teacher’s guidebased on quality materials provided by pearson publishing. student testimonial. ......

Teacher’s Guide

W2L Premium Edition

September 2011

ContentsWhy use What2Learn?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 1

Getting started

Get your accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2

Accessing learning games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 2

Creating your own content

Making games and quizzes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -8

Creating topics to store your games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 8-10

Monitoring student progress

Setting up links with your students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 11

Managing your students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 12-13

Helping students who have forgotten usernames or passwords. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 13

Viewing progress reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 14

Maximizing student engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Page 15

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What2Learn - Teacher’s Guide

Why use What2Learn?• Reduce your marking – let What2Learn do it automatically for you!

• Quickly and easily create quizzes and learning games and see the scores your students have managed to attain.

• What2Learn is an exciting and unique new online tool for learning and assessment. Students learn through a range of interactive activities which raise achievement and motivation.

• Boost examination results and enhance use of ICT across the school with this system based on Becta Award-winning principles.

• Thousands of ready-made interactive activities to support Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 students.

• Educational content covers most areas of the secondary curriculum. Much of this is based on quality materials provided by Pearson Publishing.

Student testimonialThe site has helped me with my revision of Science. I have learning difficulties and the site has been fun and a good way to learn. Thank You

Sam, Grade 10 student

Teacher testimonialThanks for your wonderful site. Being a teacher I really enjoyed playing games and learning. I will definitely introduce this to my students!

Lalitha Raman

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Getting started

Get your accountsThere are two kinds of accounts at What2Learn – student and teacher. Student accounts are able to switch between different content for different age groups, and between resources for UK and US students. Teacher accounts are needed to manage your student accounts (eg resetting passwords), to monitor student progress and to generate new content specific to the needs of your students.

Our partners Pearson Publishing will be happy to provide you with assistance in getting all of the accounts you need. Please see www.what2learn.com/register for details.

Accessing learning gamesYou will at times want to check the activities available in What2Learn and direct students to the most appropriate games for the topics you wish them to revise. To do this simply log in to your What2Learn account and click on the Play tab in the side menu. Select a subject from the drop-down menu and click on Show to see the games available for that subject.

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Creating your own contentWhat2Learn makes it quick and easy for you to create your own interactive learning games to enhance the learning of your students. When you make a game our automated system will instantly create a web page for your new game.

What2Learn Premium provides access to twenty engaging and eff ective interactive learning game generators, from basic hangman-style games to formal drills. To get started, log in to your W2L Premium account and click on the Create link in the toolbar.

The available game types are as follows:

Hangman game engines

Hangman has always been a classroom favourite for developing literacy and vocabulary. The W2L game generator provides four fun and colourful hangman-style games to engage your students. To create your game you will simply need to provide a game title, a description of your game and then eight single words to appear in the activity.

Provide a game title

Provide a description of your game.

Supply eight single words for your game

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Multiple-choice game engines

Multiple-choice activities still form an important component of many formal assessments. The What2Learn Premium game creator provides three fun activities which you can help to prepare your students thoroughly for such tests. Each game requires you to enter eight questions.

Provide a game title.


Enter the question.

Enter four possible answers.

Press the radio button to indicate the correct answer.

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Q&A quiz game engines

Most online learning games are based on multiple choice activities. Sometimes it is not enough for students to simply recognize the correct answer – sometimes you want them to know the answer and be able to spell it correctly. What2Learn Premium’s game generator has six Q&A quizzes which give you the opportunity to meet this need.



Enter the eight questions in the question boxes.

Enter short (preferably one-word) answers.

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Anagram quiz game engines

An alternative to the above Q&A quiz game engines, W2L anagram games provide an opportunity for students to develop their subject knowledge at the same time as enhancing their literacy and vocabulary. Each answer is shown to the students with the letters jumbled up (this jumbling of answers happens automatically).



Enter the eight questions in the question boxes.

Enter short (preferably one-word) answers.

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Long answer activities

Preparing students for formal assessments at times requires them to be able to write detailed answers to questions. W2L provides two interactive drills to help students to ensure they get the required key words into their answers and avoid the ‘waffl e’.

Once students have attempted an answer, their eff ort will be graded before they are off ered the chance to see an exemplar answer before repeating the activity.

Data entry for this kind of activity is more complex than with other game engines. Please follow the instructions below carefully.

attach

install**update

Computer Viruses: Increasing the risk

100 characters left

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100 characters leftWhat actions increase your risk of getting a computer virus?

100 characters leftOpening email attachments you were not expecting or clicking on links in emails increase the risk.

100 characters left

Certain kinds of websites such as peer-to-peer, downloads, cheat sites and pornographic sites.

100 characters left

Failing to install or update antivirus software and fi rewall makes it easy for viruses.

100 characters left

void

100 characters left

void

100 characters left

email

25 characters left

25 characters left

link

25 characters left

peer

25 characters left

download

25 characters left

cheat

25 characters left

25 characters left

antivirus**fi rewall

25 characters left

Title Exam Q: Computer Viruses 1

40 characters left

Row Question status Answer status

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Q. Q. These are the key words you would like to see in the answer the students provide.

Providing partial words is good practice. eg, by using ‘attach’ students would be credited for ‘attachment’ or ‘attached’ in their answer.

If you need more than 8 key words you can add multiple words to a single box - just split them with ** (shift-8 twice). Keep within the 25 character limit though.

The title as it appears within the

game itself. Can be the same or diff erent to the

main title.

How many marks your question is worth. Students

will get a point for every key word they include in

their answer

The actual question you want the

student to answer

In these three boxes you must

supply an exemplar answer to the

question. You are limited to 300

characters (100 per box) but sentences

can start in one box and end in another

The title of your game. This what will appear at the top of the game’s webpage or within the main W2L system if you add it to a Topic.

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Once you have selected the type of game you would like to make, carefully follow the on-screen instructions. Failure to follow the instructions may result in your game not working properly. Once you have created your game, you should make a note of the game reference number as you will probably need this later on.

“ How do I see the scores my students have managed to get on my game?”

With the launch of version 3 of W2L it is now possible for you to see the scores your students have managed to attain in your own W2L games. To do this, you will need to create Topics. Topics are collections of games that you make available inside the main W2L system.

Once you have made some games using the W2L game generator and have made a note of their reference numbers, follow these steps to begin tracking student achievement within them:

Step One: Create your Topics

Log in to your W2L teacher account and select Topics from the side menu. You will then see a table like the one shown below, which shows you any Topics you have already made. It also gives you the option to add a new Topic – simply enter the name of your new Topic and press the submit button. You can add as many diff erent Topics as you like.

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Step Two: Adding games to your Topics

Once you have created a Topic, you can click on its name to begin adding games to it. Any games you have already added to this Topic will be listed (see below).

To add more games to the Topic you should enter the game number in the input box below the table and press Assign this game. You can add as many games as you want to your Topics. You can also add games using a widget on the dashboard when you fi rst log in.

Step Three: Get your students to ‘unlock’ your Topic

Now that you have created your Topic, you need your students to ‘unlock’ it to gain access to it. To do this, they will need to log in to their W2L account and enter your Topic’s share code into the sharing box on the dashboard. You can see the share code of your Topics by clicking on Topics in the sidebar – see the image in Step 2 above.

Once students have entered the share code of your Topic, they will see a link on their dashboard to your Topic and all of the games it contains as shown below.

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Step Four: Share your Topics with the world!

Please tell others about the Topics that you create and encourage them to give your Topic code to their students (you will not need to see the progress of their students).

Online forums and social networking resources such as Twitter provide a great means of doing this, or simply contact us when you have created something you are proud of and we will tell the world!

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Monitoring student progress

Setting up links with your studentsTeachers and students have been enabled to personalise their W2L experience and access only the information that is of relevance and interest to them through the use of share codes. These enable students to link to one another to set up competitive leagues and enable teachers to access progress data on their students but not the tens of thousands of other students actively using W2L.

Getting access to the progress your students have made has been made incredibly easy through use of What2Learn share codes. When you log in to your What2Learn teacher account your dashboard will display your sharing code (see below).

You must make all students in your class aware of what your sharing code is – display it somewhere prominent in your classroom. When students log in to What2Learn they need to enter your sharing code into the sharing window on their dashboard (see below). Once they have done this your will be instantly linked to them and able to access their progress reports.

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Changing your display name to your studentsYou probably do not want to show your fi rst name to your students. To change this, go to the Sharing page and click on manage groups.

Simply enter the name you would like students to see into the New Value box, as shown above, and click on Update.

Managing your studentsWhen a student enters your share code and becomes assigned to you, they will automatically be placed into your ‘default’ class. To make it as easy as possible to monitor your students, you will want to create a range of diff erent classes and assign students to the most appropriate class.

To create a new class, go to the Sharing page and click on manage groups. Enter the name of the class you would like to create in the Add a new group row and press Update. Repeat the process to create all of the classes you require.

Once you have made your groups, press to go back to view sharing and groups.

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Select to view your default group and then choose the students you wish to move into another class by putting ticks into the checkboxes. Then select the appropriate class from the drop-down menu and click on Change.

Students who have forgotten usernames or passwordsIt is of course just a matter of time before some students forget their usernames and passwords. To prevent this becoming a barrier to progress in lessons, we have made it quick and easy for you to see the usernames of your students and to reset their passwords. To do this, click on the Sharing link in the menu and select the group you are teaching.

The username of each student is displayed in brackets after their name. Please be aware that usernames and passwords are case-sensitive.

To change a password, select the appropriate student(s) using the check boxes at the end of the rows, select the update password radio button, enter a password into the password box and click on Change. You will not be able to change the passwords of students who have not linked to you by entering your share code.

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Viewing progress reportsAs a teacher you will be keen to closely monitor and reward the progress your students are making. Once you have set up links with your students using share codes, this will be extremely quick and easy to carry out. As What2Learn will automatically mark the work of your students, think about the substantial time savings you will make. You will be able to see the attainment of your students in the original core games and in any games in topics created by you (or other teachers) that your students have ‘unlocked’.

Step One

Log in to your W2L teacher account. Make sure that you are set to the required key stage by clicking on the change class button in the side menu. You will not be able to see reports for games within a certain key stage if you are in the wrong class.

Step Two

Click on the Reports button in the side menu. You will see a screen like the one below.

You will be able to start narrowing down the details you would like to see in your report by selecting a specifi c subject or topic and the particular group of students you would like to see results for. Subjects are our original core content and Topics are any additional sets of games that you have created or unlocked.

Step Three

Once you have chosen the class and the subject or topic you want a report for, you can narrow your choices down even further by selecting all students and an individual game, an individual student and all games, or an individual student and an individual game.

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Maximizing student engagementWhat2Learn was designed with students in mind and has been proven to raise engagement in even the most diffi cult of classes and unmotivated of students. How does it manage to do this?

Wide range of stimulating, interactive gamesProviding learning opportunities in the form of games not only sparks enthusiasm and interest but it provides an extremely eff ective means of boosting knowledge and skills.

In-built reward systemsStudents are automatically rewarded for the completion of learning games. Central to this are the ‘micons’ (cartoon-style characters the students design to represent themselves within What2Learn) and the virtual farm. To make any developments in these resources, students must spend credits earned through the completion of activities. With things changing over time on the farm, this has been developed to encourage students to return often and undertake more learning.

Student–student competitionStudents can set up ‘bowling leagues’ by entering each other’s share codes. These leagues show how many learning games each student has beaten. This encouragement of competition motivates many students and keeps them engaged in their learning for longer.

Top Tips1 Tie in use of What2Learn to your school’s own reward

system. For example, three W2L games completed = 1 school ‘Merit’.

2 Allow students time to develop their micon and ‘bowling leagues’. Although such activities are not directly educational, they will increase the desire amongst students to complete more learning games.

3 Does your school use tutor time eff ectively? Book network rooms and give your students this time to make progress through What2Learn.

teacher’s guidebased on quality materials provided by pearson publishing. student testimonial. ......

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