Educating the Dragon

Mixed feelings this morning.

The session that was planned was entitled IWB2, it’s all about embedding Interactive Whiteboard practice into everyday teaching, focusing on the idea of supporting the Integrated Unit. This session follows on from, you guessed it, IWB1 which normally occurs a term before.

I began this session, as I begin every IWB2 session, with the words “I have about 32 pages here and a pile of tasks to do today, but I’d prefer for us to not complete all that and have you walk out at the end having your questions and issues resolved. “ – Or something like that.

Normally what happens is that as I move through the presentation I am heckled with question about: “How do you….?” Or “When I try to…it just….”

Today’s session however looked very different as I barely touch on the Integrated Unit concept when time was up. I’m not sorry that it went that way as the time was filled totally with answering queries and addressing issues on this or that. Even as I am educating the educators I have to be fully flexible to personalize the learning. At the end of the session I sensed staff were enthused once more toward incorporating the IWB into their classroom practice. And that, I feel is the greater goal than ticking the box saying “I delivered the IWB2 workshop today.”

Classroom practice has to be the same too. Addressing the needs of the students, ensuring they leave the classroom having learnt something today.

“ It is no longer adequate for the teacher to merely have taught something today… The learner needs to have learnt something”

The drive back along the Gisborne/ Napier road was long and slow. A little over 3.5 hours, it appears the logging trucks come out at dusk!

Today was the day for two training sessions.

Firstly, I ran ‘Digital Storytelling" workshop, sharing the online platforms of Voicethread, Teachertube, and Slideshare.

I always enjoy running these session because I find teachers bring just as much to a session as I do. We began a voicethread… My first really proper one and it is oh so basic but I am hoping that others whole attended the session will be adding there thoughts about it. The cough at the beginning of my talk is not me but an attendee who shall remain nameless.

Cliotech was good enough to allow me to share some of the input from her slideshare .

Second up was Stop motion animation. Some folk from this morning stayed into the afternoon. We played around with webcams for a while and discussed the usefulness of animation creation to support not only the literacy programme but also it solidfy learning in other areas, for example creating an animation to illustrate life-cycles in science. We even had one uploaded to www.teachertube.com by the end of the session. It’s entitled "Mr Mouse" Enjoy!

ps. It was also great to know about a couple of sound wikispaces today. One of the attendees has been struggling with establishing her class wiki on wikispaces. I would have loved to sit down with her and assist in creating her class wiki, but that would be another 3 hour session so I pointed her in the direction on Wonderfulworldof.wikispaces.com and encouraged her to look through the material there before she gave up. Often I find its better to have the pointers than to be able to ‘Fix it’ then and there. Thanks Chrissy

pps. Thanks Derek for sharing this . What a powerful illustration of Storytelling in the 21st Century

I’ve hit the road again today, spent all afternoon travelling from Hastings to Tauranga. I forget how beautiful NZ is and its not until you spend sometime on the road and actually look around as you go that you fully appreciate the scenery.

But that is not why I’m posting today. It is the middle of the school holidays and I have Breathe Technology Staff meeting in the morning. I’ve spent a lovely evening with my boss, her partner a colleague of mine and the Easiteach trainer. More of that tomorrow I guess. Sometimes it is really difficult to get out the conversation about Education but we did hit upon the topic of internet dating.

From what we talked about it seems to be;

a) a) a lot more common now and

b) b) a lot safer.

I was wondering if that were true or not or whether it is just our perception of it? If anyone has facts and figures on such things please comment.

My other question was surrounding cyber safety and the ‘internet dating’ thing. I fear that the Internet-dating will be the sex-ed of the cyber safety education programme. I remember the thoughts of:

‘Let’s not talk about sex in the classroom.’

‘If we start talking about it, more students will experiment with it and we’ll have a bigger social problem than we already have’

So my question being where in the ‘cyber-safety curriculum’ does internet dating appear?

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

Two stories came to my attention:

1. Five year olds in this European city are not due to start school until they are six, in fact ON their sixth birthday. This five old I heard about is very, very bored at kindy and mum and dad want her to start school early. As part and parcel of the procedure for that to happen the kid needs to be assessed by a some Educational Psychologist or similar, there are a raft of result coming through regarding the kid but what stands out is the IQ of 140. The kid begins school immediately and is put in the Y0 class, where she spends the first week learning the number ‘1’. Are her needs being met?

2. Intermediate kid, he has special needs that I am unable to disclose. The school has streamed maths and literacy programmes. His ability is somewhat below even the lowest of groups in the lowest of classes. His class contains 29 students. The teacher sees him for focused teaching time, with 4 others three times a week. Are his needs being met?

The recent push in education towards ‘personised learning’ is merely rhetoric. The reality of one teacher personalizing the learning of 33 students on a continual basic is beyond the time and energy of any regular teacher. It is why Primary (Elementary) teachers have been organizing ‘differentiated’ groups for a long time now; it is the realistic balance between ‘personalized learning’ and ‘whole class teaching’.

When my kid finally hits school I want to know what is really happening in the classrooms. I don’t want some Principal talking to me about their ‘personalised learning plan’ when really its ‘differentiated learning’ in a new coat of paint.

Let’s keep it real people, let’s call it what it is.