[Russel Tarr]

I'm currently working on A report writer for history teachers. This one is one I am using as a framework for Years 7&8.

Let me know what you think - obviously, it could be abused but the way I use it is to provide the main body of a report which I can then work up into a fully personalised one.

My next step is developing one for Year 9 and even GCSE...

Good idea or not?

[Carole Faithorn]

As a teacher I have never been very keen on computer generated reports. With my parent's hat on I must say that it is easy to detect when such a system has been used and I didn't like it.

However I can see that something like this can be very helpful for busy classroom teachers and might also ensure that all pupils' parents received meaningful feedback about their childrens' work, its strengths and weaknesses.

I had a bit of a play with this and on the whole it seemed to work pretty well though it did throw up a few nonsensical statements. I think the problem seemed to stem from the conjunctions whereby (for example) a negative statement was joined to a positive one with an 'and' rather than a 'but'.

[Dan Lyndon]

The main criticism I would have is that there is no reference to historical skills, other than organisation and communication. The reports that I use are computer based and are linked in with the critical steps that the dept has developed. They also generate targets based on the NC skill areas. I have some examples on my pc at school and shall try to post them over the next few days.

[Russel Tarr]

Cheers - that would be great!

[Danno44]

Well, thats a very interesting piece of software, a great idea in fact! We use an piece of software prooduced in-house and its ok, but there is alot of room for mistakes. Your programme seems to make 'personalised' reports that actually read well.

However, more reference to specific key skills or National Curriculum levelf of achievement could be useful - eg can describe or explain or link causes etc.

hope this is helpful, 'cos youre programme is!

cheers

DAN