Hi, and welcome to my first post on this new blog.
The ‘About’ page gives you a brief outline of who I am, what I do, my family and my interests. Suffice to say here, I am a science teacher and have been so for over 30 years (I stood in front of my first class in January 1983!). So I have vast experience of teaching, and have been leading successful science departments since 1991.
I decided to develop ‘Online Science Teaching’ following many months of hard work and late nights. Let me give you the background……
A little while ago I was asked to tutor a student in a nearby village. Having tutored many students in the past, I was in no rush to take on another one. But the mother was persistent, so eventually I agreed to become the girl’s tutor. The student in question was being home-schooled, and during our first session it became abundantly clear that she had little basic knowledge of science – there was no way that we would be able to cover the specification in sufficient detail in the time available.
In a rash moment I offered to do something that was to occupy many hours of my time in the months ahead. I decided to produce video courses that would cover the entire specifications! The plan was that I would deliver a video every week, my student would watch the video in her own time, and during our tuition slot I would go through any problems and also use prepared questions and past papers to check her understanding.
Time was limited, so we decided to concentrate on Biology and Chemistry, and the materials were prepared following the Edexcel iGCSE specifications. I chose the iGCSE courses because there were no practical assessments involved. In a future blog post I will describe the various options available to homeschoolers and their exam entries.
Each video was about 20 minutes in duration, and took about 6 hours to prepare. I managed to condense the Biology and Chemistry courses into about 20 videos each, and within eighteen months I had covered everything.
As development of the courses progressed, more and more people showed interest in what I was doing, and I received requests to make the courses available to others. So, to cut a long story short, I developed a site where interested parents, students, tutors and establishments could purchase the videos. The site can be found at:
http://www.igcsesciencecourses.com/
I decided to develop this blog in support of my main site, and also to ‘showcase’ other materials as and when I develop them. I’ll also be introducing you to other resources that could be of interest.
So, many thanks for reading my first post on this new blog – I hope you like what you see!
Until next time,
Graham
