The importance of cleverly guided facilitating discussion.

Students don't learn anything they don't already know....

Ponder that a while.... I'll wait.

Education's Death Valley....

I especially like the point about the contradiction involving diversity...
Conformity vs diversity - our system is still geared towards - intact this still deeply ingrained ideal - conforming - as much as we hold high an ideal of celebrating diversity. How many more generations of public school children in New Zealand will be eaten by the conformity machine before we actually actively take our own steps towards ensuring we are nurturing, rewarding and realising individual diversity. I wan tot be a teacher that helps students seek out success through happiness - not through conforming and surviving in a dull job they felt forced into through a lack of options and the insipidness of conforming to the norm.

Differentiated Instruction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiated_instruction

Differentiated instruction and assessment (also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation) is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing different students with different avenues (often in the same classroom) to acquiring content; to processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and to developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability.^[1] 

A reminder post to make sure I am incorporating this still in my teaching and planning.

Whole Brain learning

I have introducing some whole brain learning techniques into our classroom to more fully engage all my learners - but in particular the majority of year 2 boys!
I have noticed some excellent side effects already;

• more student talk
• more students following instructions
• more smiles
• more uptake of knowledge by more students

It's a win/win so far!!

And the video where I first saw it...

EDIT: I also created a Whole Brain Learning board on my pintrest page!

I am blessed with a holistic brain.

What I mean is,  my brain is awesome at connecting the wide and varied input I deliver to it - my synapses fire into the Tardis that is my mind and snippets of info rub up against thoughts and other facts and form little gangs of newly hatched ideas. 

These gangs of ideas act like magnets to attract other snippets and form new opinions which I should really bother to share more often.

I have been thinking about gun control and regulation.
And I have been attending a number of digital education seminars and workshops again lately (I say again because I did this about 8 years ago in my other life too).

The following is what happened when these two main things rubbed together in my Tardis.

In the digital education world we "tsk tsk" and shake our heads when we hear of schools banning cellphones and BYOD (Bring Your Own Devices) from schools (I would like to say Learning Environments but in this instance the institutionalised term, schools, is more appropriate).
The ideas behind that banning are numerous but include things like "If we ban them we will stop cyber bullying" or "If we exclude unauthorised devices from our network students won't be able to sext*"

We "Tsk tsk" because it is not the cellphones or the BYO devices that are the problem. We shake our heads and wonder why those Learning Leaders are ignoring the challenge of some student led critical thinking. We are sad because of the missed opportunities to use our key compentency tools to develop Digital Citizenship and foster positive online morals and values.

We think, when has sticking our heads in the sand and shutting down discussion ever made a significant contribution to our issues? 

Let's talk about cyber bullying and the impact; let's unpack the issues surrounding sexting and create a dialogue about what is really going on.

We need to move past the dictatorship of Cyber Safety and empower students to be responsible self governed Digital Citizens.

My best friend lives in America and each day we yak and yarn about what is happening in our worlds. Guns and Boston Bombings have been a big part of that lately. We talk about gun control and stricter laws and the constitution. 

But is gun banning any different than cellphone banning?

 I mean, I am all for rights, but the constitution was written back in the day when you were lucky to get one shot off per minute and semi automatic weapons weren't even something you imagined in your wildest dreams...
In a time when getting shot, from a health perspective, REALLY meant you could die. Medicine has come a LONG way since then, and speaking of a long way - that's what you were from getting any help!

We all need to encourage a dialogue into the weapons equivalent of Digital Citizenship... especially now that we have 3d printers.
Maybe the discussions are one in the same - empowering all citizens to get on the same page in terms of mindful self governing and away from forcing a big brother dictatorship through wilfully ignorant misdirected and ill-informed exertions of "rights".
Encouraging focus on the deeper issues rather than floundering in the squeaky wheel surface features.

Meanwhile...what does it mean about me that I would like to ban banning.....

*sext/sexting -electronically sending a nude or partially nude picture of yourself (apparently about 1 in 5 young people has sexted...)

Democratic School group visit

Dawn's democratise school group came to talk to our staff about how we can collborate and incorporate their ideas in our programmes as my principal is open to some of their stuff and there is common ground.
It set up for the start of a year in the direction I would like to be going and made an interesting day!
I very much like the "takes a village" approach!
I am very interested in the opportunities to personalise learning so children could get more input/choice about what they want to learn. They can be then more intrinsically motivated to learn which is as it should be! (instead of them having to do what everyone else has to do which is not a natural way to learn  and not ideal!)
If I can find some one to take a group of wee kids and teach them how to sew or braid or fix a car then GREAT! - my job would be to integrate that through my planning into what I am required by the government to report on for National standards.
The  freedom, support and resources to do that would be fantastic!

A Teaching Blog...

Have been thinking for a while it would be a wise idea to have a teaching blog. There are some reason for this

• Lots of people keep talking about it
• I have been utilising other people's blogs a lot lately
• It is a way to record my teaching work
• It is a great reflection tool
• It could be useful for registration 
• it could be useful for future job applications

So.. tonight I have tangented (did I just make up that word?) from Pintrest to a bunch of Blooms related sites looking for some existing plans.
I am a big fan of not reinventing the wheel all the time but rather modifying wheels that have already been created and actually work.

Particularly interested in the work of  Kathy Schrock at the moment who is 'updating' the Blooms Taxonomy to  include web/online/iPad components - e.g. 21st century stuff.

She has represented a bunch of (iPad) apps into a Blooms format (see below). Has also done the same with Google apps, of which I am not so familiar.

Not that me, my class or my school have iPads yet...

P.S. I was meant to read this and this but I decided to go to bed instead...