<h1>DrFrostMaths - June Newsletter</h1><p>I hope you have all been well and survived the onslaught of Year 11 and Year 13 exam setting/marking. This is partly the reason it's been so long since the last DFM newsletter. However, there's probably several months of news in this newsletter, so brace yourself...</p> <h1>DFM "Not on Tour!" Training Events</h1> <p>As like last year, all training events for DFM are moving online, via Zoom. Each 1.5 hour event will include (a) An overview of the platform (b) Setting up your classes and intervention groups (c) Setting and monitoring work (d) Creating worksheets (e) the 'Key Skills' section (f) using the DFM Whiteboard with your class, the (g) new 'courses' system and a brief guide on how to set up a course for your school (h) a Live! game where you get to participate and (i) a Q&A session, including details of DFM's expansion as a charity.</p> <p>Over 2000 teachers attended across the events last year, so will be thrilled to see as many of you as possible.</p> <p><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfBQWL8aTyGaVrfLnPInqlcKA3fEA2IPdzkUrHBNe0QLf3qlg/viewform">Sign up here</a>.</p> <h1>The new DFM 'course' system</h1> <p>If the 'Key Skills' system was the gigantic release of 2020, then 2021's equivalent is the new 'courses' system. This allows schools, multi-academy trusts, publishers and exam boards to create courses, bringing together Key Skill, exam questions, videos, worksheets, external links, DFM resources and custom content, to enable students to sequentially work through topics.</p> <p>Students get progress bars to track their progress on a skill, unit, module or whole course. For teachers, there are useful tools like quickly generating a worksheet based on all the skills involved in a unit, module or whole course.</p> <img src='https://www.drfrostmaths.com/uploads/users/1/images/img-1-1623657520-886.png' style='width:500px'><br><br> <img src='https://www.drfrostmaths.com/uploads/users/1/images/img-1-1623657646-151.png' style='width:500px'> <p>The course editor is completed and we've added a few courses for Edexcel, White Rose Maths and an in-house 'DFM course' so far. In the coming month we'll be integrating it into the rest of the site.</p> <p>Want a go? Use <a href='https://www.drfrostmaths.com/course.php'>drfrostmaths.com/course.php</a> for browsing or <a href='https://www.drfrostmaths.com/course.php?edit=1'>drfrostmaths.com/course.php?edit=1</a> for building a course. We're extremely excited about this system and think it offers a much clearer sequential way for students to learn and practise content on the site, as well as catering for overseas syllabuses.</p> <h1>Charity Update</h1> <p>We registered for charity status back in February. While typically the wait for processing is 7-10 weeks, the Charity's Commission backlog is currently around 6 months. However, we managed to recently get our application changed to 'urgent', and within a day, they had reviewed the application with provisional approval pending further information. We expect the charity status to come through within the week.</p> <p>Our aim is to raise £2 million, in order to hire a number of staff as well as contract work out to teachers and other individuals. A large part of the growth will be to cater for curriculums overseas, working with exam boards intentionally and leveraging local expertise. We also want to increase our primary level provision, improve the site's content offering generally, be able to scale to large user bases and eventually expand into other subjects in the longer term. I will give you more updates as they come!</p> <h1>"DFM Phase 4"</h1> <p>The course system is part of 'DFM Phase 4' (yes, we've managed to unintentionally align ourselves with the Marvel Comic Universe phases!). Planned changes include:</p> <ol> <li>Integrate the course system into the rest of the site, including data analytics of student progress for teachers. We'll be phasing out the 'scheme of work' system which it supercedes, as well the 'A Level' and Tiffin scheme of work static pages which have been recreated in the course system. <li><strong>Removal of all banner advertising</strong>. Yes, really! <li>Making <strong>more functionality available within login</strong>, including answering of online questions. <li><strong>Continued production of Key Skills</strong> and associated worked example videos. <li>Continued <strong>internationalisation</strong>, including more flexible country-based filtered to exam boards. <li>Parent user accounts. <li>A <strong>redesigned homepage</strong>, and generally updating the user interface throughout. </ol> <h1>Other updates since the last newsletter</h1> <ul> <li>Significant updates to the Key Skills interface, with a new Key Skills homepage and the <strong>ability to select key skills from a mix of topics</strong>. <li>You can now <strong>require students watch videos</strong> on Key Skill flexible tasks and on fixed-question Key Skill worksheets. <li>You can now <strong>override the mark on a 'seen' but unanswered question</strong>. <li>If viewing data for a student-set task involving multiple classes, it now orders students so that <strong>students within the same class are together</strong>. <li>When selecting classes on the data analytics interface, <strong>your own classes are duplicated at the start of the dropdown</strong> for faster selection. <li>A redesign of the dialog that appears when setting worksheets to classes. <li>When selecting topics (e.g. on the topic filter when building a worksheet), there's now a <strong>search bar to quickly find a skill</strong>. </ul> <h1>New resources</h1> <ul> <li>A large number of new Key Skill worked example videos. I'm aiming to get the rest of these done by September.<li>...and a large number of Key Skills. <a href='https://www.drfrostmaths.com/preview-keyskills.php?permid=845'>This cute one</a> generates random maps! <li>More of the 'All in One' worksheets, which combine worked examples, questions and solutions within a single sheet. <a href='https://www.drfrostmaths.com/sow.php?sswid=1'>See them here.</a> <li><a href="https://www.drfrostmaths.com/resource.php?rid=563">FP1 Chapter 8 - Numerical Methods</a> <li><a href="https://www.drfrostmaths.com/resource.php?rid=231">GCSE Linear Inequalities</a> </ul>