A teaching resource for Unit A1 · Skills Development on BTEC Level 3 Creative Media Practice (Games Development) at Belfast Metropolitan College.
It teaches students how to write the per-session reflective log that carries the evidence for all five assessment criteria — and why the log, not the finished artefact, is the only place several of those criteria can be evidenced.
Live site: https://jamesbell2021.github.io/reflective-log/
The centrepiece is two complete logs of the same induction day. Same room, same Gear Zero arcade task, same group of three, same pitch. One is written at Pass, the other at Distinction. Nothing about the day was different — only the writing.
Every section of both logs carries an assessor note explaining exactly what earns or loses the grade, and the notes can be hidden so students can try to spot the gap themselves first. The Distinction log is deliberately honest about failure — an unsolved time problem, a lateness, a named skill gap — because a log with no problems in it evidences nothing under AC2.
| Section | What it does |
|---|---|
| Why bother | What a log is and is not, What / So what / Now what, and three rules: same day, name things, write the failures. |
| The 5 criteria | AC1–AC5 in plain English, what the log should show for each, and the Pass, Merit and Distinction bands. |
| Two examples | The Pass and Distinction logs of the same day, with toggleable assessor notes. |
| Prompts | Twenty-five starter questions, five per criterion. Tapping one drops it into the writer. |
| Write it | A structured entry writer with a field per criterion and next steps, word counts, and export. |
| Fix it | Eight lines that score nothing, each with a rewrite that does and the criterion it evidences. |
| Checklist | Twelve checks to run before closing the laptop, with a progress bar. |
| Glossary | Forty-four searchable terms, filterable by assessment, grading, criteria, course, research, practice and tools. |
Entry writer. Name, date, session, one field per criterion and a next steps
field. Each field shows a live word count and flags anything under forty words as
thin. The entry builds as Markdown with a placeholder marking any empty criterion
as unclassified, and can be copied to the clipboard or downloaded as
reflective-log-<date>-<name>.md.
Sound. Square-wave chiptune blips generated with the Web Audio API — no audio files. Off until the student presses start, with a toggle in the corner.
Nothing is sent anywhere. The writer draft and checklist state are held in
localStorage in that browser on that machine, under bmet.showyourworking.*
keys. The page tells students plainly that this is a drafting tool, not their
portfolio, and to download the entry at the end of each session.
Single self-contained index.html — no build step, no dependencies, no
framework. Fonts come from Google Fonts; everything else is inline.
Content lives in JavaScript data structures in the script block, so it can be edited without touching markup:
PAGES— the navigation sectionsCRITERIA— AC1–AC5, what the log should show, and the grade bandsEXAMPLES— the Pass and Distinction logs and their assessor notesPROMPTS— the starter questions, keyed by criterionFIXES— the weak lines, their rewrites and the criterion each evidencesCHECKS— the entry checklistGLOSSARY— terms, categories and definitions
The page is a light, printed-paper design by intent and holds its palette when a browser or device requests dark mode, rather than half-inverting.
- The example logs are dated to the September 2026 induction and reference that day's timetable, room and task — update them if induction changes
- Handbook details in the glossary (independent study days, the Thursday tutorial, resubmission rules, AI use policy) should be checked against the current course handbook before each cohort
- The Northern Ireland studio list in the Distinction log should be refreshed as the local scene changes
James Bell · Belfast Metropolitan College · Games Development