renga's blog

This is a thought provoking and entertaining piece by, Sir Ken Robinson. I'd love to know peoples reactions and thoughts, so please comment. Thank you!

From: http://www.ted.com Indian education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education -- the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.

My post observation meeting with our Principal went well. I was a bit more critical of my launch than she was. She was supportive of the content and the way the lesson was launched. I did express my thoughts of possibly having too many teaching points and too long of a launch.

I had my observation on Monday and I think it might have been my worst behaved class of the year. I was nervous and tried to do a bit too much teaching and the students who were already figity ended up even more boisterous. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I scheduled my observation with one of the most challenging classes in the school. It was a third grade class, and I was asking them to do a few things. The objective was that they log-in to XtraMath, assess/exercise with basic math facts, and then once complete, they were to choose between practicing keyboarding “home keys” or choosing a “Just Right” math game using Everyday Mathematics Online (EDM). I knew going in that the launch should be less than 10 minutes, but between the constant interruptions and too many teaching points, the launch took almost 20 minutes. Way too long, and I know that.

It has been almost 6 months since my last blog entry. I really had no idea how busy the end of year would be as a first year teacher. I took on a "video club" where we produced an end of year video for our school. While this was a blast, it really added just one more thing to my already over filled plate. I also had to support staff as they prepared for a new computer rollout by helping them make sure all of their files were saved in a networked folder etc. Though, perhaps the most overwhelming thing for me was not related to teaching.

I’m sorry I haven't blogged much recently. As if being a first year teacher is quite challenge enough, my partner and I have been planning a wedding as well which only adds to the time and stress load. As we approach the end of the academic year, I’m in the process of completing some of the contractually agreed tasks associated with the profession. This is also the time of year when teachers find out if they will have a job next year. With the economy in the state it is, there are quite a few teachers in Washington State who won’t have a job next year. First things first though, I have to make it through this year.

I've tried various software titles at a couple of different schools trying to find a good solution to help young people learn keyboarding (how to type). Perhaps my favorite software though the years has been the Type to Learn (TTL) series by Sunburst. I'm at a new school now and we don't have TTL, but rather a different software application by a different company. I'll hold off on mentioning the product and just say that I am less than thrilled. I was getting ready to propose a software acquisition to the Principal when I met up with a fellow technology teacher at a nearby elementary school. We had met during technology meetings at the district office and he works at the same school as my wife.

I find that even though one of my true passions in life is the love of film, I am apprehensive, and in fact have yet to show a video in the classroom.  There seems to be some backlash against video and film in education that I really don't understand but somehow feel as a residual of some era or event I wasn't a part of.

Shortly after getting back from winter break our school's fourth and fifth graders packed their gear and set off to camp. I had the pleasure of joining them and boy did we have a good time. As a new teacher, I'm not exactly sure why both grades went, but it ended up being quite a few students. I don't have the exact numbers but, I think it was around a hundred young people. We had plenty of parent volunteers and about half a dozen school staff all quite excited for this January camping experience in a gorgeous part of Washington State.

It has been a while since my last blog entry and so much has happened.  I'm actually a bit hesitant to write because I'm afraid it may just spill on to the keyboard and not make much sense to the reader.  Of course I could take a bit of time and plan exactly what I'm going to write, but I think I'm going to go with more of a stream of consciousness thing.