Educating the Dragon

Have you seen this story about Waiuru College?

A student at

Waiuku
College was attacked after school on the first day, a bottle was involved.

It appears from the interview that Stuart Harrison, the principal is very much on the defensive, though from what I actually heard him say the school handled things well, apart from not informing the victim’s family regarding the return of the attackers to the school.

Good on the victim for standing up in assembly. In my day I would never have done that.

There are several questions that I feel arise from here, and I love to hear your thoughts about:

Stuart mentioned such programmes as Peer support, anger management and the installation of cameras, but

what is an appropriate response to bullying and what measures are suitable for a school to have in place?

Our school has been battling with the issue of cameras (to deture vandalism- not bullying) for some time and as yet we have not installed them, I sense the day is not far away.

There is a wider issue at stake: what should parents reasonably expect from their school.

We are already educators, social workers, welfare officers. We run homework club after school.

Breakfast club before school

Cricket/ baseball/t-ball/ netball/ rugby soccor (Delete as appropriate) on the weekends.

Now are we to be police, judge and jury? 

What are governments recommending? Did hear that on the news reel, did you?

I need to bring to your attention an article about being bored in class. More about a student who said it out loud really Original. 

I then want to direct you to  Vicki Davis and her comments about it.

In this Web 2.0 age people need to be more careful. Speech is freer than ever. and not only that but can be beamed around the world in a blink of an eye. Instead of a few hundred sudents hearing a speech… which was reportedly well thought out. The reaction to it has actually caused a chain reaction, I’m sat here in New Zealand, on the other side of the world blogging about the issue. If it can reach me in 2 hours it can grab the blogging the worlds attension in a day. Probably not what the Principal intended.

Where does teaching democracy endd and living it begin. Surely the way we live our lives and particular the way that Principal acted speaks, no SHOUTS, about what we hold dear, our  values and beliefs.

It makes us all stop and think, reassess what we hold dear. Which hill is worth dying on when it comes to our youth. Smart money says its not the ‘freedom of speech’ one, you’ll lose everytime… well most times at least.

This was so cool! I just have to blog about it.

Chrissy and I had meeting tonight. We skyped each other because we were trying to get our talk and write wiki up and running. So we had that page open to as we discussed how to embed RSS feeds into our Wiki. It was the session I missed at Learning@schools with David Warlick so I was a little non-plussed. But as I added and made amendments to one part of the site chrissy was on another and then we discussed our changes as we went along. I managed to capture some of that conversation but homelife encroaches. Help required to upload .wav…anyone

Skyping on Vimeo

Thanks Rachel for your assistance. if I’ve stuffed it up… let me know.

I’ve begun to read ‘Growing up digital by Don Tapscott, as recommended by both David Warlick and Jennifer Correiro. But I must confess that even as I read the first few paragraphs my mind hit overdrive, and as is my way I began processing all over again the thoughts and ideas I had heard about telling a new story and the Net Generation. I thought about the kids in my school, in my class. I thought about the trouble John Key got himself into over the ‘underclass’. In
New Zealand, you see there is no class system. It is a classless democracy with the shining bright lie that, in fact there is a class system, doesn’t work in the conventional sense but it is there all the same.

I digress….

“…there is a dirct relationship between family income and access to computers and the Net. This correlation also exists between the higher- and lower-income schools… our research shows that the digital divide is actually widening, not disappearing. As the new technology trickles into poorer neighbourhoods and schools, the better of children are leapfrogging others- getting not only better access, but a wider range of services, faster access, ther best technology, and, most importantly, increasing motivation, skills and knowledge. This not only exacerbates the fluency gap but also the gap in different economic classes’ capacity to learn and have successful lives. Have-not become know-nots and do-nots.”

David spoke of his schooling and how 80% ish of his class went to work in the mill to do repetitive work, closely supervised. It got me thinking about what are we preparing our students for, are we assuming, and grooming them accordingly, they will be working at Watties. Yes these are Net Gen kids but to be honest, because of their socio-economic position are we not in danger of ‘writing them off’ in a “Look at their dad to see their future” sort of way.

Funding is different for decile 1 schools, and rightly so. But I ask the question, is it enough? If we are hoping against hope for these kids to be ‘successful’, whatever that looks like in the future, we’d better be supporting them in their learning Web 2.0. For whatever their future holds, straight up, it’ll be measured in gigabytes.

Those key competencies are great, and they have their place, just like the subjects, but there is a whole lot of digital literacy et al. out there that needs to be grasped and utilised if these kids are to be Life-long learners.

Well it actually worked, I can,t really believe it. And I wouldn’t if it were not for the fact I was stood right there when I said.

David was taking about the LEVEL BOSS at the end of video games and that the kids are having to beat the level boss…here’s what i did with my 7 year olds- xbox, playstation gurus all.

It was the beginning of my writing lesson this morning and they have been writing a proceedure about crossing the road. They’ve been working on it all week and they were up to the editting part where they have to underline possible spelling errors and write them in their ‘1st try/2nd’ book (dumb name i’ve always thought- but that’s what it is) Anyway…

A couple came to me and said- “Haven’t got any mistakes”- And they haven’t.

What’s gonig on here i think. So I stand up and address the class. I tell them that even I make mistakes in my writing(anyone regularly reading these posts can testify to how terrible it is at times-please don’t) and I say Writing is like a game. We’re at level one now and level two is where you are able to use some really big words like compelling or Fantastic or anticipate, the level boss needs to be defeated and the way you get to the end of the level is to attempt to use, in your writing some descriptive words, adjectives, adverbs that you are trying out and you haven’t used before. i said the level boss needs to be blasted and your only ammo are the words you are trying. it’s ok because you have the cheat book right in front of you. (waved   ’1st try/2nd try’ book in the air0 Isaid its fairly empty and the moment but i’ve got all the cheats, the right spelling in my head and i can put them in your cheat book after you’ve had a go yourself.

I am now the Games Master and they possess a cheat book. They lapped it up. now they all want to be on level 2 writing really cool stories to share with their Skyping buddies.

I am well chuffed.