Educating the Dragon

If sharing is the threat now…. What is hyper-civilisation going to look like when my kid hits college? Surely there is a premise here of get on board or get out of the way… Society is clearly heading down a certain path with technology and all it’s plug-ins. I have known for a long time that students are needing to understand the place of the internet and its tools for a productive economic life in the future but I have not really understood WHY before now. And according to Mark Pesce its because if they fail in grasping this stuff they will be disavantaged more than if I had never learnt to read or write.

The future looks nothing like democracy because democracy which sort to empower the individual is being obsolest by a social order that hyper empowers them.

Mark Pesce

By way of a literacy warm up the other day we all sat around in a circle and told a story.

There were not many rules to this game:

1. No names of people in the room are allowed

2. No more than 3 sentences spoken

3. The final sentence should be left half finished.

It was a step of faith on my part, I have not tried this with any group or class before. I was pleasently surprised. First with the ideas flowing and also the sense that the story made in the end. I found it a great warm up activity, particularly if you disperse the ‘not so imaginative’ students around the circle.

I would love it if you could play….

"Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a wollot, whose name was Fringle. Now Fringle lived in a small cave on the edge of a vast forest. There was nothing Fringle enjoyed more than…."

I’m supervising the art class this morning and then again this afternoon.

It’s the last session of the term, those that have not finished are very nearly, it has been nine weeks in the creating and they are all nearly done.

In both the morning and the afternoon sessions there a couple of boys on the “Watch out for..” list as relievers often get.

The morning session boys had finished and one came to me saying “Can we listen to my ipod, please Mister.” I thought about it for a little while, scrolled through the menu like I “on the In-crowd” and said; “Sure just so long as your quiet and sensible about it.”

The session in the afternoon, some of the boys had finished and others had not.

The difference between the two: Ipods sat for a little over a hour, drawing and colouring, barely talking to each each other let alone disturbing others.

Non-Ipods threw crayons to another table, left the room when my back was turned and continued a conversation in a loud and somewhat ridiculous manner.

So I’m leaning towards Ipods having a constructive impact on classroom management.

How about you?

Sir Ken hits the mark again. He’s speaking on creativity/ education/ and the general systematic sleep-walking toward the future.

I will be listening again to the talk and reflecting on it further at some later date, I just wanted to share with you the audio recording of the presentation.

David Hill is a wonderfully natural story-teller. He has just finished a series of visits to schools in the Hawkes Bay, finishing here at Hastings Intermediate .

I would love to tell you of the great tales he told, but I really couldn’t do them justice. He first tried writing when he was 16 or 17, trying to impress a girl. Then he leaves it alone for a decade until he finds some old notes he made…. Now 23 chapter books later and still writing, in fact we were honoured with the first public reading of his, yet to be published, next book.

If you ever get the opportunity to invite David Hill to your school, take it. He is well worth listening to.