ULearn08

I've been at Ulearn08 this week and it has been a great time. Tiring but enthusing. Three standouts for me.

Tony Ryan - This man is an absolute legend. What a delight to listen to him. It is so good to be reminded about the importance of being transformational in our teaching. This wasn't a presentation of "how to teach" rather a challenge about "how to be". It was worth the conference fee (not that I paid it personally mind you) just to hear him speak. He talked about teachers needing to be Energisers, Ethicists, Entrepreneurs and Environmentalists. Great to be reminded that teaching is a mirror. Your attitude is reflected back to you. I know this is true when I feel frustrated and that is reflected back at me from the children. I hadn't really thought about the opposite being true that when I am on top of it that gets reflected back in improved attitude from the children. So many challenges in this presentation that I will be mulling it over for awhile.

Webspiration - This is a beta test of an online version of the classic brainstorming software. It just looks brilliant. I sat and created a brainstorm and then collaborated with someone else all within the time of half a keynote speech (woops did I confess to that). If this remains free and online I don't see how they will keep selling the full product? Maybe the full version offers extra features. I'm sure it will. Very nice to see this online though. It is better than some of the alternatives I have played with like bubbl.us or mindmeister.

Finally. I am so proud of the children from LT4 who came and presented some of the things they have been learning. They were just great and I was very proud of them. If you happened to be in the session... Thank you. Some of the things we showcased are available here.

Wordle

Education Policies

This is a cool tool. We have been forming political parties in our class and the children have been writing policies. Wordle creates a word cloud from any pasted text or you can just drop in a URL and it will go get the text for you. The more frequently a word appears in the text the larger it is on the cloud. In playing around with it I have dropped in the Labour party education policy and the National party statement on National standards. I would have preferred to compare two policies but it seems National have not released their policy yet. It isn't hard to see which is which. I'm going to get the class to do this with their own policies. Makes for an interesting comparison.















Try it out with your school website or your own blog and see what your text looks like.

Go animate

This is a great web tool for creating animations. Very simple to learn. I hope school's bandwidth can cope cause I want to use this on Monday! Fantastic!

Just the coolest thing

This is a link to a Transit NZ website that has video of NZ Highways. Sort of like Google streetview. Very cool.

inanimate alice

If you haven't had a look at this site is is well worth browsing. Incredible multimedia storytelling.

Running to Uganda

It feels like an impossibly long time ago that I last wrote anything on my blog. Life has been incredibly busy and there just hasn't been time. But I thought I'd share, with anyone who is looking, a revived project that we are going to have another go at this year.

Last year we ran to meet a school in Palmerston North. This year we have a boy in our school who is raising money for his airfare to Uganda so he can visit the children's home his parents have helped set up there.

So..... we are running to Uganda. This is a big ask but I think if the children all get motivated that we ought to be able to do it. Keep an eye on the wiki and see how we get on. We are starting on Monday!!!

CommunityWalk Map - Run to Uganda

Waht do you tnhik of tihs?

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Thanks Allanah

Classmate PC

Goodness me it has been a long time since I posted anything. I have been so busy in my new job that I haven't had the time. But today I couldn't pass up this opportunity to test a piece of equipment and blog about it at the same time. I am typing this on a Classmmate PC. This is sort of like an ASUS EEE or the OLPC computer that has been all in the blogoworld. I've taken a couple of photos so you can see what they are like.

This could be a really useful tool. I want to play with it for awhile but if anyone has any experience with these or any feedback I'd love to hear from you. It is running winXP and has a 30 GB hard drive. 512 mb Ram could be limiting and I'm not sure if it is upgradeable. Built in wireless took me a couple of minutes to get connected on my home network. Also has ethernet port and two usb ports. Headphone and mic input but that is all. I'm no touch typist but the small keys are not too bad. You wouldn't want to be typing a lot on it but then mostly we don't type screeds of stuff.

I will attempt to get back to blogging soonish. At the moment I am enhjoying the challenge of Team teaching with two others a class of 70 fantastic year 7 and 8 pupils.

Fun set of Geography Challenges

http://www.travelpod.com/traveler-iq/worldphotos

This Traveler IQ
challenge is brought to you by the Web's Original Travel Blog

The Story of Stuff

This is a fantastic 20 minute presentation about consumerism, sustainability, environmental impact and what you can do about it. Just brilliant.

Definr

This is a brilliant online dictionary. Very fast and has a neat little plugin for firefox. You can drag to your tool bar a link that when you click on it it opens a small box for you to type a word you want the definition for. Works a treat. It also makes suggestions for you if you have an approximation of the spelling.

Link this with Freerice and you can quickly get to level 50! :)

Lookybook

Lookybook

Free Rice

Have a look at this website if you want something to challenge your children (and yourself) that also has a positive benefit. The link above takes you to the totals page which has some incredible statistics showing how something like this can take off. Fun to play and you are helping address world hunger! What more can you ask for?

Teacher Salaries in Perspective

AREN'T YOU ALL SICK OF THOSE HIGH PAID TEACHERS??

Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do... baby-sit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage. That is right. I would give them $3.00 dollars an hour and only the hours they worked, not any of that silly planning time.

That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 AM to 4:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now, how many do they teach in a day... maybe 30? So that's 19.5 X 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

Let's see . . . that's $585 x 180 = $105,300 per year.

(Hold on! My calculator must need batteries!)

What about those special teachers and the ones with master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be fair, round it off to $7.00 an hour. That would be $7 times 6-1/2 hours times 30 children times 180 days =$245,700.00 per year.

Wait a minute, there is something wrong here!

There sure is, duh!

(Average teacher salary $50,000/180 days = $277per day/30 students = $9.23/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student.) Very inexpensive babysitter and they even educate your kids! Crazy!

This is the tool I was looking for to power the Run to Meet You project. It is just brilliant for tracking a trip. Well worth looking at. We are nearly in Palmerston North so we will be looking for somewhere else to run to. Any takers?


Wedding map to share with guests
CommunityWalk Map - Run to meet you

California Fires

George Bush took some flak for not responding very quickly after Hurricane Katrina but apparently he has been much quicker to respond to the current crisis. Maybe a little too quick if this photo is anything to go on.

Here's a fun little graphic someone sent me

Run to meet you

Earlier in the year we tried to get an internet connection going with schools via the photo a day project. It sort of petered out, partly I think because of Northern hemisphere schools heading off for their summer holiday just as we were getting started. If anyone is interested in reviving that one we'd still be interested.

Run to meet you is a new idea to try and get our children to connect with others around the globe. Have a look at the wiki and let me know if you are interested. Given the guidelines (see the wiki) I figure we ought to be able to run at least halfway around the world before Christmas.

I'd love to hear from others about what they think of this idea.

Contemplation

It has been an exhausting term and the holidays have just come in time!

I've felt too busy to blog but have missed the interaction and the process of jotting down my thoughts. Today I've been catching up with some reading and this one jumped out of the pile.

























It comes from Stephen Heppell who is always good value to listen to. Great little list to reflect on for your own situation.

I like point three...

Quality controlled -------------------------------------Quality Assured

Makes one think really about things like ERO and assessment and teacher standards and feedback.

From David Muir comes this list of Heppell quotes.

“Bits of paper are worthless!”

“A school’s policy should be: ‘We could so do this’ “.

“We don’t know how good or children can be – let’s find out.”

“Learning can inoculate children against poverty”

“Being part of a community is important but everyone looking the same and acting the same is disastrous.”

(Rats!!! I had written a whole longer response to this and then firefox crashed and lost the lot). I'm tired now and going to bed so if it was important it will come back.

Our First Alice Video this year.

This is so time consuming to do but truckloads of fun. This movie trailer is supposedly the precursor to the full movie!! We will wait and see. (Made by Year 7 and 8's)