I know, I’ve left it a bit late to be starting a new coursework unit, but the saving grace of the OCR Nationals is that you can enter candidates right to the end of the year – no May 15th-ish deadline for us. This does devalue ICT a little, over the last fortnight I’ve lost pupils almost every lesson to finish X coursework, but, we do get to claim the time back in some weird OMG-the-moderator’s-coming-best-get-Johnny-in-all-day-to-sort-his-folder way. I digress.

Inspired by James’ excellent unit 23 resources (thank you very much), we now also have a moodle course for unit 20  - web animation. Not quite ready for sharing, but will be soon. Having looked at the marking criteria, we’ve found that these two units are almost identical (marking-wise), along with unit 22, the sound editing unit. I’m sure that anyone teaching or investigating the OCR Nats already knows this, but I think I dropped a stitch somewhere.

I’ve reached a point with the top Y11 group where they have shown they can work independently (after a fashion), and will work well to get they grade that they need. I have given them the choice of Units 20, 22 and 23 as their last unit, their homework for the last week was to investigate the units and make a decision as to which they would do. Now I have four ’sub-groups’ (including the single award pupils) operating alongside each other. I’ve yet to see quite how well this will work, but it’s looking good.

I’ve prepared folders for each of them, containing the documents available from OCR for each of the units, and a quick outline of the assignment. I’ve hijacked ‘guest speakers’ from across the school for each of the units (music teacher – sound, ICT tech – flash animation), to run workshops with the kids.

Is this personalised learning, or just individual learning?