I know I’ve been away for a while (they used to say that when you had been in the nick) In truth I have been studying for my DTTLS and learning the craft of a College Lecturer.
‘Ah,’ I hear you all say. ‘The finer points of teaching carpentry?’
Alas not my dear friends, tracking. I have learned how to track students in so many different ways.
‘Oh my! Do they keep escaping?’
Once again, no. Although getting them to turn up is a task all of it’s own. I track everything they do and then I track the tracking, I sometimes even track the things they don’t do. When I’m not tracking students I track me, or at least my progress and I’m sure my head of department tracks me also. In fact tracking (if you haven’t guessed already) is very important in FE. It’s important because it proves you know what stage your students are at. It’s so important that we have software called E-tracker.
So I track my students progress on paper. I also have the same tracking on Excel, twice, the official one and my own copy. On top of this I complete E-tracker which is not like Excel and it’s not Excel. Its a great way of tracking students and everyone says they know how to use it; but don’t. It’s so great we are dumping it, so rumour has it. The strange thing is, all the trackers contain the same information. I can understand the theory of tracking but I can’t understand the duplication. Everyone I ask tells me to just do it and don’t ask, because that’s FE and if I keep questioning it, I will go insane. Mr Chips never had these problems. 😉
