The website Jon uses to help students get organised is Trello
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Video transcript
what i’ll say about about um this idea then is that when i was teaching a year 10 group a number of years ago what they saw with was the idea of revision and how to how to engage in the revision process and in my previous school what they did was they to try and get students to engage with the vision process they set up what i think what they call the revision hub on um on the school vle so they set up a revision home and all subjects were tasked with um ensuring it was populated with as many revision materials as they possibly could uh to ensure that when students went home during these the holidays whatever they had worked to do and they could you could do a bit of revision my issue with that was with with that was that i’d speak to the students and say did you look at that materials that are put on to the division hoping they’d be like what what revision or first of all or they’d say no i didn’t know where to look or you know it was like a convoluted way to try and get they had to click through a number of screens on the vla or whatever the students just weren’t using it they would simply won’t use it actually went to the um one of the technicians the it technicians and said is there a way of telling how often students are going on this page and he said i can tell you now that i’ve actually done this before and they don’t use it at all he said only a handful of students use so i was like what is the point then what is the purpose behind it so i thought what i have to do is i have to conduct a pupil panel if i tell you what i’m going to do just stop sharing my screen man i’ll just stop sharing for a second can you see me or yeah yeah i’m back am i sorry just that that would make me as well seemingly faced well um so this year 10 group i did i decided to conduct a pupil panel with them um and say to him okay well with the revision what is it you what are find it hard and the most common response i got from and it was primarily boys as well was i don’t know where to start i don’t know i know there’s loads to do i just haven’t got a clue where to start so i was thinking okay well the starting point is probably the vocabulary or ensuring that you’ve got a systematic way of learning your vocabulary for from my subject anyway um and they were like well i can’t with this vocab book you could actually give them like a vocab up that thick and say to me okay go and learn that and you know they’re not going to do that already so so i said to him what we’re trying to try and come up with a system where we can maybe learn some vocab maybe little and often and things like that so we set up vocab tests and things and we were doing okay with them not much better than they would expect in any case but then i thought okay well there’s got to be a way to um to get them to to focus their revision a bit more and to spend a bit more time on the actual revision process and it was actually a conversation with a young man called uh craig mystic mr barton math.com his full name that’s his full name i think and when i was speaking to you you this was again about five or ten years about six or seven years ago i remember you said you used trello to organize stuff and i was like never heard of it and i remember you showed me you i think you had like certain number of tasks that you needed to do probably for your website and you would say what i can do is i can put all the list of jobs that i need to do on this left-hand side here and then i can move them to the doing pile that i’m in the process of doing and then once i’ve done them i can move them over there and i can box them off and i don’t need to worry about them at all and i remember in my household me and my wife adopted that for household jobs now yeah don’t don’t worry it went down like a lead and well we we planned our wedding with it did you that’s yeah yeah it was yeah i mean yeah it was touching the arguments did that cause yeah i was moving things yeah well that’s the thing is that the beauty of it is you share it don’t you share that that board with other people don’t you so you might be working on something like one of my jobs was to put the bid out or to redecorate the the spare room which still hasn’t been done and it you know if you see them on that to-do list for ages don’t you if they’re not in the doing pile then then people have got got a word to say or two about them so i thought when i was using trello with my wife i was thinking okay i could use this then with people who are now really disorganized in my french group who are now really struggling with organization so i thought okay what can i do then so what i did was i share my screen again with you i um set up trello and this took me a while to do so i’m not gonna say that this didn’t take me a long time so it did and basically went through the specification and i went through every element of the vocab list on the specification every topic area as well and what i did was i um gave the type gave the title it matched up with the specification and if you click on each of these so for example you just scroll down here so if i scroll down to me my family and friends which is the first major topic of gcse if you click on that just shout out craig if you can’t see this by the way so once you click on one of these um areas of this this red section that i’ve got on the left hand side here so all the things that are yet to be completed then what i’ve got here is i’ve got a list of um little tasks for the students to do so i’ve got here can i move that no and you’ve got like a little five minute quiz you’ve got a memorized quiz you’ve got a quizlet quiz and these are all linked in to that particular topic area so i won’t want to click on that i’ll do it now but once you click on that that will take you to a quizlet quiz on me my family and friends which will test the students on the vocab needed for that particular topic area so i was setting students work to do in order to get them to focus on their revision but the beauty of trello as i mentioned before is that once you’re confident with an area so for example say they clicked on me my family and friends and they were happy with how they were doing then they could either move it to the amber section or they could actually move it to the green section if they think that and we might have done for example a vocab test and they’ve got 50 out of 50 on that vocab test they know it inside out they’ve done all the tasks that embedded into the um into that particular card then they can put that into the green section and you know that when it comes to their revision in easter or whenever they start they don’t need to waste their time on this me my family and friends because it’s this stuff over here which is the the areas that they need to focus their time on so straight away over the course of it it was over two years that i did it but the the popular the way they populated this was you you’d have some over here you have some in there you’d have a few more over here and when it came to the vision the students knew that they just need to focus on these sections here because i’m sure you’re probably the same trade when it comes to going over things you like to do the things you know you go that don’t you so that a lot of the students are focusing their time on things that they already knew they need the answers to and they would they could say to themselves i’ve just done an hour’s revision there on me my family and friends i’ve got full marks so i could that’s me don’t ask me french work boxed off whereas in reality they should be focusing on these things over here one thing that i really like about trello as you said before is that you can share you can share the board with other people so what i would do is i would share this board with one of the students and the student me and the student would be the only people who own that board so i can keep an overview of how they’re doing and if they’re actually doing some revision at home so i can have a little look i can dip in and dip out and say well actually you got you’ve put that into the green section you need to move it to the younger section until you’re more confident with that area and by the same token as well you can actually add parents email addresses in as well so and i’ve used it utilized it to a large extent for parents even as just said well you’ve noticed having on their trello board that they’re not really engaged with any version at all they need to make sure that they’re they’re using trello to you know to do some vocabulary or some listening activities whatever it might be um and then we’re coming at it you know a two-pronged attack really so it’s us on the parents as well and the parents have often referenced it as well in there you know in the conversations that i’ve had i’ve had with them um but one thing that they came out of the um the pupil panels were they the pupil panel started year 10 and at a pupil panel towards the end of year 11 before they they left for their exams and i said to them what how are you how do you think you are on course for you for your target grades and things like that and and again it’s primarily boys that i’m talking about here they were saying that the thing that has got them to the stage that we’re at they’re where they’re at which is on target or above target is using trello and focusing their revision and ensuring that when they click on these different icons here that whether it’s on their phone or whether on their laptop or whatever they can just do five minutes at a time rather than going to their exercise book or their you know their before their big vocab booklet they they use they can just do it on on the move on the bus um or whenever they wish to um so that’s something which was you know i think trello as well it’s not it’s not an educational app is it it’s not an app that’s designed for education at all but i think that it can be used in that way to get people to to focus their revision a little bit and ensure that they’re spending the time on the things that they need to spend time and rather than wasting precious time it’s fascinating this so just a few questions on this mate if that’s okay so just in terms of the logistics you you create one board but then what do you do can you then copy it so each kid has access to their own you don’t have to do it like 30 times or whatever no no does it work so you have you have to i called mine a master board so yeah i have a master board and then just copy that master board yeah and then in a lesson i would just get the students or sign up to trello and then get them to copy that master board yeah and then they’d call it whatever their name is so i’m on my channel site i’m not going to put the student’s names but they’ve all got their own individual shallow board called their name and then they they’re then free to move it around uh they would obviously they need to invite you to share that board yes and then once you’ve shared that once you and the students are both in ownership of that board you can both click in and click out it whenever you wish to and i said before you can also share it with the parents as well if they want to um and are you setting that up at the start of the year so they’ve got they can see the whole course or is it just something that you do towards revision time yeah the start of it i do it start of year 10 because in year 10 what we do because there’s a such a huge number i think there’s over 3 000 words they’ve got to learn um at gcse um you can’t do it all overnight can you so it’s got to be a you know well-structured program to to learn the vocabulary so um we do a vocab test every week in year 10 and all the as some people on trello there all of all the vocab test vocab is all linked into that so the students you use trello anyway just to be able to revise the vocabulary so yeah i was going to ask just in terms of the logistics of the homework would you you would be you’d be setting kids homework and the way they would access that homework like if it was a quizlet thing or something like that would be to go through trello would that would that be right yeah so if it was especially it was a revision for a volcano yes that’s primarily what i’ve been using it for but obviously on the fellow there you can see that i put quizlet quizzes and there’s a website called memrise that we use in languages you can put any link on there at all and the beauty of it is that everything’s housed in one place because that i said before the issue that the students had when they called it revision hogwarts they were clicking through a number of different slides and different you know different um websites and things to get one task whereas if they know they’re not very good on family and friends then there’s a number of tasks ready when waiting for them there i’m excited about this mate you know i think this has definitely got cross cross subject potential um so the resources you can link to website actually i assume you can attach a document or something like that yeah if it need be yeah i think what one thing that i will say is a bit of a caveat is um it did take me a long time to embed everything and get it all set up and things but once it’s once it’s set up you know it’s ready to go and you can you i’ve used the same one over a number of years and you can you obviously you can keep adding to it and you know ensuring that you it’s all you know fresh and any any websites you find that are useful can just be added on um but the the main main body of it is is always there once once you’ve done it and it’s cross-platform right so the kids can just get it like an app on their phone yeah a tablet on their desktop or whatever yeah and how would you also go i was going to say one thing that i often do is if the students vocab test would be on like a wednesday or something or whatever day it was and the students would always come in and say can we spend 10 minutes on trello before you start the test and i’d just say nice of course yeah because you know some students probably would have done nothing at home but at least yeah yeah yeah i can walk around and see what they’re doing and i just give them opportunities to do a little bit of last-minute revision but at least they’re doing something um and i say through trello you get them into that habit of of doing everything through trello then when it comes to revision they know that that’s where they’re going to go and they’ve got a clear idea of what they’re going to do rather than going onto the school website and just being confused because all you know subjects are different something that they will have different you know revision resources and yeah and ways to access things so i just thought for i would just have it all in one place and just have it as easily accessible as possible that’s amazing i mean and yeah the final question is just gonna be the cost as you’re using it is it free yeah i think it’s well it’s uh again as far as i’m concerned it’s free yeah that’s not i don’t think i picked well it’s free i think that was one of the big things that you you said it was free um because i know you’re like definitely once yeah i’m just it sounds like you’re using like using it a lot i wonder whether there’s any conversation but it unless as i said unless you’re kicked out your house in the next few weeks maybe fingers crossed it is that’s brilliant that sounds like a really really interesting use of technology