Educating the Dragon

Over this first half of the School year I have relieved in two Intermediate classes for 3 weeks each.

The first class is run by my colleague and dear friend Chrissy . She spent that time in Argentina and as you can read had a fantastically, marvelous time. I certainly enjoyed following along with her through my Google Reader . While she was there she posted on her travelog exploits of her trip. She also blogged on the class blog , offering international insight and challenges for her students.

The second class I have completed today and they received a postcard from their teacher. I continued on the planned theme for the time she was away.

My point really of mentioning this is twofold.

Firstly, the interaction the class had with their teachers during the time away is vastly different.

And secondly, I would like to question whether the class who had ‘full access’ to the international experience really appreciated it or engaged with it in any really meaningful way.

Web2.0 is all very well but students need to enthused and then educated about its possibilities in order to maximize the learning potential.

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?

My students have laughed off internet safety as ‘stupid’. We were in discussion about ‘What is the internet?’ and the conversation turned to Bebo and other social networking sites.

How and at what age are we best to address the issue of Cyber safety with our students? What about with the Board of trustees? Principal? Senior management? And Staff? Are we to merely steer our students through the Microsoft applications or are we to prepare them for the internet fired workplace?

Having discussed what the internet is and the range of its use today I set them the task of reading and commenting upon a couple of blogs: Room18TIS and Student2.0 . They left comments - Some of them good, some of them not so. Apologies to the authors for any of my students comments that slipped past me!

Some found the abstract nature of the exercise difficult so I directed them all to my blog, this post in particular about David Hill’s visit . I thought the first hand experience of what the post was about would give them food for thought and a little more direction in their commenting…. hmmmm. I’ll let you be the judge.

But what concerned me was they were UNCONCERNED about the ‘global- anyone can read what I put’  and as you can see , there was a mix in the quality of their comments. I think also a lesson of two in Netiquette would not go amiss.

The closure of a School canteen in Wellington is hardly a surprise to me.
A quick poll of students I’m working with right now reveals an interesting list of favourites from the canteen:

My assessment: Students are spending their own money, therefore the choices that they are making are are TASTY choices, not necessarily healthy choices.
Perhaps the government needs to buy back the school canteen system in this country? (It’s bound to be worth a LITTLE less than the rail network) Should canteens not offer these other choices at all? Surely that would mean there is NO choice? So should there be no choice at all? Perhaps government should legislate that Pizza Hut and Burger King should stop serving their wares because the public can’t be trusted to make healthy choices?
Mc Donald’s are offering alternative choices for their Happy Meals, presumably so parents can make those choices for their kids and educate them at the same time.

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.