Teacher s Guide - Mock Court
Transcript of Teacher s Guide - Mock Court
School Mock Court Case Project SCIO
Teacher’s Guide
Principal Sponsor
Getting Set-up Welcome to the School Mock Court Project.
On registering you will receive an email
detailing your username and password. For
security, it is important to change your
password so as to ensure your account can
only be accessed by you.
Changing it is simple. The simplest way is to
login and on the top right is a box with your
details. Click the black arrow to change your
password. Once done you will be
immediately logged out. Now sign-in with
your new details.
You can change your email address in the
same area, but remember this is the address
we identify you with.
Teacher Type We have two teacher types on the system,
but to add to the confusion, one can be
both.
The ‘principal teacher’ controls the overall
project for the school. Each school can only
have one principal teacher.
When signing in, if you are the principal
teacher you will go directly to your ‘control
screen’. To go to your class screen, click
‘Teacher Page’ from the top menu.
A teacher controls his or her own class and
is responsible for
authorising the students,
uploading their work and
allocating roles. The
principal teacher can not amend anything a
teacher does.
The principal teacher allocates tutor dates
and can delete users from their school as
well as recover passwords for students who
have forgotten them. At the foot of the
page, you can see all the court dates, for all
the classes. This does not include ‘Pre-
Proofs’ as these are done at your school.
Principal Teacher The overall function of the
principal teacher is to act as a
conduit between us, your tutors and your
fellow teachers.
Once logged in you have one main screen to
contend with. On the right you can see who is
waiting to be authorised to access the system.
If you believe someone’s access has been
compromised or someone has been
authorised access in error, ask the class
teacher to ‘unauthorise’ them and you can
simply hit the delete button - they will be
denied access and removed from your school
records.
The centre section is important as it shows
you all the relevant dates of the project, but
these are currently blank. It is down to the
principal teacher to agree visit dates with the
two tutors and on agreeing, to enter the dates
in these field. This immediately updates your
teachers’ screens, the tutors diary and our
own monitor screens - meaning we don’t call
to chase you to arrange the visits.
On the left, you can see the student stats as
well as the password recovery box. Simply fill
in the details to recovery the forgotten details.
Class Teacher Looks a little confusing, but let’s break this
down into chunk sized bites.
Your Details
Top left hand box has your details. If these
are wrong, please let us know as soon as
possible, although you can change your
password and/or email address from here
yourself.
Tutors
As we get closer to the start of your project
tutors will be allocated to your school and will
appear in the top centre box. It will also show
if they are tutoring for the Pursuer or
Defender teams. Click on their name to email
them. You can also speak to them through the
forum, although this will be slower. See Forum
for more details.
Diary
The diary is important and must be adhered
to, else you will suffer a deduction in points
(min 5, plus 1 for each further day late, or
part thereof). Why? If, for example, your
initial writ is late, the opposing Defenders will
have less time to do their defences. It also
puts the other school out of kilt in terms of
planning etc. Closer to the trials, this might
mean important documents never reach the
Sheriff on time!
Stats
The top section gives you an overview of your
students, whereas the below section tells you
the points awarded in terms of the parental
participation section. NB: If a student is not
allocated to a team, they can not earn bonus
points.
Upload
This is the section that enables you to ‘serve’
your documents on the opposing teams and
or pass files to the examiners (art etc). The
files must be in an acceptable format -
principal a Microsoft, PDF, JPEG or PNG file.
There is a maximum file size of 2MB which
many overlook, but the uploading will be
refused if the file is too
big. One of the biggest
problems is students
putting loads of very
large photos onto a Word
document for uploading. Try a site like
https://tinypng.com which works really well in
compressing images to a fraction of their
original size. If all else fails, break the file into
more than one - as long as we can see it has
been spilt.
Once a file has been uploaded, the students
will be able to see it from home as will the
opposing team (if it is intended for them) as
well as the examiners. It also marks your
school record on our system, so again we are
not chasing you to upload. Make sure the
document is loaded into the correct section -
Pursuer or Defender and into the right
category (writ/art/diary … etc)
NB: It is the last Initial Writ or Defence
uploaded that remains. Older versions are
automatically deleted.
NB: Watch your timetable. Once the time to
upload has passed, the relevant upload button
will turn from green to red—meaning that
section has been locked and if you missed the
deadline, you are now facing penalty points.
In this situation (and only in this situation)
email the document to our Admin team who
will upload it for you. The sooner, the less
penalty points you get.
Students
Along the top menu you will see Student
Update. Your students must FIRST register to
use the system (you should not do this for
them). They will choose their username and
password, but are refused access to the site
until you allow (authorise) them in. On this
screen, you can allocate them to a team,
assign them a role and give them access to
the site. They must be authorised to gain
access and must be allocated to a team to:
Cont ...
Once students have been allocated to either
the Pursuer or Defender team (NOT before
then), they can ask their parents/carers to
complete the parent quiz. More than one can
have a go, but be warned, it will be the one
who attempted the quiz last whose score is
recorded!
Each team can earn up to an extra 5 bonus
points. The scoring is based on the
percentage of parents/carers taking part,
together with their average score - so the
more parents that take part, the higher the
score is likely to be and the more points each
team will earn!
The quiz is meant to be fun, so some of the
answers are a little silly.
The children can give the
adults a hand answering
the questions, but this is
more about parental
participation.
If the student has a
sibling in the project,
each parent/carer will
have to do the quiz
twice, once under each log-in. If a student
changes teams, inform us so we can transfer
their points.
Class Teacher
1) benefit from parent
points (see relevant section)
2) to work from home
and to see their own teams ‘papers’.
View Uploads
This allows you to see what you have
uploaded for each
Team / Role Allocations
Once you have updated a student, they will
see on their screen the role they have been
given, but at the foot of your main screen you
will be able to see the different roles all your
students have in their respective teams.
You can have either one or two solicitors and
should be fielding three witnesses. For smaller
schools, we would suggest one solicitor and
two witnesses. Thereafter, the number of
gown-makers, writers, researchers, etc, is
really down to you. Some schools find it easier
to ‘job share’, but that is up to you.
Remember, the artist can do more than just
paint a picture. They could be the cameraman
or photographer for the journalist. Perhaps a
TV clip could be done?
Court
The project may well start without your actual
dates for going to court showing. These will
go up once a Sheriff (Judge) has been
allocated and space given in the court diary.
NB: These a real courts with real Sheriffs
sitting. It is possible your court time/date
could change with little notice. While every
endeavour is made to avoid this, court
business will always come first. Please keep
checking this section as the date approaches
Speciality Day
This is when many specialists come together
to address the students. Whether they be
from the Judiciary, robe makers or those
dealing with mobile phones. A great
opportunity for the students to learn and to
see their opposition for the first time.
Opposing team
The buttons to the right of the Court Cases
Section (foot of main page) enable you to
email the opposing team as well as to see
what they have served on you - including their
initial writ or defences, witness list and list of
productions.
Parent/Carer Section - Extra Points
Forum For the students, this is probably the most
used part of the website. That said, we urge
teachers to use this as a way of engaging
with students outwith class, us and your
tutors.
Important announcements are posted on the
forum and we have stopped emailing
teachers individually as this is proving too
time consuming on matters involving more
than one school. Last year some teachers
used the forum to give and receive ideas,
seek clarification on points and even to have
a good old moan.
When you click the forum button, you will be
asked to sign in again. This is for security
reasons. The password remains the same as
for the main site. You will then be given two
chat rooms to enter - students or teachers
(The word Senior precedes both if you are in
the Seniors Projects). While you can enter
either chat room, your students can not see
your room.
You have access to the students section to
see what the chat is, what they are talking
most about, but also to help ensure students
behave.
Some teachers have gone in pretending to be
students and we have no problem with that if
it is done properly. Others have gone in and
set-up their school as a ‘University’ or the like
and the children respond well to that sort of
humour. Remember, usernames can only be
identified by you and us - no-one else. Tutors
can only see usernames - not their real
names or even which school they are at.
ALL posts and private messages are stored
and linked back to the user and their school.
If a student sees or receives an inappropriate
message/post, they should click the
exclamation mark (top right of the post/
message) and encourage them to inform you
and you to contact us.
When entering
this forum for
the first time,
go to your
control panel
(Profile) to
change your
signature or to
add an avatar
(small picture) if you so wish. Unlike your
students, we encourage you to enter your
email address so the system can email you
when a private message has been received
(this facility is available to secondary
students as well). It is here were you can
send and receive private messages.
You can send a message to your students,
fellow teachers or tutors. This would be
useful if your student wishes to ask a
question they don't want the other teams to
see! Private messages can also be sent to
the project team (username = Admin),
although we will not be able to help with
specific questions like drafting etc, but will
answer general questions.
Teachers and secondary students can email
documents to each other through the forum.
This is prohibited for primary school
students.
Last year there was an informal competition
as to who could get the most responses to a
post and who could post the most! Some
students decided to help others with general
advice, which was often well received.
Visits - In and Out of School A key part to the project are the visits - the
tutors visiting your school, the Speciality Day,
Intermediary trials and the finals.
TUTORS
Most of the Tutors are solicitors, paralegals,
diploma students or advocates. Each give up
their time voluntarily, but each also has a
busy workload. Court practitioners sometimes
have to cancel a planned visit at very short
notice, as is the nature of their work. Please
be understanding.
The key to successful tutor visits is
communication. Please don't wait for the
tutor to contact you. Click the email button
and send them a message. Alternatively, pick
up the phone. Remember, some tutors will be
a little nervous and a little reassurance goes a
long way.
On the first visit, it is ideal if all the students
are in the same area. This allows the tutors to
introduce themselves and to talk generally
about the project. Hopefully, before they
arrive, you will have already introduced the
project to the students and have allocated
them into their teams. Part way through the
first tutorial, the teams will be spilt so they
can talk more specifically about the actual
roles.
Visits two and three should have the students
already split into their teams awaiting the
tutors.
NB: The children remain your responsibility
when the tutors visit. If there is no adult
supervision by the school, the tutors have
been told they can leave the classroom.
Intermediary Trails.
We have already touched on the scheduling
of the intermediary trails and where to find
this on your screen. Please remember these
are real courts and some will still be running
when you arrive.
Please do NOT arrive earlier than
15 mins before the first trials.
Some courts will refuse entry.
Please follow the directions of
our staff and the court officials,
especially in terms of where to
go. Please only use the toilets
you are directed to use.
Some courts offer catering
facilities. If you make use of these, please do
clean up after yourselves.
Not all courts have large public galleries.
Naturally, space is offered first to students,
then mums and dads, before other family
members and friends. If you are expecting
large numbers, please let us know.
Finals
All schools are expected to attend irrespective
of whether you are competing or not. Schools
not competing in the finals may be asked to
show case their school by providing a soloist,
choir or even a teacher as Black Rod/Macer.
There is an awards ceremony at the end.
NB: Those attending trials can not sit in on
other trials until they have been heard. In
other words if you arrive as a class and one
team has a trail at 4.30 and the other at 5.30,
those in the later trial must not sit in on the
earlier trial - but those in the earlier trial may
sit in on those in the later trail.
Parents/teachers are not able to assist
students during the trials.
Resources A very important part of the website and it is
crucial that you look through all your
resources in order to try and work out what
team’s position is going to be.
Don’t be frightened by some of the
terminology, If you don’t understand a term,
ask your tutor or us, through the forum.
There is loads of help out there, you just
need to ask.
Have a look at the videos on the site and
postings on the forum. Try and work out
what happened when the phone was
acquired. Who might have said what to who
and what really did happen.
Maths plays a really important role here and
is often overlooked. Remember to tell your
story and to get your facts across.
The role of artists, journalists, robe makers
are very important. Last year there was a big
drive on art and the level reached was
staggering - earning the schools who pushed
in these areas big points.
Remember, to win at the
intermediaries it is the
combined effort of all
roles (and parental/carer
participation) that adds
up to determine who
competes in the finals. Only one defender and
one pursuer team from each region go
through to compete in the finals in
Edinburgh., although everyone goes through
to watch.
Schools needing additional help should let us
know as soon as possible and we will do all
that we can to assist.
Do’s and Dont’s
Never leave tutors with students
Please use the forum to communicate once the project starts
Follow instructions by us and court officials when at court and do not arrive more than 15
minutes before the first trials
Organise your first tutor visits with your tutor as soon as you can
Enjoy!
School Mock Court Case Project SCIO (SC043342) 1st Floor 108 Commercial St Edinburgh EH6 6NF T: 0131 555 8415 F: 0131 561 8205 E: [email protected] W: www.mockcourt.org.uk
Principal Sponsor
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