Year Two, Report Two, Learning Activity Four

Recognise Governing Variables or Barriers

1. The maps will help staff to navigate Espresso

There are copies of the maps in the appendix, the KS1 Maths and English especially will show just how complex Espresso’s navigation is.
There are so many branches, and sub branches which in time we will become familiar with, but for the moment, only seem confusing.
A researcher on First Class mentioned that Espresso is so often updated that anything I produce will almost instantly be out of date, and this is true. The object of the exercise was not to continually update the information, but to have an initial overview, in a way it is “catching up” with those who have used Espresso from very early days.
One interesting incident occurred following a visit from the Library service. They were advising the Librarian to ‘map out’ the contents of the software on Junior Librarian for teaching staff. It was reassuring to hear an ‘outsider’ advising us to do a similar thing to what I have done for Espresso.

Thoughts following my reflection: -
• I have learned that Mind mapping is a good tool.
• Though the maps will soon be ‘out of date’ they will help us to ‘catch up’ with those who have used Espresso for some time.
• Other services advise schools to use mind-mapping to help visualise what software contains.

During informal discussions with the teaching staff I found them very appreciative, they wrongly thought that I had spent a huge amount of time preparing them. The majority said that they hadn’t had time to have a good look at them properly, and had relied instead on my guidance and knowledge. They did however see how useful it could be. One teacher was very enthusiastic; she had taken them home and refers to them regularly whilst doing her planning. I have also found them useful, but I think more useful was setting about creating them in the first place, by doing so I gained so much invaluable insight into the structure and content of Espresso.