JDMcDsblog

I have made up a wiki, or shared web space called HutchieInternational. Its main purpose will be to act as place to make up collaborative pages, made up of contributions from pupils in our school, and our partner schools. But to for this to be of any use, you need to log on to the site and request permission to become a member. Only then can you add your own text.

So, here are the instructions.

Go to the wiki at http://hutchieinternational.wikispaces.com/

This will take you to the home page. At this point, you can read, but not edit.
To edit and to add new material, go to top right and click “join”

A dialogue box will pop up; fill in the fields as follows:

user name-whatever you wish (eg FredBloggs)
password-something you will remember
email your e-mail address no

click “Join”

You should now see your user name at the top right of the Home Page, beside the envelope icon.
Go along to the side bar on the left hand side and click “Join this space”

This brings up a box entitled,

“Request membership to HutchieInternational
To join the space, hutchieinternational, submit a request to the space organizers.”
No need to write a comment.
Click on “Request membership”

When I receive this request, I shall then grant permission to edit and you can begin to add comments.

What next?

1. S1- Go to “Where we live” (left hand pane). Add a brief comment about your home area.

2. S2 Go to International Trade (left hand pane) Add a comment about international trade, based on what you have found out by researching the websites in your Global Studies workbook 3. This comment shoud mention eg debt, fair trade, the work of Oxfam, poverty cycle, etc.

I have been reading about Comment Challenge 08. In fact I heard about it while listening to Dave Noble’s excellent podcast, Booruch, . It’s a bit late to get started on this, since it’s been running since 1st May, but I am going to have a go, and follow my own time frame, commencing on 25th May. The idea is to encourage us to become better bloggers, by focusing a bit more on what we actually post and the kinds of comments we write. There’s some excellent material on Sue Waters blog, and also on a dedicated wikispace:
http://commentchallenge.wikispaces.com . There are plenty of ideas, here are some:

1. Set up a plan for tracking your comments–use CoComment or another tool.
2. Comment at a blog where you’ve never left a comment before.
3. Find three new bloggers and leave comments for them.
4.Comment on a blog post you don’t agree with.
5.Respond to another commenter on a post.
6.Find three bloggers that are not related to your normal niche and leave comments.

exam time

Originally uploaded by jenjemeer

This is the time of year when many teachers go into Purdah. Sacks of scripts, securely fastened by plastic handcuffs are delivered, accompanied by fastidious instructions for the marking, filling in Ex forms and returning of papers -by the next day, if possible. At this time of year, juts before exam leave, senior pupils are generally bipolar-manically optimistic aboutr exam succuess for no good reason or inconsolable that they have forgotten everything they ever learned. The Sixth Year revert to Primary 1 levels of maturity and regress or simply dissolve, a school career that started with cheery shots of first day at school ending in a wimper.
Markers meet in cavernous stadia to dissect scripts and agree a marking scheme-the lucky ones get to mark at home, at a time and place of their choosing; the less fortunate are coralled into barns and sheds to mark centrally in a given time frame.

This is my 18th year of marking Standard Grade Geography-I came in near the beginning when there were quite small teams for each level, and now there are over 100 Credit markers. For a while I used to be an examiner and setter, too, which meant standing in front of your peers and defending decisions on where to award marks for contentious evaluation questions. I loved the cameraderie of working in the exam team, meeting colleagues from across Scotland. So, despite my annual vow not to mark again, I’ll be joining the throng at Hamden to go through the 2008 Geography paper, and no doubt enjoying some good banter along the way.