Being deeply learned and skilled, being well trained and using well spoken words: this is good luck. - Buddha
Thanks once again to Blogger in Middle-earth, I found another reflective blogger who asks us to reflect on our blogging and choose one that we think is simply the best. Joanna of Confident Writing is compiling this great reflective collection.
Bibme is an online bibliography creator I found out about from The 2.0 Life, that I wish I knew about during my past three years of studies and essays. As a lifelong learner I intend doing further study in the future, so this will be a gem that I recommend to learners (especially all the student teachers) who need to reference in APA, MLA, Chicago or Turabian formats.
In a recent blog by Jama he talks about how he is over all the ithis and ithat of ipod name variations. Well, while camping yesterday at a beach I thought it would be fun to label it an ibeach. An hour later I noticed a family walk past and one the the kids wrote under my writing. I was honored. So parents, get some literacy practice at the beach these holidays, write an ibeach story and take a photo! I'd love to see yours.
We collected all the washed up glass on the beach that we could find to use as decoration, a flashy display of wealth. Then as a thanks to the beach, we took all that glass home to recycle. Tread softly.
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tigation, that Christchurch City Council has created a social/economic barrier to clean rivers; by not providing free dumping. 
After reading an article on Gisborne Girls' High School armed robbery amongst it's students, and also a recent 'fight club' at Gisborne Boys High; I wondered initially if those students had any idea of the reputation they are creating for themselves. I am sure those girls and unfortunately their families too by default, already will have a 'bad reputation' through this incident. Yet reputation can also affect schools and communities, I would imagine that parents researching schools online will think twice about sending their child there if they have the option of a school with a better reputation for safety.
Flour Power commissioned by the Christchurch City Council, is the new $250,000 sculpture that replaces the beautiful children's art in Stewart Plaza, Christchurch. The glaring bright sculpture is certainly interesting but definitely not eco friendly in any way, although is supposed to reflect loss of, or replacement of rural life with urban life. It is made of new steel road lights strapped with a tyre. I wonder if they at least recycled one of the tyres found dumped in the Heathcote River! 
Activists antsy at ant farm Sunday Star Times | Sunday, 16 November 2008
For a while now I have been thinking that although I have grown to love writing blogs, I should experiment with other ways of expressing myself. I will encourage my student to do the same. Here is my first Jing captured blog, on my solution to using Google Bookmarks on Google Chrome (see my earlier post). It is a full screen show that opens separately, I managed to get it to open in a new tab by inserting html [target="_blank"] (thanks Quackit). I would prefer this embedded and reduced for easy viewing. 
Armistice Day marked in NZ Today marks the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I. WWI left nine million soldiers and five million civilians dead, with over 18,000 New Zealanders dead.
Astronauts ready to pimp the space station. The international space station is using sustainable practices to expand the station. A core feature is a revolutionary system that recycles urine into drinkable water. Is this the first step towards a self-sustaining system, like a spaceship, like Earth?Nationals First 10 Steps
1. Set National Standards in literacy and numeracy. These standards will describe all the things children should be able to do by a particular age or time spent at primary or intermediate school.
2. Require every primary and intermediate school pupil to be assessed regularly against National Standards. These assessment programmes compare the progress of pupils with other pupils across the country. Does anyone else worry about this point? Who is going to look good here, and what is the 'norm'? One of the 10 principles of Assessment for Learning: Research based principles to guide classroom practice, by the Assessment Reform Group (2002) says assessment should be sensitive because of the emotional impact they have on learners confidence and enthusiasm. How will disadvantaged and low-achievement pupils and their community feel?
3. Require primary and intermediate schools to report to parents in plain English about how their child is doing compared to National Standards and compared to other children their age. These reports will give parents information in plain English (perhaps there will be a guide?) about how their child is doing compared to National Standards and compared to other children their age.
4. Provide targeted funding of $18 million a year to assist primary and intermediate schools to give an extra hand to those pupils who are not meeting National Standards.
Apparently only 59% of schools in decile 1 to 3 have a Reading Recovery programme, yet 71% of decile 8 to 10 schools do. Are there limiting age restrictions to Reading Recovery assistance that disadvantage struggling students?
5. The will refocus the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office to support schools in the Crusade for Literacy and Numeracy. National aim to minimise the many demands and compliance requirements they place on schools, so that principals and teachers can focus their attention on providing pupils with the skills they need.
6. Provide extra support to under-performing schools to ensure their pupils are on track to achieve National Standards, using an expanded range of intervention methods to assist schools.
7. National will get tough on truancy by prosecuting parents of persistent truants and giving schools an extra $4 million a year to crack down on truants.
Having little experience with this point I am very curious to here what experienced teacher say about this. Will it help? Is this a teachers job and is punishment or education of parent the 'right' path?
8. Give schools extra help to deal with disruptive pupils, including an extra $2 million a year for the Interim Response Fund. National say that disruptive pupils are at risk of leaving school without the literacy and numeracy skills they need to succeed. They also threaten the progress of other children in their class, and in the medium term will allocate some of the funds currently tied up in the Ministry’s contestable funding pools and use this to give individual schools the ability to tailor solutions that are best for their particular situations.
What are the criteria for a 'disruptive' pupil? I really would like to know this one as I am sure many teachers out there will as well.
9. They will support teaching excellence by:
- Review teacher training.
- Encourage a high-trust flexible teaching environment (I am not clear on the meaning of this).
- Encouraging schools to co-operate to expand successful teaching methods.
- Celebrating the success of top-performing teachers with an extra $2 million a year for excellence awards.
- National will also support the current goal of reducing pupil-to-teacher ratios in new-entrant classes from 18:1 to 15:1, and we will maintain all budgeted funding for this initiative (why only new-entrant? I believe that should apply all the way through school).
10. Improve special education services by:
- Ensuring more special education funding makes it into frontline services.
- Increase Ongoing and Reviewable Resourcing Schemes (ORRS) funding by $18 million a year for pupils with the highest special education needs.
- Drop Labour’s emphasis on mainstreaming and work to support the choice of those families who wish to send their children to special schools (Again as a beginner teacher I have mixed feeling about this, any experiences to share?)
- Expand special education schools and encouraging the development of satellite special education classes.
With all my final assignments due in the next few weeks I have not blogged in a few days. WOW, really I mean WOW! A year ago you could not have gotten me to write anything that did not require grading. Engagement and ICT are effective for any age learner.
I love seeing children take on creative thinking challenges, and The BP Challenge for primary and secondary students held today at Villa Maria Girls School was a wonderful example of this. The categories were the same for both primary and secondary.At the K12 Online Conference Professor Stephen Heppell presented “It Simply Isn’t the 20th Century Any More Is It?: So Why Would We Teach as Though It Was?”
Stephen says that technology can do almost anything what we want, but the challenge is to determine what it is we want? He asserts that the education factory model needs to be replaced by new concepts that reflect the fundamental changes of society. He describes it as the end of “they” and the beginning of “us”. "They" being the big corporations and "us" being individuals and communities who now have the tools, knowledge and ability to make their own choices and have their own voice.
In this age, individuals have more power by having knowledge freely at any time and thus make their own informed decisions. Also important, is the social communication and collaboration that globally creates communities of interest that can rival a corporation.
Definitions of knowledge, literacy and identity are changing and this is impacting throughout our society. Stephen says we are witnessing “the death of education and the dawn of learning.” It is time for education to catch up, our challenge is to find new models for teaching and learning.
Almost every business has a logo which is a visual brand that represents the ideas, values and identity of the company. Many individuals may have their own logo in the form of a family crest. Maori culture have tattoo's called Moko, which serve as a visual identity showing their rank, nature and ancestry. A very personal logo.
Poverty is a worldwide social issue but as a beginning teacher I have decided to reflect on what this means for me in New Zealand. Having taught at schools where children come to school hungry, I have felt a sense of helplessness when thinking about what I can I do to help. It's easy to think of the big ideals, education is the solution to poverty. Yet that is no immediate solution for me or for the child sitting in your class each day. We give children breakfasts and attempt to deal with the social issues often accompanying poverty, but there is only so much we can do as teachers outside the classroom. What we can do however is provide safe learning environments and show that we care.
The main idea I got from "Using Video Games as Bait to Hook Readers" was that we can engage children in reading by providing contextual opportunities. We need to think outside the square when we consider what is appropriate literature. I do 90% of my reading on a computer monitor or mobile phone, I imagine our children will do the same and much more.
I consider my role as a teacher in this scenario would be to guide reading and inquiry learning through a WebQuest or other online learning environment. We all love reading about what we love.
I believe Barton and Hamilton (1998) description of literacy offers an insight to this article. Cited in Literacies Across Media.
Literacy is primarily something people do; it is an activity, located in the space between thought and text. Literacy does not just reside in people's heads as a set of skills to be learned, and it does not just reside on paper, captured as texts to be analysed. Like all human activity, literacy is essentially social, and it is located in the interaction between people.Mackey, M. (2002). Literacies across media. Playing the text. RoutledgeFalmer: London.
