About Me

For the last ten years I've been working in international schools in Thailand teaching ICT (Information Communication Technology) and Computer Science, prior to this I have worked for several years in software support and also taught English as a Foreign Language. I'm particularly interested in using ICT as a tool for transforming education and in the impact of open source technologies upon learning. Twitter ID @ajduckworth

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Online Multiple Choice Assessment Tools: Socrative, Kahoot and Plickers- a brief comparison
I was looking for a comparison of a bunch of online assessment tools: Socrative, Kahoot and Plickers but found nothing so here is my take on these tools.  What they all offer is the ability to poll the class with a set of multiple choice questions. Socrative and Kahoot require the students to have a device connected to the Internet into which they can enter their responses to each question.

Plickers
Initially Plickers seems quite magical because the students don’t need any devices in order to submit their choices, which could be good if you work in a school with dodgy or no Internet. Instead with Plickers the students are given a card, with a unique pattern, which they can hold up in one of 4 ways,corresponding to the students’ chosen answer corresponding only the teacher needs a device.  Each card has a number from 1 to 40. The teacher needs to note who has which card. The teacher also needs the Plicker app on their phone, using the camera they can scan the room to poll the student choices.

I remember when Kahoot came out some teachers started saying how much they preferred it. I have to say my vote still goes to Socrative. Why? Personally I tend to prepare any tests in a spreadsheet and Socrative is the only tool that will allow this. Until Kahoot and Plickers get their act together I will be sticking to Socrative.



Socrative
Kahoot
Spiral.ac
Plickers
Students need an Internet connected device
Yes
Not needed
Teacher can upload multiple choice from CSV files
Yes
No, questions and answers must be entered one at a time.


Friday, April 8, 2016

Cambridge Computer Science IGCSE 0478 Input Devices Exercises

Exercises to help understand Input Devices. You will need to make a copy of each document if you want to edit it!

Computer Science CIE IGCSE 0478 Output Devices Exercises

Here are six exercises that cover output devices for the Cambridge Syllabus:

3D Printers
Projectors
Monitors
Loudspeakers
Printers
 

Computer Science IGCSE CIE 0478 Overview of Past Paper Questions

If you are wondering which past paper to look at to find past paper revision questions for the area you are revising you need some kind of summary of the past paper questions. After searching for some kind of overview of the Cambridge International Examinations 0478 Computer Science Past Paper Questions I ended up making this myself. So far there have been only two sets of examinations, However because there are separate papers set for each examination date and also specimen papers it means that there questions from five or six papers to choose from. The theory and programming papers are shown on different tabs of the spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gwos7DmMgcG0a3XY9hFrLtRpmLtATb-ovvLBe_1Aaoc/edit?usp=sharing

Where to download the papers
You can download copies of the past papers at xtremepapers.com. Strangely however, at the date of writing, however, the November papers were not listed, so you would need to use the Cambridge Teacher's site to access these