The de Ferrers Academy – Frog Blog

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.

We have added a number of additional Frog features to the de Ferrers VLE, including:


D+T Peer mentoring:

Students can now select a DT option and ask for help, guidance and advice from some volunteer mentors. Most of the GCSE and A level options are now represented.

We’re already seeing some excellent responses to this – well done!

We hope to start using this approach soon in other curriculum areas.


Education News:

Staff and governors at de Ferrers now have their own one-stop shop for education news and webslinks, agggregating all of the news feeds into one convenient webpage.

We will soon be making a one-stop revision and study page for students.




Young Designers:

DT are celebrating the work of KS3 designers by dispalying some of the best work and inviting their peers to cast their votes.

Check below for the current winners…

Since the last blog post we have been busy working on some new sections of the VLE.

Recently we have been experimenting with the use of surveys within Frog to collate feedback from our VLE users. Using the built-in form components we have been able to create surveys that use a variety of radio buttons, tick boxes and text areas. After a successful trial with de Ferrers staff, the PE curriculum area have now launched a student survey which is open to years 7-11. The survey allows students to share their opinions of Physical Education at the college.

If you are a student in Years 7-11, you will find a button on your Frog Dashboard after you login which will take you directly to the survey.

I am sure you will see some more surveys appearing on Frog soon, we are also working on some new widgets, so watch this space!