A

Your students may be quite ICT literate and 'at home' on the Internet - as such they will probably settle easily into the Learning Platform environment and learn to navigate their way around it very quickly. However, there are a few things you might like to consider to make the first session on the site less stressful (for you) than it might be. The following suggestions represent an ideal which you may not have time to fully realise.

B

Check that each computer can access the Learning Platform web site and that you can log-in successfully there each time - remember that Learning Platform needs Internet Explorer 5.5 (or better) to run all its features properly.

C

Some aspects of Learning Platform Courses lend themselves well to paired work - eg reading content and discussing ideas stimulated by it. But others don't - eg the individually completed Assessment Quizzes. Are there enough machines to allow individual work when necessary? If not you might need to work on a half-and-half basis, maybe across 2 sessions, where some students are completing work away from the computer.
D

Each student has their own User ID and Password - you need to consider the best way to distribute these beforehand and to think about a system for dealing with forgotten passwords.

E

An Excel spreadsheet has been left in school - it contains all Teacher and Student Passwords.

  • You need access to the relevant parts of this spreadsheet.
  • You can reorganise the sheet any way you wish.
  • Whichever list is best, you need a printed copy for your class. They might be printed large (use CTRL-A to highlight all, then re-set font size and adjust cell boundaries as necessary) and then cut into strips for distribution
FYou may already have a system for dealing with forgotten Network Passwords. It is quite easy for a Teacher or Administrator to find a Student's User ID and to set a temporary password. You need to decide how to deal with this.
G

You may decide that the best introduction is a demonstration by you using a single computer through a projector. In this way you can show the site URL, log-in procedures and basic navigation techniques to Courses and other important areas of the site in a controlled manner.

HYou should aslo demonstrate how to change passwords in their Profile area - all users are recommended to do this and choose a personal password which will be easier to remember than the initial one.
I

You might want to demonstrate how a Course can be run. Within this demo you might wish to show examples of the various Quiz Assessements students might be asked to complete from time to time:

  • Multiple choice single answer*
  • Multiple Choice Multiple Answer*
  • Fill-in-the-Blanks*
  • Model Answer*
  • Submitted Assessment
  • Off-line Assessment
JFor the tests marked automatically by the computer (those starred * above), you might want to point out the importance of spelling, Capital Letters, etc and the danger of 'trailing spaces' for Fill-in-the-Blanks Quizzes. The computer looks for an exact match and makes no allowances for right answers given in unexpected formats: eg Christmas Day falls on the same date each year but if the computer expects 25/12 it will mark wrong December 25th (totally wrong format), 25.12 (slightly wrong format) and 25 / 12 (extra spaces).
KYou will have enrolled the class to a particular Course. Log in as one child in the class and ensure they see this Course on their My Courses panel.
L

After the 'walk-through' session you might want to prepare a 'crib sheet' for the first practical session listing:

  • Site URL
  • How to log in
  • How to view a Course
  • How to take a Quiz test

 

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