Fronter

I hated fronter until about a week ago. I couldn’t understand how someone who set out to make a VLE would choose something so ugly and counterintuitive and clunky. The structuring seemed weird, the layout seemed weird, the routes to information seemed convoluted.

I still think all these things this week, except for the hating it part, this week despite all of its flaws this ugly duckling has been a bit of a super star in this awful BTEC mop-up period.

Last weekend I was overwhelmed by marking and faced with a range of students who had all failed and passed different aspects of the BTEC course. I was glaring at the tracking document I’d hashed together on the back of some form or other when it became terribly obvious that not one out of all the BTEC students had the same needs as any other. It was going to be organisational, motivational, teacher in breakdown style chaos.

Except… except it wasn’t thanks to Fronter. I’ve had “fronter training” and shown how to open a new folder, set up a test… I wasn’t impressed with the VLE at all. Not in the least because it looks so vile (and I do think that’s important). I’ve barely touched it since except to save documents when I’ve run out of space on the school laptop.

Last weekend I used pages (reports template) to create quick and simple (good looking) mop up task sheets
. I mention good looking because it’s this sort of thing the students notice. I had one task about cell division, so the header showed dividing cells and the whole thing was colour co-ordinated. It may have taken me an extra five seconds to make that effort but the students noticed, they liked it, and were eager to see how the graphics would look for the diseased tissue task or the body systems task…).

All of these tasks got uploaded to Fronter Hand In Folders, and I then went through limiting access and room times for all of these tasks. Only those who need to see a folder, see a folder.

I showed the students, explained to them that anything outstanding, they would see a folder for, a task and instructions how to do it. I would be there to help with anything. A few of them needed to have fronter passwords re-set so after a slow start the work started coming in. Thick and fast. I’ve had more work submitted to me this week than in any other week of teaching, pretty much ever. The least organised students are submitting work faster than I can mark. If I mark something in progress and provide feedback on how to improve, then within an hour the student has generally corrected it and resubmitted to give an absolute A+ result!

So for all its flaws, this week, I love fronter.