Archive for category school

Jonathan Harris: Collecting Stories

Posted by kmcg2375 in digital storytelling, english, school on August 19, 2008

Artist Jonathan Harris discusses his latest projects, which involve collecting stories – what a great talk!

I’d like to show this to Year 9 when we start making digi-stories, to get them thinking about how images can represent people and their lives.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Jonathan Harris: Collecting Stories“, posted with vodpod

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Laptops in Schools

Posted by kmcg2375 in school, technology on August 18, 2008

An interesting article in the SMH today – the DET is on the hunt for cheap laptops.

Had to chuckle at the reference to the NSW government resigning itself to the “boisterous nature” of secondary school students, and allowing for “the likelihood that one in 10 of the machines will be lost, broken or stolen each year.”

What I want to know is – what are they going to do to make sure the laptops we DO get run faster than a snail’s pace?  Currently my average laptop lesson uses about 15 minutes at the start just getting logged onto the laptops and onto the net.  This turns most teachers off, and many colleagues avoid the laptops altogether because they ‘waste’ so much class time.  *sigh*

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21classes

Posted by kmcg2375 in school on August 12, 2008

I’ve just been browsing through Jo McLeay‘s student blogs, which are hosted by 21classes.  I know I have heard of this site before, but I have been so happy with Edublogs that I haven’t bothered to pursue any other providers.  The main features that 21classes lay claim to are:

  • Host and manage blogs for your students
  • Use a Class Homepage to communicate with students

It looks at first glance like 21classes provides an easier structure for teachers to link student blogs to a main class blog.  Another selling point is that students apparently don’t need an email address to sign up for a blog…good news for DET teachers whose students don’t use their DET email, but also can’t access their Hotmail or Gmail accounts on the school computers!

Is anyone out there using 21classes?

Has anyone used 21classes AND Edublogs, and can comment on how they compare?

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Organising School Debating

Posted by kmcg2375 in school on August 11, 2008

Once again it is that time of year when school debating teams start to pass the zone level and compete for Regional and State titles.  This also makes it the time of year when debating coaches like myself need all the support from staff they can get, but unfortunately seem to have used up all their favours just getting the zone rounds done.

I think that debating is such a worthwhile activity for students to be involved in – both competitively, and in the more relaxed environment of in-class debating.  However, I think that schools that are entering teams into debating competitions need to understand the full range an amount of resources that are needed to support the teams.  Here are my first thoughts on what a school needs to plan for – can you add more?

  • Each team will participate in at least three zone-level ’round robin’ debates.  This means cover of some kind for at least three half days for each teacher taking a team.
  • If a team wins their zone, they go on to play schools that are progressively further away.  This usually means close to a full day of cover is needed for each debate beyond inter-zone finals.
  • If my Year 11 team make it to the State Final they will have been in around nine debates.  This means up to nine days away from most classes!
  • Debaters need lots of coaching to do well.  Weak debaters need coaching so they feel comfortable in the competition; strong debaters need coaching if you want them to go as far as possible in the comp.  This could mean losing around one lunchtime per fortnight, or missing more classes –  you will probably try to use your ‘free’ periods, meaning the kids will always be out of the same classes.
  • Do they have clean shirts, ties, blazers etc.?  Or will “someone” i.e. the coach have to organise this?  The school may need to develop a system for borrowing formal uniform items.
  • Debates have associated equipment – bell, stopwatch, palm cards, chairperson forms, glasses for water on the tables…  You will need a designated storage space so these things are easy to find, especially in schools with more than one teacher coaching the teams.

I’m hoping to work out a real ‘budget’ – both for funding and staff support – for debating in my school.  We’re always going to want more than we can have, but schools need to at least be realistic about what they are signing on for, I think.

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Using Renzulli and Gagne together

Posted by kmcg2375 in research, school on August 10, 2008

In an earlier post I discussed the way in which our school uses the trait’s of giftedness as identified by Renzulli – we focus heavily on ensuring that students who possess above average ability also develop high levels of task commitment and creativity.

The NSW DET, however, does not feature Renzulli’s traits of giftedness in their Gifted and Talented Policy.  Instead it uses Gagné’s (2003) Differentiated Model of Giftedness and Talent (DMGT), which states that:

Gifted students are those whose potential is distinctly above average in one or more of the following domains of human ability: intellectual, creative, social and physical.

Talented students are those whose skills are distinctly above average in one or more areas of human performance.

What I like about Gagne’s model is that it explicitly recognises that students may be gifted in a range of domains; it is not limited to intellectual giftedness, but also recognises creative, social and physical giftedness.

I also think it is very useful to conceptualise ‘giftedness’ as being potential for excellence, while ‘talentedness’ is actual performance at an above average level.

But I still am unclear about how our school uses these two theories together.  Certainly they both bring something to the table, but are they supposed to work together in some way?  Anyone have any ideas?

I wonder if Renzulli would tell Gagne that combining task commitment and creativity with high ability is the key to moving gifted students beyond potential to performance!

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recycling ‘The Journey’

Posted by kmcg2375 in school on August 5, 2008

This term our English faculty have decided to teach Area of Study-style units with our Year 10 classes, in preparation for the concepts and style of learning that they will encounter in Stage 6.  While most teachers are using the old HSC units on Change, a couple of us have elected to study The Journey instead…another recycled HSC topic 🙂

In the spirit of preparing the students for Year 11, I’m reflecting the new, broad AOS topic of Belonging by simply teaching the overall concept of The Journey i.e. not breaking this down into a smaller topic of either Physical, Inner or Imaginative Journeys. Read the rest of this entry »

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Gifted and Talented Action Research

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, research, school, video games on July 28, 2008

In my school I am part of a group of beginning teachers that are completing action research projects in their gifted and talented classes.  Our school is half-selective, meaning half of the students had to sit an academic exam for entry.  The rest of the school is made up of local students, but we also run a G&T class in years 9 & 10 of the local stream.  The class I’m using for my action research is my Year 9 G&T class, and the unit I am studying is the videogame unit…fun research 🙂

In our school there is a focus on developing three traits of giftedness as identified by Renzulli:

  • above average though not necessarily superior general ability;
  • high level of task commitment or intrinsic motivation;
  • and creativity

The students in my class certainly do display above average ability, and my aim is for my teaching units thie year to boost their levels of task commitment, intrinsic motivation and creativity.  The videogame unit so far is proving successful in these areas – in today, the third lesson of the unit, students worked in their groups for the first time, taking turns at playing the games (Need For Speed: Carbon, and Street Fighter II) and at creating an account on our class wiki and making some new pages.

So far the level of task commitment and intrinsic motivation is sky high!  The creativity is off to a slow start in some respects, but I think we did some important work today in laying the foundations for creativity.  I spent a lot of times with the groups on the laptops today, making sure students were comfortable with their roles as writers/authors on the class wiki.  This creating of information, along with activities in later weeks where students will create their own video game concept and characters, is all designed to lead students into higher order thinking.

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Year 9 Wiki

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, school, video games on July 24, 2008

I’ve just finished creating a new wiki, this time for my Year 9 class, and this time it is one that I am actually going to use!

I’ve created two other wikis before – one for my HSC class, which I made using wikispaces.  My Year 12s were struggling with the blog as it was, so the wiki never really got a start there.  The other wiki I made was a general purpose one, which I imagined all of my classes would contribute to, on every subject that they studied.  This way all of my classes, from years 7-12, over time would come to access this kind of mega-source of information.  What a plan!  What a community! But I decided not to run with the idea, because I don’t think the students really will go for the idea…I’m not convinced it’ll be so much fun adding to the site unless you really know the others that are making it too.

I’ve added a couple of YouTube videos on using PB wiki to my vodpod (click here or in the right-hand side bar).  Anyone else out there using a wiki ATM?  What is (not) working for you?

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Blocked Site

Posted by kmcg2375 in school on July 2, 2008

I am so over all of the sites I want to use at school being blocked by the DET server.  Anyone else go into a violent fit of rage when they see this page pop up?

The thing I most regularly want to access at school is YouTube – there are so many excellent clips that can be used in all aspects of the curriculum.  The DET block on Blogger also means that all of my school blogs have to be made through WordPress or Edublogs (OK, no real complaint there!), but it also means that I can’t access OTHER blogs that are made with Blogger.  Wikispaces is also blocked – I assumed that it wouldn’t be, because it is affiliated with Edublogs, and spent a whole weekend one time making a wiki on Wikispaces, only to find out on Monday that is was blocked… grmph.

Teachers who keep even a half decent eye on their kids should be able to see if they are up to no good.  And kids know how to get around these blocks anyway by going through alternate sites!  Please DET, UNBLOCK OUR INTERNET!

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and for Act II…

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, school, video games on June 29, 2008

I’ve been working on a short unit of work to do with my year 9 class next term once I’ve finished with the Video Games unit. I’ve decided that I’m going to run a ‘taster’ course in online tools that can be used to create or publish their work. We’re going to look at blogging, podcasting, uploading to YouTube and sourcing sound and images that can be used under a creative commons license.

I’ve decided to link both units together under the banner of ‘making meaning’ – weeks 1-5 will be based on how video games make meaning, and weeks 6-10 will look at making meaning online.

While students will work in small groups of 3-4 for the video games unit, they will work in pairs for the unit on making meaning online, to author their own blog. I’m going to be fairly prescriptive with what I want each blog to contain. Here are my current thoughts:

Students work in PAIRS to create a blog to publish their own compositions which must include:
• Central blog with a weekly post on class work or homework task, posts must include hyperlinks
• Widgets including at least admin, latest comments, categories and blogroll listing other students blogs, and other links
• A page for published poetry (including an image added for illustration or visual symbolism)
• A page for at least one published short story (embedded as a downloadable document)
• A page for published multimedia (embedded from YouTube)

Looking back over this list I see the requirements could seem a bit arbitrary, but I envisage that each of the required ‘pages’ will be linked to a series of weekly classroom activities/workshops.
Thoughts?

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