies, I have been unable to reach an agreement with them over use of their symbols.  I apologise if you were looking for these resources.  It is my intention to replace them with Widgit-free versions at some point in the future.

The background

We have used a selection of software packages from Widgit software for many years.  The staple favourite amongst my colleagues is writing with symbols 2000 (WWS2K).  This product allows you to enter text with symbols above, and also to create grids of text with symbols.  The software was never very user friendly and was replaced by Symwriter and Communicate in Print.  When WWS2K was discontinued, our school was persuaded (some might say conned) to upgrade to Symwriter which was meant to offer similar functionality.  We also purchased a smaller number of copies of Communicate in Print to compare the products.

It seemed we now needed two products to do what we had been able to do with one product before.  That isn’t progress – that’s software company greed!  Neither product was particularly intuitive to use and so symbol use at our special school dropped to lower levels as a result.

As I’ve mentioned on my blog before I share my resources to help other teachers.  I also hope that some of them may serve as examples of good practice.  It’s easy to forget that software companies exist only to make money – as I found out in my dealings with Widgit software.

The reason

I contacted Widgit software after reading copyright information from their site.  Not finding their site easy to navigate I’d searched Google for their copyright terms.  I then emailed Widgit to request permission to share 17 worksheets, most less than a page in size and containing a small amount of text (and thus symbols).  I was amazed to find that the copyright information on their site was out of date and amended immediately following my email.  (In fact it was changed again later in the week – that’s twice in 8 days).

Emails went back and forth between myself and Widgit regarding my request to share (for no cost or profit) these 17 science worksheets.  In fact Widgit obviously liked the material because they said the following:

“You do have some good worksheets here and we would be interested in working with you to make these available in Communicate: In Print as downloads on our website. We would use your ideas and do the work. We do work with a variety of people that make resources for our site who currently receive a royalty for their ideas. Would you be interested in this arrangement?”

I offered Widgit the change to distribute my worksheets royalty free (I’m not interested in making money from my resources) if they would allow me to distribute the 17 worksheets I had already submitted for approval.  I tried to explain to Widgit that my worksheets served as free advertising but they seemed more interested in getting me to pay.   (You’ll see that my resources site pulls in a steady stream of downloaders – that’s free advertising!).

I can’t blame Widgit.  Their software is clunky, unwieldy and difficult to use (say my colleagues) and the only unique selling point they have is the collection of symbols.   They maintain their stranglehold on the copyright of these symbols in order to stay in business.  It’s a pity that their licensing terms are so draconian and inflexible – but businesses who sell to education are in it for totally different reasons to the teachers who use them!

(And for your information the symbol at the top of the page is facepalm – it seemed appropriate to describe Widgit’s attitude!)

Update: Just to add these views are my personal opinion, formed after speaking informally to colleagues where I work.  As with all my blog posts they do not represent the opinions of my employer.

When you sign up for Graze.com you are given the choice of pre-created boxes or the option to build your own (the most popular choice).  As part of your box you receive a portion of fresh fruit, and two smaller portions of snacks.  You can opt to swap the mid-sized box for olives (instead of dried fruit etc) but this substitution costs extra.

Graze works without commitment.  You can order regular boxes (with the options to skip/push back the next box) or order one-off boxes to any address.  Boxes are shipped by first class post and are designed to fit through the average letterbox.  I’ve received two boxes to date, the first taking two days to arrive and the second arriving the next day.

You also get to customise the snacks you receive.  As well as adding olives to your order, you can rate the foods you like and don’t like so that you only ever receive foods that you will eat.  You can also mark foods try (the default setting) so that you get sent them to try out, a good way to see what new things taste like.  I binned all the dried mixes that have chilli in – so I can be confident that I will not receive them.

After a box is shipped you get an email telling you it is on the way, and what it contains.  You then have the option to rate the items you receive once you have tried them, customising your boxes further to meet your tastes.  You can also see nutritional advice and information about the company on what is a slick and well designed website, which is quick and responsive to use.

The box includes a napkin and bamboo forks.  These allow you to eat your fruit (and olives) anywhere with no mess.  The box can be recycled and the plastic packaging claims to be recyclable although without identifying the exact type of plastic it is impossible to say for sure.

I’ve taken a selection of photographs showing the unboxing of a Graze.com delivery, so you can see for yourself what they contain.

Final verdict.
I’m impressed with the website; the system is extremely user-friendly and offers a good experience for the consumer.  I was less impressed by deliveries that take two days to arrive, but that reflects the state of our first-class post system and not Graze.com.  It does mean that you can never count on a box to arrive on a particular day, for example I would not arrange for a box to be delivered to work on a Friday just in case it was held up in the post.

The main obstacle to the success of Graze.com is the price.  If they ever get this down they could be on to a winner.  A standard box costs £2.99 and one including olives costs £3.49.

My first box included around 120g grapes (with irritating tiny stalks that were a pain to remove due to the way they had been trimmed), a punnet of olives and a small punnet of chocolate coated peanuts.  I estimated the total cost of the snacks at under £1.50 had I bought them in the supermarket.  Of course you are paying a premium for the preparation and convenience in the same way that you do for pots of fruit salad in Tesco etc.

My second box (shown in the photographs) consisted of approx 130g fresh pineapple (with a clever sleeve to help keep it moist in the pack), a punnet of olives and small punnet of honey coated peanuts.  Again I’d estimate the cost in a supermarket at under £1.50.

Will I be using Graze.com on a regular basis?  Probably.  I love the website and some of the dried fruits/seeds they offer.  The key to making it special is to select mixes of fruits and seeds that you probably wouldn’t get so easily in the supermarket.  The choice of fruit (which you have to include in a box) is limited at the moment, although I would hope that Graze offer more choice as they become established (or perhaps the choice to add 2 extra medium punnets to replace the large punnet of fresh fruit).

I waited in the next day, and started to become concerned by lunchtime that my order hadn’t arrived.  I checked the order status page and it told me that my items had been allocated, to be delivered by today (the delivery date).

I contacted E-buyer and it turns out that one of the items was out of stock despite being shown as allocated.  I had not received an email or message anywhere that would let me know that E-buyer had failed to meet the delivery schedule (agreed when the order was placed).  Had I not have contacted them myself I would have been totally unaware that my order was not proceeding as it should.

I have posted below the response I received from E-buyer.  It shows a distinct lack of accountability or responsibility for the order problems and only a passing apology for messing me about and causing me to waste a day waiting in for their delivery.

I can only advise others to proceed very carefully if they place an order with E-Buyer that they need urgently.  Clearly E-buyer have issues with their system that need to be fixed (like notifying would be buyers that their items are out of stock).  Caveat emptor!

Final word from Ebuyer

Thank you for your response.
We have developed a suite of Order Management Tools that are unique and provide you with the ability to manage your order right up to the day before delivery.
Our intent was to provide you with as much information up front to avoid confusion on how your order would be fulfilled and within what timeframe.
We wanted to make sure that the tools worked in an intuitive and
informative way to online buyers so that you knew exactly where you were every step of the way.
Upon selecting an order from the Orders screen you will be in the ‘View Order’ section. This screen will give you the overview of the order, detailing billing and shipping addresses, the order line status and price and your overall order status.
The ‘Order Progress’ tab shows you a graphical image of your order progress making it simple to understand where each part of the order is every step of the way. If a block is green then your order has passed that status successfully, if it is red then your order will need some attention from you. Each block will offer information on each status with text to explain exactly what status your order has reached.
I apologise however for any inconvenience or annoyance caused and can confirm that the order is cancelled.

Have you had a similar experience with an online company?  Should we accept poor service as the price we pay for cheap goods?   Personally I think it is possible to have both but very few companies seem to be there yet!

My first impression when I unboxed the camera was the wobbliness of the neck.  Like a big black rubbery swan, the visualiser sat on my desk with curved neck, but fortunately a smaller footprint than a real swan!  When in use there was some wobble of the image when I knocked the desk, but this was only minor – however I’d recommend seating the visualiser on a firm surface.

The visualiser comes with manuals, a selection of cables, a mains adaptor (on a cable of reasonable length) and a CD containing software for PC and Mac.   Installation of the software was relatively straight forward on stand-alone laptops but our technician ran into problems when installing on our networked desktops (hopefully he’ll have success on the later version that we downloaded from Avermedia’s support site).

The software was quite straight forward, with the ability to operate the main features of the visualiser from both the software and the unit itself.  Pupils were impressed by the ability to switch between colour and black & white (handy for looking at monochrome text) although the negative mode freaked them out a little!  Capturing a still image from the camera takes only a mouse click, although saving them is much less intuitive (or perhaps I was limited by the resolution of my desktop – the control panel of the software starts up by default off the edge of the screen).  Video recording/time lapse is supported, as are basic annotation functions, mimicking some of the simpler functions of an IWB.  An interesting feature is the ability to broadcast the image over the network, for other PCs (with the software installed) to receive.  Whilst this sounds useful, there was significant lag between images being put under the camera, the screen updating and then networked satellite PCs being updated making it less useful than first impressions would suggest.

As you can see the images were crisp. quality good and the colours well balanced when viewing on the PC screen.  The image updated quickly on screen and zooms were good, although the software was unable to save a zoomed image, instead it reverted back to the full image.  Capturing the windows worked well, although it is possible that future versions of the software will make this process easier.

I didn’t use the VGA pass though cables supplied, which are more suited to the visualiser used as part of a permanent installation.  Instead I connected it up using the composite output (phono plug).  It took me a while to locate the tiny RGB/TV switch which needed to the flicked, but then the image appeared a glorious 72” wide.  It soon became apparent that the quality of the picture through the composite output was not as good as that captured at full resolution over USB.  Whilst this is probably due to the limitation of the composite video format, it is worth bearing in mind as connection to a PC gives a crisper picture with much brighter clearer colours.  Hopefully the picture below gives you a better idea of how the image differs from the composite output.

I haven’t had much of a chance to use the visualiser yet.  The software isn’t installed on my whiteboard PC, limiting me to using the composite video output.  When I tried the hardware out with my year 11 class it was very useful being able to project a worksheet on screen (I hadn’t got a digital copy of the one I was using) and then being able to show the pupils’ work on the screen was a huge motivator.  (With the software installed I would have been able to easily highlight the flaw in the plug wiring above, which is not as obvious in the bottom picture).

I look forward to using the Avermedia visualiser more in future as I become more accustomed to the hardware. 

Have you got a visualiser?  How do you use yours in lesson?  Do you have any ideas how I could use mine better?

Feel free to post comments and suggestions below.