What learning type are you?

I have an interest in different learning styles because I have never fitted into the norm myself. I am really keen to find some resources to help my students understand their own learning styles. I am planning to seek out information on Multiple Intelligences but am open to any suggestions.

Mensha Kids just posted a great resource blog on a site that analyzes your writing style of your blog. It is called Typealyzer and this is what it said about me.

I am a Mechanic: The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Go find out what type you are.

Restorative Justice for K12

The schools in our cluster are moving toward implementing the behavior management system of Restorative Justice, delivered by Margaret Thorsborne, who spent today guiding us on an exploration of this approach. The main aspect I like is that it recognises and works within a relational framework (it's all about relationships), which to me is a key skill for 21st century learners (I purposly mean that teachers should be learners as well as our students).

Margaret is inspirational and shares many of her own stories to show how we need to understand and overcome our past experiences of dicipline and/or upbringing in order to recognise the aspects that mold the way we repond as adualts today. What I really like about restorative justice is it's focus on healing both parties. It explores the harm that has been done and ways to fix it. It develops reflection, empathy and a way to right the wrong.

Margaret also reminded me that emotional literacy is something we need to be teaching alongside other literacies. I am now considering how I would teach emotional literacy. How do you teach it in your class?

My next step with Restorative Justice will be to practice how to actualy use it in everyday school situations, and perhaps a cheat sheet to remind me of each step.

Image by levork

First Aid changing with the times

Part of our teacher PD yesterday was updating our first aid certificates. Some things I learnt that have changed since I last did a first aid course(about 5 years for me): A portable defibrillator that talks to you, you no longer look for a pulse because there are other more important things to be doing as a first aider (sometimes even doctors can't find a pulse when it is there), 30/2 not matter who (30 chest presses to 2 breaths) it is the same for babies to adults with the difference mainly in the pressure applied, and lastly how to use an Epipen. There are many other important aspects but these stood out for me.

As teachers (especially primary schools) we need are faced with all sorts of first aid situations. Some can be healed with just a colourful plaster and a cuddle but in an emergency I believe I could now make a difference in those vital first few minutes.

Comprehension Strategies

A major focus for my school this year is reading comprehension, and thanks to Mathew Needleman's blog I found a handy page of comprehension strategies that lists the strategies along with the definitions, and has a cloze type sentence to guide teachers and students in using the strategies. I think it would be handy to laminate and use as a scaffold when talking comprehension during reading and will make teachers and students more aware of what strategy they are using and why. For this purpose Open Court Resources also provide a bookmarks and posters for your class along with a range of other comprehension resources.

Do you have any reading comprehension teaching ideas to share?

WordPress for class?

I have been following a New Zealand teacher's blog, Education Investigation on eportfolio's as he researches a solution for his school. As I am determined to start my teaching career using eportfolios, I have been paying close attention to his findings.

In this article he introduced me to Nick Rate’s research report “Eportfolios and Assessment For Learning.” It is a must read, if only for the perspectives on formative assessment and reflection,

ePortfolios and Assessment for Learning

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid learning assessment

but I was was interested to see that when it came to eportfolios Wordpress MU (allows management of multiple blogs and more) over a came out on top. At this point I was a bit suprised, I thought WordPress was just a blog site! This got me to thinking that I had never tried any other blogger than Blogger.com, it was time to branch out. So this is my first blog written on WordPress (and copied to Blogger, until I figure out the move), I haven't viewed any tutorials yet but feel in control so far.

So far I admit I like it. The home page shows your blog plus links to various pages you create. It can serve as a private, school managed blog host and eportfolio tool. It has so many features I never knew I was missing, even the insert link offers a variety of new options for me as a blogger, including opening it in the same or new window, impressive (also, word count, trackbacks... wow wow wow).

I feel this has the best features for both eportfolio and blogging I have seen so far, it seem to have an easy to use interface for users and managing large numbers of bloggers.

Have you ever used WordPress in a school environment? What do you use for portfolios?

Language Slivers: Learnt vs Learned

Language Slivers
For a while now I have been wondering whether learnt or learned was the correct spelling, so with true googlish (this is not in the dictionary, so is it acceptable to use?) enthusiasm I searched and found some interesting stuff. It seems both learnt and learned are alternative spellings of the past participle of the verb. British English uses the irregular learnt, while American English uses the regular form; learned.

Some other verbs of the type -ed & -t: burnt / burned, spelt / spelled, dreamt / dreamed, leapt / leaped, spilt / spilled.

There are verbs where the opposite is true such as dived (British) and dove (U.S.).

New Zealand English which was established by colonists during the 19th century, had it's strongest influences coming from southern England, Scottish English and Māori, according to Wikipedia.

Applying to Education: Although both forms are correct, perhaps we should be using the British variation. What do you think and teach?

Language Slivers is the title I will blog my developing language skills and exploration. I am a beginning teacher and don't pretend to know everything, especially language, but I am always willing to learn. Please add your thoughts and comments, I am sure I will need plenty of advice from experienced educators willing to share.

A Sharing Attitude

I recently wrote a comment to my Flickr rat photo group saying that I was disappointed by how many people are not willing to share the use of their photos with the world. This as you know is a real pain for teachers and students trying to do the right thing. I would feel proud if someone choose to use my photo in their blog (with attribution of course). Too me it says they thought my photo was a great image, worthy of spreading a message. Plus it will attract a greater audience to my photo album.

Come on we are all exhibitionists here, we like our photos being appreciated. I believe the main problem is that most people aren't aware that when they upload photos the automatic copyright settings for their photos is All Rights Reserved , meaning no one can use it, create with it and spread the joy!

In Flickr go to Your Account -then click the Privacy & Permissions tab - look for "What license will your content have". You can change your settings to a variety of different Creative Commons copyrights that protect your ownership but give sharing rights according to your need.

So as a teacher and amateur photographer I ask you to consider using Creative Commons copyrights on your photo's and share a part of your world with the rest of the world. Imagine if that was an attitude everyone had?

Just after writing this blog I found this brilliant video on copyright law, using Disney characters, thanks to The Clever Sheep blog.


Image found with Creative Commons Search from Flickr, kindly shared by ryancr

Stand By Me

Playing For Change: Song Around the World. Stand By Me" is a rendition of Ben King’s , Stand By Me. Clips of musicians from around the globe have been stitched together into one awesome music video. It is from the documentary, "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music" which I found through Open Culture, a blog that offers a rich dose of culture that I reminds me how wonderfully creative people can be.

Applying to learning:
I thought this could be a great piece of music to share with my students. It is about knowing that there are people (teachers / peers) around them who are there to support them and who care about them. This could lead to discussions on strategies to use when lost / unsure /confused.
I think most people who sing along to this song, feel that tug on the emotional strings, sung as a class I think it would also help develop a team bond. It is easy to sing along and can be repeated with different variations over a week.
The resulting song could be recorded and blogged for discussion.

What would you do with this video in your classroom?

And we all fall down

My week started with a total computer crash (can't wait for my Mac laptop), I lost all my software but none of my personal files. I was annoyed at the inconvenience of not having my computer for three days while it was repaired, but I was never stressed about what I might lose in the crash. The reason for that is that many moons back when a similar crisis occurred, I made the choice to move to cloud computing. I started with Gmail and my files in Google Docs, then my images in Picasa (Flickr is for showing off) and I only occasionally used online software. For now I have decided to forgo loading Microsoft Office for Google Docs, and Photoshop for Picnik (Flickr's editing program).

I have my computer again, it is a bit scary how much I miss it.


Image by Josh Bozarth

Am I worthy?

A good idea is hard to come by, is a post by Graham in his thought provoking blog openeducator. He explores how we come up with ideas for blogs, and the fact that we sometimes spend more time wasted on worrying over the 'worth' of our blogs rather than just getting down ideas and reflections. Aside from wondering if anyone aside from Ken of Blogger in Middle-earth (thanks man) reads my blog, I have often worried that my posts were not good enough, or up to the standard of the crowd of educators I follow. What if they really do read my blog, will I make 'the standard', does it matter? I suppose only if they add to my professional development by commenting.

It made me consider that my blog writing has been affected to some extend. If I go back to my not so far beginnings, I see I blogged ideas and thoughts with more freedom of discovery and exploration. Later on I wrote substantial blogs that seemed more for an audience than my own professional development, reflective thoughts and creative growth.

Yes there are many different purposes for blogs and perhaps we just need to be clear on what our is, or perhaps we need variety. I have developed as a writer by being much more aware of my 'potential' audience.

Finally sometimes we just need to get ideas down, for me reading my favorite blogs often inspires me to write a blog about the same or a related topic. In fact I often start my blogs with, Joe of TopBlog said . . .

Image by seretuaccident

2009/365 photos

I am a very visual person and have recently rediscovered the joy of digital photography. I decided to build an online album to hold all my photos and to share them as creative commons. After a wonderful holiday I was catching up on blog reading and found the ideal way to develop my own photography skills and understanding of visual imagery. Dean from Ideas and Thoughts introduced me to the 2009/365 photos group on Flickr. This started in 2008 with educational bloggers attempting to take a photo a day for the whole year in an attempt to learn and collaborate. My own 2009/365 photo set is well on it's way and so far (6 days!) I haven't missed. I will put a Flickr slide show of my photos in the sidebar.

I would love to hear your thoughts on my photos and growth as a photographer and image maker. I plan to use this project and knowledge in my class to engage and model for my students.

This is going to be a wonderful journey and a challenge, why don't you join me.

How many blogs do you write?

As of today I have started using a separate blog for my personal views and opinions that do not relate to teaching and learning. When reflecting on my past year of beginning blogging I realised I had more and more to say, and it now extended beyond my profession. I have become a writer, a voice shouting out, blogging has engaged my interest and volumn.
Shaun's Rant & Rave blog can be found in on the side links of 'My Blogs' or click here.

How many blogs do you write and are they for different purposes?

Mangere fire a tragic reminder to use smoke alarms | NATIONAL

Mangere fire a tragic reminder to use smoke alarms | NATIONAL
This is a reminder and perhaps a discussion article to use when teaching your class fire safety this year.
Give your children the safety edge.