Educating the Dragon

. If anyone has a good model for this I’d love to share it with the world.

I’m tired of ‘reading’ the report to the parents, for them to nod in all the right places and for the child to meekly answer You’re right Mr Jones I do need to: work harder/ talk less/ keep my hands and feet to my self.

Please someone?! Anyone. How can I jazz it up?

Have just read in the Education Weekly how Gov. Schwarzenegger, has announced a proposal for school shopping which will allow parents to access information “so we can understand how specific classrooms are performing.”

That thought scared me somewhat; when I think about teaching focus moving away from encouraging students to learn and onto results driven education.  … But then I thought about how this policy would be adopted into
New Zealand. If they follow the property market model then I think we are safe. Just think of it:

Mr Jones’ class is tucked away in a leafy corner ofHoneysuckle
School. The classroom is merry and bright, the children have a sunny outlook all year round. Pay us visit and I think you will agree that this is the class every child dreams of.

Yep, I think Real Estate classes are the way to go, lots of fluff and no substance.

Web 2.0 is the next thing people are talking about.

“Web 2.0 this, Web 2.0 that”

In the land of information technology I could only fake knowledge for so long before I got busted…

….I had no idea what is was, how it was different or even had any value to or impact on my digital classroom. I had to find out.

I googled, as you do. Skimmed and scanned various sites until I came across O’Reilly. Now O’Reilly really knows what he’s talking about and by the way I read that document it sounded like he invented it. Along with some other folk, I’m sure. So if you’re not sure if something is Web 1.0 or Web 2.0 then O’Reilly’s summary is below. (or Click here for full document) Check out an application against these criteria and ask yourself: How many and How well does it meet these?

Core competencies of Web 2.0 companies:

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
• Software above the level of a single device
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

P.s. Thanks for filling inthe blanks for me Tim. every day is an education, and today I learnt something.

Educating the dragon is not referring to my mother or mother-in-law or even the kids in my class. The Dragon is me. It’s a reference to my Welsh heritage. It is my intention to plot my learning over the next 12 months as I get myself fully intergrated into the Kiwi way and embed my understanding of the full ramifications of volunteering to take a leading roll in IWB ^{(Interactive WhiteBoard)} use as my school has landed 4 IWB for 2007. We that’s my intention, we’ll see how I get on…. First things first, I’ve got some background reading to do.

Hi, just starting out in the great Blog adventure. Was inspired by Chrissy of teaching sagittaruian fame.

I’m a teacher in Flaxmere. Dedicated to the intergration of ICT into the curriculum, not as a stand alone subject but fully integrated into the teaching and learning of my students.