de Ferrers Specialist Technology College – Frog Blog

We have had a busy half-term here at de Ferrers and being in the last week of the Summer term, I thought it was time to give the Frog Blog a little update.

The World Cup resource as blogged about in the previous post proved very popular. Lots of students had a go at the quiz, with a number of students getting all of the questions correct. England came out on top in our “Who will win the World Cup” poll, followed by Spain and Brazil in second and third spots. Only another four years and we can do it again!

Work has begun on the Student Council pages which will be up and running by the start of next year and there are plenty of other new sections and features in the pipeline. We will bring you some more updates nearer the time.

To celebrate the impending start of the World Cup, we’re adding our World Cup 2010 pages to Frog.

Staff & Students can try the World Cup quiz & top the leaderboard, view facts and stats about the World Cup finalist countries and the South African stadiums in our interactive Google Maps mashup, vote for who’ll win and post their views on the matches…all that plus a countdown clock!

Next week we also launch the redesigned student front pages, with better access to new hotlinks and the message feed from staff. Well done to the Student Council & Dove Voice for their views and ideas!

Here’s the official results of our Frog VLE Election 2010 votes and student voice…a brilliant resource.  Popular with a lot of students and well used in CPSHE lessons by Y11.

Thanks again to Paul Evason from Haybridge High School & 6th Form for coming up with the template and sharing it.

Will the real election results look anything like this???

We are about to unveil our new Learning Blog widget, allowing students and staff  to share thoughts as part of self & peer assessment, learning diaries, book reviews, etc. We hope to upload this very soon to the Exchange area of the Frog Community for other schools, as well as a few other goodies…

Next job…our interactive World Cup 2010 VLE pages…the thinking hats are going on now!

Following on from the success of our Young Designer KS3 voting website, we have now opened it up to Young Designers at KS4.

Four pieces of work are on display from the Young Designers who have each been assigned an anonymous number to make the voting fair. Every student at de Ferrers is invited to decide who deserves to be the Young Designer, so get voting.

You can access the voting centre by going into the VLE and clicking the Young Designer button under the “Subjects” section.

Since our last blog update, we have been setting up some new web pages.

Here is an overview of the new web pages and details of where you can find them on the VLE:

Creative Arts Website

The Creative Arts curriculum area website is now live and a link can be found in the subjects area.

The website is being updated with resources, news and photo galleries for Art, Drama and Music.

General Election 2010

We have also set up an Election 2010 mini-site. Thanks to Paul Evason from Haybridge High School & 6th Form for creating this resource and making it available via the Frog Exchange. (You can read their blog Here).

The website provides general information by linking directly to BBC web pages and also allows students to share their thoughts and views about the General Election.

We have adapted Paul’s version slightly to include our own Frog Box voting system. A link to the Election website can be found at the foot of the student homepage.

Revision Zone

Last, but not least, is our Revision Zone. This web page provides links to external websites that will help with revision, these are split into the following categories – KS3, GCSE, A Level, IBDP, General Advice Tips & Preparation and Revision Timetables.

There is a forum which can be used to share your own revision tips and links to revision websites with other students.