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?
Monday, 16 April 2012
Wednesday, 29 February 2012
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!
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Back to School
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| 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!
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Monday, 19 December 2011
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!
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.
- 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.
- Make the first letter a capital (eg. Bananas)
- Put some punctuation on the end (e.g. Bananas!)
- 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)
- Now you have an easy to remember, unique, strong password
- When updating your password (which should be done regularly!), try adding sequential numbers to the end (e.g. Bananas!go1)
- 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...)
- 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!)
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Pondering Creativity
How IS creativity defined? Why do we value
creativity? Do we measure creativity in students to be able to facilitate
creative growth?
How then do we measure creativity? Should we?
Why? Do we assess to measure creativity, or to identify it? What do we do with
this knowledge? What relationships exist between descriptions of creativity,
and the tools used to measure it? How reliable are popular creativity tests
(e.g. Torrance Tests, Consensual Assessment Tests) in terms of indicating creativity? Are there
any tests that successfully measure the multiple aspects of creativity? How
have tests of creativity changed since they were pioneered? What is the point
of assessing creativity? What is the point of assessment in general – do the
reasons extend to assessment of creativity?
To what extent do creativity
tests predict giftedness? Is creativity a successful predictor of giftedness?
How is giftedness defined? What parallels exist between the definitions of
“gifted people” and definitions of “creative people”?
___
These are the questions floating around in my head as I wade through a very large pile of literature on the topic. I hope to be able to find some answers.
Do you think I'm asking the right questions?
Monday, 10 October 2011
Hindsight is 20:20
@Mrkempnz asked the following question on Twitter...
"what would you do differently if you were a first year teacher again? ......"
... and it got me thinking.
I make little secret of the fact that I hardly enjoyed a minute of my first year of teaching. I was ill-prepared, lacking resilience, lacking experience, lacking knowledge... I really consider myself lucky that I am still in teaching at all.
My immediate thought: EVERYTHING!
I should never have accepted the first job I was offered. I was desperate to start teaching. I had done quite well at uni, and received excellent feedback from my supervising teachers. I was told by two of my placement schools that I had I been qualified, they would have offered me a job. (Because of this, I was probably a little bit cocky!) When I was called within a couple of hours of my first interview, and offered the job, I didn't hesitate, of course I said yes!
I should have done my research. The school and I were not a good fit. I had zero ESL training, and being a young, naive, female, inexperienced teacher, with no kids of my own, who wasn't local, I was immediately seen as an outsider, by both the children and their families.
My first day:
"Miss, you got kids?"
"No"
"You live in *******?"
"No"
"You Muslim?"
"No"
"Well MY dad says I don't gotta listen to you!"
"..."
I should have worked on relationships. Now, the relationships are the very first thing I establish in my classroom. There is little need for 'rules' if a community is established in which there is an understanding of mutual respect. An older teacher said to me "Don't worry about the curriculum yet". I felt it was all I had to cling to. I was wrong. I had no idea how to build rapport with my students.
I felt that I couldn't be myself.
All I did in my first week of teaching was yell, sleep and cry. I was totally unprepared for just how exhausting it was. I had a management plan, given to me by the school, and was told I had to use it. It involved a clipboard, with 'behaviour tracking sheets'. The students would have their name recorded, marked as a warning, then their number would be circled the more they misbehaved. There would be consequences - "Time outs" (I had a "time out table", whatever that means), exiting the room, etc, depending on what the student did. I suppose, it is sound in theory (though it has NEVER worked for me - it just doesn't fit with who I am as a teacher). But I had that chart FULL every day, usually before recess. It was impossible to manage, to follow up on. I had little concept of 'tactically ignore', and every indiscretion was met with the same level of response. What reason did the kids have to show me their best side? If you asked me what my management plan was now, I couldn't explain it, or tell you the steps. There is no time out table, or list of names with crosses. There is no 'one size fits all approach'. But I know that I could walk into any class in the school (and I now work in a secondary college that many consider 'challenging'), and know that I would be in control.
I knew something was wrong - with my teaching - but I didn't know how to fix it. I became so incredibly frustrated - other teachers would walk into my room, and it would be silent, the kids perfect angels. They would leave, and it would be back to mayhem.
I didn't show my students how to be successful. I probably had high expectations, but I know I didn't model them effectively. I was inconsistent. I didn't require them to be respectful - to myself, or each other - consistently enough. They were so awful to each other, it makes me shudder just to think of it. The community relationship was severely damaged. 'Transition times' were a nightmare. I didn't have a clear enough idea of what routines I wanted in place - so how could my students? My classroom must have been a stressful, erratic place that year.
The former principal of my current school once shared the following quote:
"I have come to a frightening conclusion.
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis
will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized."
~Haim Ginott
I wish someone had shared that with me in my first year. I knew it, I felt it, but I couldn't articulate it. I look back on my first year of teaching, and the only thing I feel proud of is that I made it through. I don't know if I did much good for my students that year, and that I truly regret.
Now, I can look back on that year, and realise how far I have come. I can articulate, identify and explain all the things that went wrong. More importantly, I do everything in my power to avoid those same mistakes. My principal suggested at one point in that year, that teaching wasn't for me. I was deeply hurt by that - I knew I wanted to teach. I knew I could be good at it - but I didn't know how.
Thankfully, the school community I am now part of, has allowed me to become the teacher I always wanted to be. My classroom is a safe, challenging place, where I am myself, and my students flourish.
"what would you do differently if you were a first year teacher again? ......"
... and it got me thinking.
I make little secret of the fact that I hardly enjoyed a minute of my first year of teaching. I was ill-prepared, lacking resilience, lacking experience, lacking knowledge... I really consider myself lucky that I am still in teaching at all.
My immediate thought: EVERYTHING!
I should never have accepted the first job I was offered. I was desperate to start teaching. I had done quite well at uni, and received excellent feedback from my supervising teachers. I was told by two of my placement schools that I had I been qualified, they would have offered me a job. (Because of this, I was probably a little bit cocky!) When I was called within a couple of hours of my first interview, and offered the job, I didn't hesitate, of course I said yes!
I should have done my research. The school and I were not a good fit. I had zero ESL training, and being a young, naive, female, inexperienced teacher, with no kids of my own, who wasn't local, I was immediately seen as an outsider, by both the children and their families.
My first day:
"Miss, you got kids?"
"No"
"You live in *******?"
"No"
"You Muslim?"
"No"
"Well MY dad says I don't gotta listen to you!"
"..."
I should have worked on relationships. Now, the relationships are the very first thing I establish in my classroom. There is little need for 'rules' if a community is established in which there is an understanding of mutual respect. An older teacher said to me "Don't worry about the curriculum yet". I felt it was all I had to cling to. I was wrong. I had no idea how to build rapport with my students.
I felt that I couldn't be myself.
All I did in my first week of teaching was yell, sleep and cry. I was totally unprepared for just how exhausting it was. I had a management plan, given to me by the school, and was told I had to use it. It involved a clipboard, with 'behaviour tracking sheets'. The students would have their name recorded, marked as a warning, then their number would be circled the more they misbehaved. There would be consequences - "Time outs" (I had a "time out table", whatever that means), exiting the room, etc, depending on what the student did. I suppose, it is sound in theory (though it has NEVER worked for me - it just doesn't fit with who I am as a teacher). But I had that chart FULL every day, usually before recess. It was impossible to manage, to follow up on. I had little concept of 'tactically ignore', and every indiscretion was met with the same level of response. What reason did the kids have to show me their best side? If you asked me what my management plan was now, I couldn't explain it, or tell you the steps. There is no time out table, or list of names with crosses. There is no 'one size fits all approach'. But I know that I could walk into any class in the school (and I now work in a secondary college that many consider 'challenging'), and know that I would be in control.
I knew something was wrong - with my teaching - but I didn't know how to fix it. I became so incredibly frustrated - other teachers would walk into my room, and it would be silent, the kids perfect angels. They would leave, and it would be back to mayhem.
I didn't show my students how to be successful. I probably had high expectations, but I know I didn't model them effectively. I was inconsistent. I didn't require them to be respectful - to myself, or each other - consistently enough. They were so awful to each other, it makes me shudder just to think of it. The community relationship was severely damaged. 'Transition times' were a nightmare. I didn't have a clear enough idea of what routines I wanted in place - so how could my students? My classroom must have been a stressful, erratic place that year.
The former principal of my current school once shared the following quote:
"I have come to a frightening conclusion.
I am the decisive element in the classroom.
It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather.
As a teacher I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous.
I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration.
I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal.
In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis
will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized."
~Haim Ginott
I wish someone had shared that with me in my first year. I knew it, I felt it, but I couldn't articulate it. I look back on my first year of teaching, and the only thing I feel proud of is that I made it through. I don't know if I did much good for my students that year, and that I truly regret.
Now, I can look back on that year, and realise how far I have come. I can articulate, identify and explain all the things that went wrong. More importantly, I do everything in my power to avoid those same mistakes. My principal suggested at one point in that year, that teaching wasn't for me. I was deeply hurt by that - I knew I wanted to teach. I knew I could be good at it - but I didn't know how.
Thankfully, the school community I am now part of, has allowed me to become the teacher I always wanted to be. My classroom is a safe, challenging place, where I am myself, and my students flourish.
Saturday, 1 October 2011
I Am Teacher 2.0
How often do we give our students the opportunity to slow down and process something they have been exposed to? Particularly if they already appear to have achieved competence. There is a difference between being able to do something, and seeing the big picture and significance of the ideas behind it.
For me, that's an important take-away message.
You might like to check out my 'Personal Web Presence', created during completion of the above series of tasks: http://www.natashaglaister.com
I would love to receive feedback or suggestions on it!
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