What2Learn

Make the most of teacher accounts

John — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:43:34 +0000

In this issue

How to get the most out of your new What2Learn teacher account.

TESTIMONIALS

T Dwight:

“Hi, just want to say this is an amazing resource. This has proved invaluable. When can we post our own games???"

J Soulsby:

“Loving the new features for teachers. Well done.”

SERVER UPGRADE

After our web hosting company repeatedly let us down over the course of a couple of weeks, we had to take the drastic step of taking What2Learn down for several days to move it to a much-improved service. (We’re paying 6 times the price of the previous hosts, but think we get about 20 times the performance). The feedback we’re getting is that it’s running faster than ever.

Teacher Guide

Click to download our teacher guide to get you started.

Send to a friend

Please forward this message to teachers.

Make the most of your What2Learn teacher account

Would you like to work a little less hard but still be a more effective teacher? You recently made an account at What2Learn but are you making the most of it? What2learn, listed as a finalist in the TES Awards as ‘Best E-Learning Initiative‘, is a very powerful tool for teachers and students. As a teacher you can…

Reduce your marking - we will automatically mark and record student attempts within activities.
Enhance motivation and academic performance in your classes by giving your students access to thousands of learning games.
Create groups and organise your students into them.
See a range of reports on the progress your students are making.
Create your own interactive learning games.

Tips for using What2Learn

Sign up your students. If your students do not have accounts for What2Learn yet you need to give them two minutes in a computer suite to do this. They should click on ‘Sign Up’ on the homepage.
Find your teacher reference number. Log in to What2Learn using your teacher account and look at the dashboard to see what your unique share code is.
Link to your students. Get your students to log in to What2Learn. They should enter your share code into the box on their dashboard. Once they have done this you will instantly be able to access details of their progress.
Organise your students into groups. Click the "Sharing" link on the side menu within What2Learn to begin to organise your students into groups and to see reports on their progress.
Set a What2Learn activity as a homework task. You will be able to quickly and easily see a report for your chosen activity, detailing the scores your students have attained.
Increase access to the system. Struggling to get into a computer suite during lessons? Many schools find What2Learn is a perfect resource for use during registration.

HELP - Your comments are needed

What2Learn has been created by two friends (a national award-winning teacher and an ICT specialist) over the course of 5 years, in (many) evenings, weekends, and holidays. As such we want to make sure that the time we invest in improving What2Learn is adding the features that you actually want. Currently we are adding a feature which will make it possible for you to add your own content to the game engines within the main system so that you can provide activities specific to the requirements of your students. You will also be able to see the scores they have attained in your games.

If you have ideas for other features you would like us to add please let us know.

We would also love to receive any positive feedback you care to give - we have spent five years making this resource and are giving it to you and your students for free. Anything we can use as a testimonial is always very much appreciated.

Hosting completely overhauled

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:18:12 +0000

After suddenly disappearing off the web last Tuesday (see our previous post for more information), it’s been a busy few days.

Again, our apologies if you were trying to use the site between Wednesday and Friday. We have taken steps to move to better, faster (and certainly more expensive) hosting. In our own testing, we have seen at least a 20% improvement in speed.

We think we’re back with almost everything (although do please contact us if you find anything missing.

Hosting

we’re now on dedicated hosting, not shared
the hosting is designed to withstand large increases in traffic
the support we get is 24/7, and reachable at the end of a phone

Website

we’ve tweaked a few elements to make pages load faster, and to ensure security

Major hosting problem

admin — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:22:01 +0000

Hosting update - Friday 1st May 2009

Since our previous hosts removed us from the internet with no warning (see the original post below for more detail), we’ve been scrambling to move the site to new hosting. The final move is going ahead as we speak (to newer, better equipped hosts). We hope to have the front end site back up by the end of Saturday, and the main what2learn system (share codes and sign-ins early on Monday).

Do bear with us - we will be back, and hopefully running much faster.

Original post Wednesday 29 April 2009

What2Learn has been increasing in popularity over the last few weeks, and we’re glad that you’re finding the site useful.

Historically, we’d been using 1% of the web space/bandwidth we’ve been paying for over the last four years.

Our recent rise in traffic, and the new features we added, took us to around 3%.

However, this was too much for our web hosts - and with no warning, they removed us from the web on Tuesday evening (7:57 p.m.) Could we have picked a worse time if we tried? Probably not - we’re listed as one of the 6 finalists in the TES e-learning initiatives.

We really are very sorry. This is not the way we would have chosen to showcase 5 years of hard work.

What are you doing about it?:

We are now on new hosting, but moving a site with 20,000 pages (and making sure that everything works) is not quick to achieve.

How long will it take?:

Realistically, it may take us to the end of the 3-day weekend in the UK (i.e. back up and running on Monday).

What2Learn running slowly?

John — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 09:08:42 +0000

You may have encountered periods recently when What2Learn is running slowly. This is partly because of rapid growth in traffic levels to the site but mainly due to difficulties our hosts are having with some of their servers.

We are very frustrated with this problem as they are certainly not providing the service we have paid for. They have promised to take the required actions to fix the problems but we are also now in the process of moving to a different server which we believe will give us a much more reliable service.

We apologise for any inconvenience this issue has caused but please stick with us!

Teachers - manage your students

John — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 20:48:00 +0000

The latest development to teacher accounts at What2Learn gives you more control of how you monitor your students and how your details appear to them.

Create and name groups that you want to assign your students to.
Easily move students between groups.
Change the your username as seen by your students.
Find the students you want to see reports for quicker and easier.

Full details on these new features, and all features for teachers, can be found on our teachers guide.

Give us your feedback

admin — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:07:57 +0000

We have been really busy creating this new version of What2Learn. We feel that it provides lots of great tools and resources for both teachers and students.

But what do you think? We would love to hear from you about any of the following…

Teachers

How is What2Learn helping your students to achieve?
How are you using What2Learn to improve your work-life balance?
Can you think of any other ways that What2Learn could be improved?

Students

Is What2Learn helping you in your studies?
What do you like about What2Learn?
How does What2Learn compare to other revision resources you use?
How do you think What2Learn could be improved?

Any other comments? Please let us know. Simply use the form below or select ‘Contact Us’ on our side menu.

How many friends do you have?

John — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:59:11 +0000

Part of the fun of the new What2Learn system for students is the ability to set up a bowling league and compete against friends. Simply enter their share codes and you will instantly create a league where you can see their micons and the number of games they have completed.

Who will be at the top of your league? How many friends will you have in your league? Make your league as big as possible by making sure all of your friends have What2Learn accounts.

How to set up your own league…

Step One: Log in to your What2Learn account and select ‘Sharing’ from the side menu.

Step Two: On your sharing page you must find your own unique share code. Tell your friends what your share code number is.

Step Three: You need to get your friends to tell you their share codes. Enter each of these codes (one at a time) into the box for entering sharing codes. Then click ‘Add this share>>’. Your friends will instantly be added to your league.

New accounts for teachers

John — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 21:33:59 +0000

The newly-launched teacher accounts at What2Learn enable teachers to be more effective practitioners at the same time as helping to improve that all-important work-life balance. Register for your free account today and start enjoying the incredible benefits that What2Learn brings.

Key benefits for teachers

Dramatically reduce the time you spend marking - What2Learn automatically records student progress and as a teacher you will be able to access a range of reports based on this data.
Engage your students and improve their knowledge and motivation through games-based learning.
Access over a thousand ready-made interactive resources to assist learning and teaching at Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4.
Quality educational content covers most subject areas. Much of it has been produced based on materials provided by the Pearson Publishing Group.
Create your own content and make it available to your students within What2Learn. Their attainment in your games will be automatically recorded.
Enhance your use of ICT within your teaching.

What2Learn genuinely is free and has been proven to be a very powerful tool for enhancing learning and teaching. What are you waiting for? Sign up now!

If you would like to see our teacher’s guide, please click here.

What2Learn Share Codes

John — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:35:52 +0000

Share Codes

What2Learn has thousands of users. The new version of What2Learn allows you to use share codes to find and link to your friends and teachers. Every student and teacher account comes with a unique share code. Start sharing your code today to enhance your What2Learn experience and to make the most of lots of new features.

Teacher Share Codes

What2Learn has always been an excellent resource for students. The new version adds a wide range of exciting featuress to assist teachers.

On signing up every teacher is given a unique code number which they need to share with their students. As soon as a student logs in to What2Learn and enters this code into the ’sharing box’ the teacher will be able to access a range of detailed reports on the progress of that student.

When combined with the hundreds of ready-made resources, this new automated monitoring and assessment tool can be used to dramatically reduce the workload of even the busiest of teachers.

Student Share Codes

On signing up with What2Learn every student is given a unique code number. By sharing this with friends students are able to set up a ‘bowling league’ in which they can compete against one another.

The bowling league will show the list of students in the league, the micon of each and the total number of games they have completed. Set up your league today - who will be in first place? More info.

Support your most and least able students

John — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:37:26 +0000

Thirteen years ago when I trained to teach it was called differentiation. Now it is called ‘personalised learning’. Whatever you want to call it, What2Learn is helping you to make it a reality.

With the new What2Learn student accounts, your students will be able to move backwards and forwards through KS3 and KS4 content, ensuring they can select the most appropriate level of difficulty for them. As a teacher and with your new abilities to monitor student progress from your own What2Learn dashboard, why not set specific activities for different groups of students.

Perhaps you have some KS3 students who are finding work very easy. Provide them KS4 tasks as extension activities - there scores will be recorded and they can move back to the KS3 content when required.