In a recent blog, “Planning for the New Mathematics Curriculum” I talked about how I once planned the Key Stage 3 curriculum by shuffling pieces of paper on my living room floor. My next large curriculum planning task was to have an influence on the whole school, not just the mathematics department.
Quite a while ago, the then government announced that all pupils had to have access to a virtual learning environment (VLE). I was commissioned with the task of finding a VLE to support the curriculum at my school. After a trip to the BETT Show and visits to a number of schools who had bought in ready-made VLEs, the decision was made to build our own. We used a platform called Moodle which allowed you to build your own VLE from scratch.
After months of planning, designing and uploading resources we had the beginnings of something which was starting to look quite impressive, with lots of different courses for teachers and students to access, brimming with links to websites, video clips, worksheets, PowerPoints... It took ages to build, but it pleases me to see that it is still going strong.
Someone once asked, would I ever do it again? Well, the answer today would be no; I would just direct them to the National STEM Centre website. Not only are there thousands of excellent resources, but also the facility to make your own resource packages.
And now things have got even better with the launch of the secondary mathematics resources landing page containing almost fifty ready-made lists containing over two hundred and fifty resources, to support the new key stage three curriculum, all freely available at the click of a button.
I was recently asked whether I have a programme of study to accompany the resources. To find the answer to this see my post in the Secondary Mathematics Resources Group.