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!

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

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…."

Another successful collaborative project.

Students took the parts of newspaper reporters and illustrators to create a 6 page news paper in 3 hours.

I was delighted with their enthusiasm and desire to meet the deadline.

They worked in pairs to write recounts including the 5 W’s and H. using complex and compound sentences, writing and linking sentences together in short paragraphs…. But shhhhhhhhhhh…. They think they were just designing and creating a newspaper.

Go Ted McCain!!