Averages

Cute little rhyme that helps kids remember the vocabulary of averages.

Expectations

I firmly believe that students will generally do what is expected of them. That is, if I have high expectations, they will generally rise to meet them. This year I really wanted to focus on my students having high expectations of themselves.

I have a very small group of 17 year seven students this year, which is lovely. Yesterday, as they walked into our learning space wide eyed and more than a little anxious, I started a conversation that I hope will set the tone for the coming year.

I constructed a Y chart entitled "our expectations", with each section label 'of ourselves', 'of each other' and 'of Mrs G...'.

Their responses were exactly what I would have written had I been filling in the chart myself, and I think their expectations of me are spot on.

Blog Hiatus = Over

Apparently doing things like going on maternity leave then returning to almost full time study isn't conducive to blogging.
Time to dust off the old blog and get back to it.

Teaching the value of Mental Computation when there is a calculator in their pockets.

I don't think any educator would argue that mental computation is a dying skill. Quite the opposite in fact, it is an absolutely essential skill in day-to-day life. How though, can we rationalise it for our students? They so quickly default to using calculators (and to be fair, nearly always have access to them), that the simple efficiency of being able to calculate, say, simple percentages, without one, is becoming an increasingly hard sell. Mental computation seems to be turning into a novelty skill, a bit of a party trick.

How can we help our students to truly value mental computation?

I want to believe

I want to believe in the Ultranet. I really do. It has so much potential.

But parts of it really suck, and it's very hard to stand up as the face of the Ultranet, preaching its virtues, when it continually lets me down.

If nothing else, it's an excellent lesson in resilience!

Back to School

Back To School - CC http://ngphotography.com.au

A new school year is just around the corner, filled with possibilities.

One of the new tools I'm trying this year is OneNote. I've never used it before, but the 2010 version seems to be pretty much everything I need to turn my planning and record keeping paperless . As an added bonus, the iOS apps make it easy to view my work on the go (along with basic editing).

I'm knee deep (almost literally, I have piles of resources at my feet) in planning at the moment - a brand new year level (year eight) will no doubt bring new challenges, and is refreshing. I've taught year seven for the last 5 years (plus this year as well) so it will be good to have a change.

I'm also getting organised to begin my new role as Digital Learning Coordinator - I have big plans, including the foundation of a student 'e-team', parent Ultranet roll-out across the College, and becoming an accredited e-smart school. 

It's going to be a great year!

Password Management

That was a longer hiatus than I intended! What a crazy term four this has been! Reports, 2012 planning, being appointed as Digital Learning & Ultranet Coordinator... Busy busy busy!!
I'm planning over the next couple of months to transfer summaries of my professional reading (aka Uni Homework!) to this blog, plus start creating tips & tutorials that I can share with my colleagues in my new role. Today's tip is the first in that series:

Password Management Tip!

Do you have too many different passwords to remember? Try using a variation of the same password for every site.

1. Choose a word that means something to you, which wouldn't be easily guessed by other people (e.g. bananas) It should have at least 6 letters.
2. Make the first letter a capital (eg. Bananas)
3. Put some punctuation on the end (e.g. Bananas!)
4. On the end of that, put the first two letters of the website that you are signing up for (e.g. if it was google.com I would use Bananas!go)
5. Now you have an easy to remember, unique, strong password
6. When updating your password (which should be done regularly!), try adding sequential numbers to the end (e.g. Bananas!go1)
7. For edumail, which doesn't like repeat passwords - what about trying alphabetical words from a certain category? (e.g. Apple!ed, Banana*ed, Celery#ed, Durian#ed, Eggplant!ed, etc...)
8. I have found that usually I can get away with having only three different basic passwords - 1 for school related sites (e.g. edumail/ultranet/web 2.0 tools), one for personal related (e.g. facebook/gmail), and one for the bank (which seems to have different requirements to everything else!)