You are here: Sociology Learning Support: Teachers' Section

Teachers' Section

This site is mainly for students. The stuff here is for use with AS and A Level Sociology courses: AQA, OCR and WJEC specifications. The site has been designed so that no plug-ins or downloads are required, and students can go directly to topics for material.

Most of the materials in the public section are self-assessment activities. Students can use the tests on their own outside class without teacher input, or they can be used in class with electronic whiteboards. The idea is that activities should be interactive, easy to find and quick to do. No activity should take more than about 10 minutes.

Printed Tests

You can give the tests to students to do outside class, or you can do them as a whole class with an interactive whiteboard. However, you can also ask students to practise the online tests here outside class, and then give them a paper test in class. The tests take about 10 minutes to do and students can then mark each others.

If you would like to buy printed versions of the tests, you can buy CDs containing 15 tests for each of:

• Education
• Families and Households

from the Association of Social Science Teachers. The ATSS site also has a wide range of materials to support teachers, and a list of good web sites. Each CD costs £20 for non-members, and £15 for members. You get a discount if you buy both together.

Click here for the Electronic Consumables page for the CDs (this link opens in a new window)

Click here for the electronic consumables order form.

The Teacher Section also includes guides to:

• Using IT with sociology students
• What you need to write your own exercises
• A list of organisations/sites for sociology teachers

• It is now possible to connect from a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) such as Moodle, WebCT or Blackboard directly to any page on this site rather than just to the Home Page.
  
  
• This should enable teachers to incorporate tests into any learning packages they design to support work done in class.
  
  
• The tests operate as a web link from within the VLE but obviously the scores will not be tracked by the VLE.

Copyright

• It is not possible to run the Hot Potatoes tests inside a VLE in your own school or college, and this would be a breach of copyright.
  
  
• The tests on the site are free for you to use on the internet. This is based on the wishes of the Hot Potatoes team who produce the software I have used to write the tests. Copyright for this software states that anyone can use it to write tests free of charge, provided that the tests are presented on a public server. Intranets or VLEs do not count as public servers. This is a very generous stance for the authors to take, as they could make a fortune if they changed their policy.
  
  
• It is possible to buy site or commercial licences for Hot Potatoes, if you wish to sell products or to use the tests inside your own organisation.