Keeping up to date

An update to summarise recent IT to try to keep this current.

Googledocs: a couple of hiccups with this with some unexplained unavailability issues. So far the restore function has got me through this, but I wish there was another backup.

PBWiki: the advanced physics one resurfaced and got some mileage. It should be now that this starts to pay off as it has gathered together quite a bit of their work. I need to tidy up the front page and also think about a wider audience.

Brainpop: A good thing, but do I overuse it?

Hardware: The computer I use showed signs of cracking recently with startup and kernel panic problems. This prompted a backup, which is always a good thing. It seems stable now.

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Brainpop

I thought it would be useful to think about why Brainpop seems to be such a useful resource for middle school students. Here’s what I come up with:

• They are short and freindly
• They are familiar – not just from science
• They are pitched at the right level (mostly)
• They give feedback gently and promptly
• They can be revisited

I’m sure there are more reasons. Not all of the presentations are perfect, so they need previewing, but, apart from that, they are good to go.

There must be others – fro example this site has a bunch of IB level stuff which is good where it matches up.