INCERTS

Incerts and the Etherpad Furore

 Etherpad is/was a nice little online tool that allowed writers to collaborate in real time. Thus made it very good for groups of people working remotely to brainstorm ideas or collaborate on creating a document. It also made it a popular app in schools where small groups could work together on a writing task and the teacher could correct, cajole and support on the spot. Everybody's edits showed up as a different colour and it was extremely easy to use with very few barriers to entry. Unfortunately, as with so many of these online tools, there wasn't really a sustainable business model to keep it going and the whole gameplan was to sell to someone with deep pockets. That someone came alang this week in the shape of Google who not only bought the product, but the whole development team too. Some would say that Etherpad was a simpler and better rival to Google Wave and they were just using their overmighty position to buy up a small but innovative rival. The more charitable might suggest that Google recognised talent and a great idea when they saw it and rewarded the creators accordingly. All well and good, but what happened next caused a minor web furore. They announced the demise of Etherpad. The word spread around Twitter like wildfire, and the number of negative comments on the announcement increased rapidly. Nobody held out much hope as the designers were doing what they always set out to do, and make a decent return on their investment. Everybody was pleasantly surprised when a new announcement was made releasing the code for Etherpad as an open source offering. It's now down to the education community to take the code on and launch a new "Etherpad" on a server somewhere and make it even better.

Obviously there is general satisfaction that a popular web tool has appeared to have been saved (as long as someone has the time/effort/technical know-how), however, it does expose the greater question, namely, how can we rely open content created in the Cloud when it is at the whim of the owners as to what happens to the platform that it was created in? 2 weeks ago I carefully planned my lesson for Ofsted using Quikmaps, a really simple Google Maps mashup that allows very easy doodling on top of a Google map. All was well until 30 minutes before the lesson when Quikmaps disappeared. Luckily for me I could do a quick rehash and work with Umapper instead (which I would have used anyway, but for a problem with saving the maps - you need to create individual user logins, something that you don't need to do with Quikmaps) and it all turned out fine. It turns out that Quikmaps hadn't disappeared for good, they'd simply scheduled site maintenance for when nobody would be using their application - Thanksgiving! 

These 2 cautionary tales reinforce the need to plan for every eventuality when committing data and mission critical applications to the Cloud. How secure is your data? Can you export it? What happens when the web application front end goes down? 

So, what does all this have to do with Incerts? For a start, Incerts is, and has always been, a Cloud application. The obvious major benefit of this is the ability to access your data and work on your assessment system wherever you may be. However, it also exposes it to the vagaries of the web - when your web connection is down, so is your access to Incerts. Furthermore, your vital assessment data is in the hands of a third party. How does Incerts mitigate against these issues? Firstly, Incerts is subject to the Data Protection Act which places very stringent conditions on what Incerts does with your data. Secondly, Incerts recognises that having the service available all the time is critical to schools and therefore the company spends your annual hosting subscription on the best web servers money can buy, and replicates the service in different physical locations so that if one data centre went down, it would be replaced seamlessly by another one. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, users can export their data at any time via School View and Class View. Taking a prudent view of data security would suggest that despite Incerts' fantastic reputation for keeping the service running for virtually 100% of the time, users should regularly export their data to spreadsheets - say, at the end of every half-term.

Twitter at Chorlton Park

I've been an avid Twitter user for nearly 2 years and I've dabbled a bit with it in the classroom from time to time, often on a whim, getting an answer to a question that one of the children has asked. On another occasion I asked for ideas about inclusions on our Victorian timeline. One response I got was putting on the date of the first Test Match at Lords - something that would never have occurred to me. Today, however, was slightly different in that I knew that I would be having a load of visitors to my classroom as apart of a SSAT schools day on engagement that Chorlton Park was running.

We have been learning how to annotate maps using the excellent Umapper online tool in the context of a project on the Lake District. Since it is such a popular tourist destination I thought I'd ask my Twitter network about their favourite place in the Lake District. The children would use a search engine to try and find clues to the map location of the places mentioned. There is nothing new or radical about such a lesson but it has the major benefit of providing a fresh perspective in the classroom. Instead of having my filtered view of what's good in the Lake District (I can recommend an excellent selection of teashops) the children are getting ideas from across the globe. It's another little chip away at the notion of the teacher being the centre of everything.

The lesson went really well and thank you for all who contributed through their 140 characters of wisdom.

 
 

Incerts User Group, 10th November

The next Incerts User group is just around the corner – next Tuesday 10^th November at 1:30pm - 4:00pm. Please let me  know if you are able to make it.

With thanks to Lorna Rushton, head at Ashbury Meadow, who has kindly offered the school as host for the occasion. Ashbury Meadow is conveniently located very close to Manchester City’s stadium at Eastlands. Directions here: http://www.multimap.com/s/hdA0bnWo

Asbury Meadow Primary School,

Rylance Street

Beswick

Manchester

M11 3NA

 

Agenda items include:

·         A demonstration of the new APP assessment framework in Incerts;

·         New features, including whole school custom reports; customised analysis reports and more;

·         Product development update;

·         Some new spreadsheets to take away and use;

·         Discussion opportunities.     

 

Ian and Chris from Incerts will be in attendance.

If there are any issues that you’d like to bring up, or questions that you would like to give us advance notice please don’t hesitate to email them to me. 

We think our customers are our best advocates when it comes to spreading the word about Incerts and we would be delighted if you could bring along a colleague from another school to find out what Incerts is all about. Similarly, your SIP might be interested in finding out more about the way you record assessment and track data, and they would be most welcome, too. Please let us know if you are bringing someone along so we can get numbers right for refreshments.

Foundation Terms explained for Bright Profile users

One of the features that users most like about the Bright Profile is the ability to display a progress graph in the Analysis feature on a term by term basis, instead of the usual annual progress graph. This makes it much easier to graphically illustrate progress than before. However, there are a couple of common misconceptions that need to be understood before you can make full use of this feature.

When using the Bright Profile in Incerts the assessment page displays 9 terms in the top right hand box, each term with a different colour code. In order to make sure that the correct colour code is displayed for your current assessments you need to make sure that in Edit  > School the box is displaying the correct term. See image below. Note: the term has to be advanced manually so that you are able to record assessments made at the end of the previous school term at the beginning of the new school term, i.e. just after the holidays. Make sure that you remember to advance the term as soon as you are ready to start recording new assessments in the new term. 2nd Note: you have to be an Incerts admin to be able to do this.

 

The system will now record the correct term for assessments recorded based upon the child's date of birth. So for a child just beginning reception the system will record assessments against FST6 (the easiest way to understand this is to count back: the last term in Reception before entering KS1 is FST8. For children starting nursery 1 year before reception, it will record assessments in FST3. For children starting nursery earlier (5 term nurseries) it will put them in FST1 or FST2 depending upon birth date and when the system records the assessment.

 
 If you wish, once you have completed your nursery baselines (or reception baselines if you have no nursery) Incerts can move these assessments back to the previous term so they display as a baseline on the analysis graph. In other words, on entry baseline assessments for a 5 term nursery will show as FST0; for a 3 term nursery they will be shown as FST2; for schools with a reception only they will display as FST5. If you would like to do this, you need to contact Incerts and ask them to move the assessments back once you have finished adding your baseline assessments and BEFORE you start adding any new teacher assessments.

New look for Incerts

When you log in to Incerts you will notice a smart new menu bar at the top of the page. The main differences are:

1.    The “Edit” option reveals a sub menu as shown in the illustration below;

2.    The wording on the menu has changed slightly: “Assess EYFS” and “Assess NC” replace the old Foundation and Assessment options;

3.    There is an “Assess APP” option, currently greyed out, but coming soon: watch this space.

Click on the image to view a large size version.

Another new feature that you may not have spotted is the ability to output your entire school’s assessment data on to a single spreadsheet. This is accessible on the “School View” page.

Note the small “A” advanced feature button at the end. This means that you can upload a custom Excel template here and output your whole school data in your own format. For more information about using custom templates please read my post on this subject.

For INSET on uploading custom spreadsheets which will include several useful examples of detailed pupil tracking sheets, please contact me ( john@creativeict.co.uk )

Custom Spreadsheet for Bright Profile Users

This example of an Incerts custom spreadsheet is for users of the Bright Profile - a more detailed extension of the Foundation Profile that has proved popular with many schools. This spreadsheet can be run at any time to give you a summary of the progress your class are making.

Click to download the example spreadsheet: Download BrightGroup14Example

Click on the image to view full size.

The spreadsheet will show the score in each column from 0-9 reflecting when the spreadsheet was uploaded to Incerts. Note the ability to sort each column by clicking on the arrow at its head. Not shown in the picture is the summary at the bottom of the spreadsheet that will help show your class' strengths and weaknesses.

Click here for a blank version of the spreadsheet to use in your class: Download BrightGroup14Blank

For more information about the Bright Profile contact me: john (at) creativeict.co.uk 

Using Custom Spreadsheets to Track Pupil Progress

Tracking pupil progress and attempting to identify children that are starting to lose ground at an early stage is a major preoccupation for many school leaders. Yet it is a very time consuming activity to do well. Incerts users have the standard spreadsheet output which includes a very useful "on target" chart for English, maths and science, but through the use of custom spreadsheets it is possible to achieve a lot more. This post will give a two examples of spreadsheets that you can use just for your class, or as a school to help with some of the issues around pupil tracking, and hopefully save you a bundle of time while you are at it.

Important note: before attempting to use these spreadsheets, make sure you are familiar with the technique of uploading and downloading spreadsheets in Incerts - see this post for instructions.

Example 1: Keystage 2 Tracking Sheet for Mathematics

To view the example spreadsheet in Excel, click here: Download TargetTracker8-PW

To view the image with annotations in detail, click on it.

This spreadsheet tracks pupils' progress against expected progress (3 points per academic year) and against a school target (in this case a Fischer Family Trust Target, but it could be generated from another source). 

It is a good example of some of the key features that can be used when combining Incerts data with external data. For example, the end of year assessment task scores can be entered manually and compared with teacher assessments - the !! denotes a significant difference between teacher assessment and test score.

It also demonstrates the ability of Incerts to create spreadsheets with historical data in them. This spreadsheet needs to be uploaded at the end of each year in KS2 as well as mid year in Y5 and Y6. Incerts knows that the historical columns already contain data and will only upload the latest assessment data to the relevant column. Clearly this needs a little thought and management so that the spreadsheet gets updated at the correct time of year once all the relevant assessments have been done.

Here is a blank version of the spreadsheet to use at school: Download TargetTracker8-PW blank

Example 2: On target for Year 6?

To view the example spreadsheet in Excel, click here: Download OnTargetExample

To view the image full size, click on it.

This spreadsheet shows how easy it is to manipulate the data output by Incerts. The spreadsheet shows which children are expected to meet their target levels in Year 6 in reading, writing and maths. Note that although it displays levels as abc sub levels, the actual scores have been entered in points - this is because it is much easier for a computer to calculate using numbers! So in order to use this spreadsheet you will need your Year 6 target levels in point scores to add to the spreadsheet before uploading it to Incerts.

The other point to note is the progress expected figure at the top of the spreadsheet. Supposing you think that your class will only make 1.5 points of progress prior to the end of Year 6, then by changing this figure it will automatically recalculate the outcomes. Similarly, if you ran the spreadsheet in Year 5 you could adjust the expected progress figure accordingly. 

Unlike the previous spreadsheet that builds up over time, you can run this one whenever you need to. It might be useful to identify intervention groups, for example, or as the basis for a staff discussion.

These examples are great, but...

Incerts recognise that each school will use its service in a different way and as such these spreadsheets might not fit the bill exactly. You might like the first spreadsheet for reading or writing, as well as maths, for example. All these spreadsheets are customisable and it's easy to do some of this yourself -renaming columns or deleting manually entered columns such as the Optional Assessments Task columns yourself if they don't apply to your school. However, if your requirements are a little more in complex, simply get in touch.

Custom spreadsheets and Incerts

One of the most powerful features of Incerts is its ability to output data to custom spreadsheets. The standard spreadsheet output shows the current assessed levels for all subjects either as levels or point scores which is great. However, you are not limited to this default spreadsheet. You can upload any number of custom spreadsheets to Incerts and it will automatically fill them with your data.

Here is a very simple example. Supposing you wanted to look at the breakdown of reading and writing levels in your class by gender? Simply upload the gender sub-levels spreadsheet  from the template provided below and the output will look something like this:

Here is the full sample spreadsheet to download (Microsoft Excel format): Download GenderSublevel2-002 which shows you sub levels by gender for reading and writing using a set of dummy data.

And here is the blank version of this spreadsheet with the dummy data removed for you to use on your class: Download GenderSublevel2-002 blank

Uploading a spreadsheet to Incerts is really simple, as the following instructions will reveal.

How to Upload a Custom Spreadsheet

Before following these steps, make sure you have the blank gender sub-levels spreadsheet saved to the hard drive of your computer by clicking on the download above. You also need to make sure that you have Microsoft Excel on the computer you are working on.

Step 1: From the Class View screen underneath the list of pupils you will see the link to output your class data to Excel. Next to this is a small A in a red circle. Click on it.

Step 2: From the pop up window, click on the link to upload a live spreadsheet

Step 3: Click on the green arrow, then select your spreadsheet template from your hard-drive.

Step 4: After a few moments you will be able to download your blank template now populated with your class data.

Once you have opened the spreadsheet in Excel you may want to save it. If you do, I suggest you follow the following protocol: include the class name, spreadsheet type and date of dowmload in the filename so that when you look at your saved spreadsheets in future, it's easy to pick out the one you need. So for this spreadsheet I might call it something like:

3JS eng read and writing sub levels by gender 31.08.09

Note the use of full stops instead of / in the date format. If you didn't know, these are an illegal character in filenames.

Once you have mastered this simple technique, there are all manner of custom spreadsheets that you can upload to Incerts in order to do some pretty powerful progress tracking for any curriculum subject. In my next post I will provide some more examples of spreadsheets for you to try out.

Incerts User Group Success

Yesterday (9th December), I held an Incerts User Group for northwest schools using the online assessment recording, pupil tracking and reporting tool. I was delighted that 20 headteachers, deputies and assessment co-ordinators found the time to attend and I'd like to thank Bridge Hall Primary School in Stockport for hosting the event. 

One of the main topics of conversation was the Becta initiative for online reporting which secondaries need to implement by 2010 and primaries by 2012. I' have collected presentations, links and resources from the event on a wiki for people to access. Please add a comment or question at the foot of the wiki, or, if you attended, fill in the survey.

As a follow up to the event, delegates requested that I set up a course for senior managers in the advanced use of Excel for data analysis purposes. Hopefully this will run in Feb 09, and if you are interested in finding out about this course, drop me a line: john@creativeict.co.uk 

Incerts User Group (Northwest)

On Tuesday 9th December I am running a user group for northwest users of Incerts teacher assessment recording system. As well as existing users, anyone interested in finding out about this groundbreaking tool is welcome to attend.

Agenda

• How Incerts supports our school          Kirsty Sutton (Headteacher, Bridge Hall Primary School)
• Becta's Reporting Online to Parent's agenda          John Sutton (ICT Mark assessor, CreativeICT)
• Incerts Development priorities          Chris Padden (MD of Incerts)
• Advanced features demo          Ian Billups (TD of Incerts)

Venue 

Bridge Hall Primary School, Stockport     (map)

Buffet lunch available from 12:45, seminar ends at approx 4pm whereupon we will move to a local hostelry to continue the discussion.

Sign up: email John