Educating the Dragon

I stood up in church the other week and was asked to talk about what it was like to be a Christian teacher in today’s secular society. I shared a bit then at coffee afterwards some lovely people said how great it was to here ordinary folk with ordinary lives for a change. It was nice, but it’s not why I’m mentioning it. A teacher friend of mine chatted with me afterwards and brought to my attention something I hadn’t thought about for a while.

When I was relieving at Sherenden I was paid mileage for the trouble of going out that far. I talked about this with my friend at church and he was relating a story about the fact that he requests mileage for each of his relieving days. Apparently there is a 10km radius where you can’t claim but after that you can claim regardless of the school you work in. There was a certain administrator he was dealing with that basically claimed they had no knowledge of the ‘mileage allowance’ and therefore refused to pay. The NZEI rep said that the reliever was entitled to the allowance provided he had to travel more than 10km to the school. Please Educate the Dragon . Does anyone know anything about this or have similar stories. Is the relieving pool being conned out of hundreds of dollars in mileage each year? Or is it just me and my mate?

Thought I’d just do this little activity before I get Chrissy’s class to do it on their blog. Inspired, I have to say, by Chrissy trying to find the airport, or her hotel in Rome. Here is my Google map of my journey to School. What I find interesting about this route is that it is not the route that I take. More often than not I go up Evendon Road to meet the expressway. However, tomorrow is the day that this route will be most helpful as I am having to cycle, being without my car; 14.7km doesn’t sound too far….. but ask me tomorrow.

I don’t know whether it is a maturation stage or whether the use of technology in the classroom by the teacher has a higher profile but the class I was with the other day immediately went to the internet to research recycling, went to publisher to create titles and borders.

It was good to get the feedback that the students really appreciated and engaged with my lessons as the whole day I have activities and tasks running through the IWB all day long.

Another observation that I made was the fact that the students engaged with a big book. We created a story journey on the IWB, including graphics and audio. Technology really engages the students, particularly the boys, in a way that technology free teaching does not. Perhaps that’s more me and the technology. With the tech, maybe I’m boring?

What an interesting morning.

I thought I’d challenge a group of 10 year olds to a project. Ted McCain style. I am only in the class today so it couldn’t be too involved.

I began by setting the scene through an email I recieved from a bookstore requesting the design of an e-mailable newsletter.

The news letter required the following:

A top ten bestsellers listing, a book review, a voucher that they could print out and take into the store to redeem along with contact details etc. Student’s could add anything they wished to the newsletter.

What was interesting was the fact that they immediately reached for the coloured paper and the glitter. I thought that mentioning the word ‘email’ in the piece would spark the need to use something like publisher. But nobody asked if they could access any of the 4 computers at the back of the room.

Several asked if they could go and ask the librarian for the bestsellers list. Not one did a google search for that information. I was anticpating a problem-solving session aided by technology. Instead several groups created individual drafts and then chose ‘the best one’

Despite not one of the groups writing a book review, creating a best seller list and only 2 groups designing a voucher in hand drawn bubble writing I hope there was a lot of learning going on at the plenary session: I asked the question What did learn from that the mindmap revealed the following answers:

Working as a team: sharing the jobs

Focus on the work and work faster

Listen more carefully to the presentation at the beginning

Ask more questions as we go on

Listen to the team leaders- they have ‘the plan’.

How can technology help us best?

If they think about these things the next time they do a group activity they will ha ve done well

Had a good conversation with some staff members today about the need for a mindset change for the future of education. We were talking about the fact that integration of technology into the school curriculum is really not one of those pendulum swings that we get from time to time in education but rather it is a progressive change that is going to continue to advance and gain momentum. How true. There is a real need for teachers to embrace the teaching of technology for the 21^st century. Not as a discreetly separate subject but that it needs to be draw into theclassroom practice of all ages, stages and subjects. Seen more as a tool like pencil and paper rather than a curriculum area to be learnt.