The de Ferrers Academy – Frog Blog

It’s June, and things are heating up at de Ferrers on our Frog VLE. We have several new features and pages appearing, with many more in the pipeline:

UPDATES:

Following the new Frogbox update, you will be able to use & share the new calendars, with coloured overlays, as well as being able to ‘froggerise’ yourself with the new Frog avatar builder.

WASSUP:

Wassup is our new virtual billboard. Check out all of our homemade adverts, posters and banners to find out what’s happening and what’s upcoming at de Ferrers.

E-LEARNING PORTAL:

The New Technologies team now have their own special pages. You can post your comments and ideas, watch training and ‘how to’ videos, look at our best pick of websites and teaching tools and ask the experts. If you’ve got a problem and no-one else can help, maybe you can call… The E-Team…

COMING SOON…

• Our CPD portal…everything you ever wanted to know about how to use AFL, Differentiation and the Accelerated Learning Cycle.
• The SEN portal for staff
• The de Ferrers daily – a virtual morning newspaper for tutor time – what’s happening and where?

Catch us at the Frog National Conference at the ICC on 14th June.

You will be able to download the presentation and handouts, including ‘20 great things to do with your (Frog) VLE‘, from our website: www.deferrers.com/conferences.

Things are moving again at pace with our Frog VLE, after a few months focussed on the curriculum, with several new sections introduced and a raft of others on the way. You hear more about our VLE work and can check out some of our pages at the National Learning Platforms Conference 2011:

http://www.frogtrade.com/index.phtml?d=2289032

Some of the new things this term are:

EXAMS PORTAL:

Updated information for staff and students about GCSE exam dates and arrangements, revision lessons, common exam guidelines and who to contact in the event of problems.

We will soon be expanding this with the Sixth form exam portal.

PLANS PORTAL:

Our revamped launch page to access all of our Medium Term Plans (formerly Schemes For Learning),   Short Term Plans (formerly Lesson Plans), resources, exemplars and deadlines.

COMING SOON:

• The CPD best practice portal with video clips, graphic organisers, forums and e-mentoring
• The E-Learning ‘ask & tell the experts’ portal
• ‘Wassup’ – our guide to events & what’s happening this term at deferrers – a virtual billboard
• The Repro zone – a cost-effective way to request work from reprographics
• Olympics 2012 interactive pages

…and more…!

Welcome back to all our Frog users. It’s been a very busy start to the new year with a lot of changes already underway.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the popularity of our Frog VLE. It continues to get a lot of use by staff and students. There’s a lot progressing behind the scenes, but a few obvious changes are:

NEW LEARNING PLATFORM TOOLS – Staff can now use Frog to link directly to Bromcom’s Webfolder for electronic registration and also to our new APP package, Classroom Monitor. The de Ferrers platform has grown considerably in recent years, and Frog is now well at the heart of everything – check out the graphic!

TALK TO THE HAND! – Mr Hand, the new head of KS4 Achievement & Guidance, has introduced his ‘Talk to the Hand’ section for Trent students in years 10 and 11. Each week there is a newtheme in assemblies and tutor groups can now discuss the issues amongst their class and send Mr Hand their comments and thoughts. It’s a very effective way to incorporate student voice on a number of levels, from individuals to whole campus. We have similar pages coming soon for Dove Voice and the Student Council, making use of the new Frog tools.

SUPPORT FOR Q.E.M.S. – de Ferrers is pleased to be partnered with Queen Elizabeth Mercian School in Tamworth, and as part of out support we have been helping them to set up their Frog Learning Platform, with a lot of the same pages and widgets we have developed. Both schools are now part of a Staffordshire Frog cluster, meeting occasionally to share ideas and good practice.

ENGLISH LITERATURE mini-website - English staff have been working with our New Technologies Development Leaders to launch their new sixth form website:

COMING SOON:

• e-learning games and our student games-design group
• Sports Report pages..by de Ferrers students, for de Ferrers students…

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!