As a school we have been using FROG as our VLE for some time and it’s now truly embedded in everyday use for our staff and students. As a department we use it to enable our students to access tutorials, resources, homework and for communicating with them directly. As we approach exam season, much of the focus for our students involves them accessing the Top 40 topics and having it online using the same log-in (i.e. their FROG one)  as they do almost every day is invaluable. – for many of them having to remember yet another user name and password seems an impossible task (I can’t recall the number of times I’ve had to reissue MyMaths or Sumdog details with all my year groups).  Once the decision was made as to where we wanted the tutorials etc I went along to our techies with a scrappy piece of paper and they knew exactly what I wanted and the end result is this – apparently setting this kind of thing up is standard stuff for those that maintain VLEs and websites.  It is accessed from a drop down option on the GCSE menu at the top and the different tabs include the worksheets and solutions, and to be honest it’s still a great feeling walking into room 11 (our office/spare classroom/ICT room – we only have 8 computers in the department!!) and seeing students watching the tutorials – all of them will be doing so, out of choice.

For us, the Top 40 isn’t just about the tutorials and worksheets it also includes the teaching resources. As a department we know the benefits of sharing resources, and this coming year it’s going to be more of a focus in terms of what works and what doesn’t work. During last Summers’ gain time our Department Handbook (only  the Maths department staff can access it) was moved onto FROG too and I included a section for sharing resources, which we haven’t really used (for no reason other than the pressure of time) and we’ve also added a section for the JustMaths Top 40 where all of the teaching resources are saved by topic, for us to use when we happen to be teaching one of those topics. However, we could easily have shared all these resource by copying onto our shared server but as we are being encouraged to use the VLE more, it made sense to just make them available on FROG.