Making classes interesting

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It’s a funny thing being a uni student.Instead of being stuck in a rut in a dead end job doing what “The Man” wants you to do, I on the other hand have a part time job that I enjoy and am working towards a career that I want, or the alternative career that I want. To be honest life is becoming what I wanted.

So I’ve been dwelling on this for a bit, and I find that as a student even though my life is extremely busy at the moment (It’s not all parties and bars) creativity is coming back into my life. I haven’t had this in my life since travelling the world in 2006, and I can’t tell if it is because of the amount of thinking that I have to do or whether it is the time I have off. Funnily enough during the holidays when I have the most amount of free time, I have the least amount of creativity. Now Google allow their staff to use 20% of their working time to projects that capture their interest, it allows them to be interested and connecting to their work.

Let’s fast forward to a few years when I get to finally teach a class. Not just one or two lessons but an entire class. Which led me to reflect on what I think my class will be like, those of you that know me would be well aware that I like to be different. I see this imaginary class a mixture between the wonder and enchantment of Willie Wonka’s Chocolate factory (The old film not the new one) and somewhere to have the A-ha moments that we have. Connect the dots, make it actually relevant!

My biggest complaint during school as is most people’s is why do I need to know this? Well I believe the main points of most of my classes will be to make them real world situations. I.e. How will i use creative writing, algebra etc.  Inspired by @sthcrft blog on why us as adults become too grown up i’ve devised my plan. I need to be creative, spontaneous but more importantly even the most boring lessons surely can become interesting and fun. That will be my aim!

Assessment the dawning of a new age.

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It’s coming up to exam time at uni again, well it’s a few weeks a way but we are close enough and there is something I have to bring up. The stupidity of my computer classes exams being done on paper.

If you are a good student that follows the guidelines and recommendations you have been using the system/Language and delving into and absorbing yourself in the code. Normally when you code or well at least when I code I write a bit of code, and then you test to see if it works. That is the entire point of an object orientated computer language, you build on bits and pieces. So I now ask, why is it that in a university that teaches you how to build a computer program that in order to perform and pass a subject you have to show off your knowledge of what you are doing by writing it down on a bit of paper. Yes that’s correct, there is no way to test your code to see if it will work, so why on earth do they even test it?

Many times I’ve walked out of computer exams or exams in general trying to understand what on earth they were trying to test me on. In this day and age, why are exams still done on a piece of paper?

There are a few answers to this. Most people that have any sort of experience with e-learning environments and corporate learning environments recognise how easy it is to cheat on a computer test. Unfortunately, the nature of the beast is that if you use a computer those in the know will try and get around it. It’s not cheating right? Its not like when your in an exam in a room and you whisper or look at someone else’s paper. Learners can also embrace the power of google, or email, or copy and paste the answers. It requires a bit of man power from an IT department to deploy a system which will minimise the chances of cheating and even then there are still people that will cheat. Its in human nature unfortunately.

From albertogp123 on flickr

Which makes me question the importance of summative assessment. For most of my subjects the decision of whether I pass or fail a course comes down to two things. Whether or not I can communicate what I have learnt, whether i have connected the dots between what is said and what is inferred, and whether I can communicate this to a reader/marker of an essay.  Second is whether I can answer questions about the subject in a specified time about a question to do with a topic, whether this by the form of multiple choice or essay. These two points combined usually makes up 80% of the marks required to pass a course.

So it comes down basically to the opinion of a marker whether I have successfully communicated that I understand the topic and can answer questions on it. Rarely does it ever ask whether I can actually apply this to a real life situation and i’ve actually had exams that mark you down if you try to apply it to real life rather then just the facts. So Why bother with assessment? Why do we have an exam that can basically judge the rest of your life like you do at the end of high school?

So where too from here? As a pre-teacher and with NAPLAN assessments compulsory I do often stop and wonder why, but then I look at these assessments I look at them more as formative assessments being used to develop a students skills further. Further to this, if we are expanding into a world as a teaching community of transformative assessment where we are teaching children by their engagement in solving a problem and applying it to a real world situation such as using mindcraft in the classroom or F1 for schools how do we develop assessments to become not only relevant, but indicative of learning.

What we need to develop is a way of testing and assessing learning by using real world problems and situations and possibly solve problems. I see the beginnings of this with constructivist teaching, and schools engaging in the solar project or F1 for schools, but these are all for students that are almost adults, or the brightest students. What can we do to use these moments into something valuable and not something we have to do. I think aligning and integrating subjects into real life examples i.e. using mathematics with programming. History and Geography together. We need to transform assessments to something more real. Why not for an IT exam at uni, make a small program and run it? Why not in mathematics at school do role plays of going to the shop and buying products.

Colourful Cabins Demonsub on flickr

Looking forward in the world of English

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I have to acknowledge something, I suffer from a disease that seems to plague the internet  and writing throughout the world today. I call this syndrome Random Capitalisation Disease. Unfortunately it does not just effect me, but this previously un-heard of disease brings suffering to readers everywhere. What does this entail? Well many times throughout my writing both online, and in real life I randomly capitalise words that do not need to be.

This has been pointed out to me a few times, and I endeavour to do my best for this not to effect what you read. However it brought me to an interesting reflection English is odd. Unlike logic or mathematics there are rules that defy logic, reasoning and any sane persons understanding of what is right and wrong. Silent letters, in which should have a phoneme sound but for which have gone missing from the word. Accents that people use to pronounce some words can be entirely different in another. I provide to you this example there is a town in London called “Loughborough” in which in the English intonation is pronounced by two separate words Lough and Borough. Though from an Australian intonation and a comprehension of how we pronounce towns we may pronounce it Loug-ha-ba-rou-gha. Accents can change the entire meaning of a word or a phrase, for example the English use a term “your having a laugh”. This is meant to be sarcastic, where as many Australians would believe this in the literal sense.

So what does this all have with the price of fish you ask? Well recently one of my university courses has asked some of the most basic questions that are grammatically related to the English language and I can not really answer them off the top of my head.

What is an Verb? Adverb? Adjective? Noun? What is the correct way to form a sentence?

See when these things were taught to me in school I had absolutely no engagement, I just couldn’t understand it. Which now makes me think, if as a child I didn’t understand it and I’ve gotten through so many years of my life not knowing it is there a point to knowing this? I write how I speak, and whilst this seems to be all well and good for most jobs and real world activities in this day and age with the exception of my attempts at academic writing. I wonder whether we should get into the depths of Verbs, and Nouns for example or whether this is an unnecessary burden on young minds which could be used for more real world applications?

I value your feedback, please feel free to leave a comment at the end of this post.

 

Blogging Whilst during university

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I know its been a while since I last updated this blog, and to be honest a lot has happened since last time. Uni has gone back and I am now doing the normal full time uni student load of 4 subjects, and doing an additional subject at the same time. As well as working 4-5 days a week part time in after school care normally 45 minutes from home. So life is hectic!

Though this is not what this blog is all about. Although i have been extremely  busy throughout the first 6 weeks of this semester. There has been one thing stopping me from posting on this blog. Many universities rely on services like turnitin to trawl journals, databases, and the internet to make sure your essay is not plagiarised. Whilst i completely accept that this is probably a good thing, and will help to catch those nefarious students out to play shenanigans with their university by purely cheating and getting someone to write them a paper or just literally copy and pasting someone else’s work.

Reading Glasses from strollers @ flickr

My problem with this, is for me to reinforce the things that i have learnt and to make connections to other subjects and points I need to write it out, whether it been in an essay or a thought, or a blog post like some of the others on this site. Now if i was to create a lesson plan or a blog post about a particular thought, say a thought on Ivan Illich’s Deschooling and how it has influenced online learning, and then developed this thought further in an essay for this subject I would be flagged as plagiarising myself. This may in fact be my own fault for not providing my name on this blog. However it is my choice that my thoughts are my own. In academia, there seems to be a school of thought that your thoughts on a particular subject are not your own they have already been written about before, and therefore you must attribute it to them.

One has to seriously think of the repercussions of this in which I don’t think academia truly has. If a computer programmer, web designer truly had to cite his or her code from whoever thought of it first, the amount of wasted time would mean nothing ever gets done. Moreover a teacher gets resources and thoughts from the world around them to make it relevant to the children they are teaching. Just think how truly demotivating it would be to a student to learn that their teacher is effectively stealing work from other people all the time and your own thought is not your own as someone else has already thought of it.

So I guess this opens a can of worms in terms of the legitimacy of copyright in academia, but i’m not concerned about that. I am more concerned on stifling creativity for younger people who will no doubt be dragged through this archaic system.


The End of Summer :(

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So with the end of summer approaching and the harsh reality that University is starting back up again I thought I should update you all on my progress of my achievements throughout the summer, and for honesty sake here is the list from a previous blog post on what I would like to do this summer.

  • Re-design this entire site
  • Build a footy tipping comp website from scratch
  • Build an android and iPhone app for it.
  • Build a small game for android.

So…What have I done, of this list. Nothing.. Apart from the time going extremely super quickly I have changed what I would like to do. I have been learning bits of pieces of javascript which should be handy for what I am going to need this semester for one of my IT courses. I also started learning c# which i thought would be more advantageous to use later on down the track. The problem with this is I started with a book, one  of those Teach yourself in 21 days however you need the motivation to keep on pouring through the dry and bland information in the book. Though this is not the biggest problem, as I have found in recent days, that whilst it was teaching some very basics of the language, it was not teaching this in conjunction with using the program I use to code with Microsoft Visual Studio, and there are many upon many features that make life easy that the book just fails to explain.

With the flipped classroom being touted around these days and with youtube showing tutorials left right and centre on a plethora of subjects, learning and teaching as we know it is evolving at a rate that is quite difficult to contemplate. Its certainly given me something to think about.

Before I go I am going to give a shout out to The New Boston which I have been following recently after ditching the C# book and they are so easy and simple to understand!

I would also highly recommend the links that appear on the side as they are some fascinating reading.

Tent Embassy Saga

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I am taking a risk with this blog post, I am going to try and discuss my thoughts on the state of Indigenous affairs in Australia in 2012. I am not Indigenous, and do not represent their views this is just my thoughts on the matter.

Without a doubt this is probably one of the most complicated issues that is often discussed in politics and also every day life at Barbecues and gatherings all around the country.

There are so many past issues that plague this community from the European Settlement in 1788, through to Governor Phillips treatment of Bennelong, Driving them out of Tasmania, the “White Australia Policy”, not to mention the issue of recognition of land rights for the original owners, the Stolen Generation, and the fact that a Aboriginal Tent Embassy needed to be set up.

To be fair since then I feel Australia has moved forward in the right direction in the recognition of past mistakes. Recognition of Land rights through the MABO decision, the Freedom Rides, Not to mention “The Apology” by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Yet there is more that Indigenous rights activists ask for such as recognition in the constitution that they are the original land owners. In which I have a slight issue with, basically if it happens I don’t want the wording to be so bad, as it opens up litigation for the recognition.

However the recent action taken by some protesters allegedly attending the celebration of 40 years since the start of the Tent embassy has been nothing less then atrocious.  Basically what has happened is that the News Media, namely news corp. have been playing fast and loose with what the Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said. In this article they  state that he said maybe it was time for the Tent Embassy should close. However this is not what he said, this is what he said.

So what happened was broadcast all over the world as protesters surrounded a building in which the Prime Minister and the opposition Leader had a function, and was flung into an awaiting car.

Since then the following day there was another protest in Canberra, where everyone as usual was jockeying for position and spin, on whether the protest was necessary, or the police escort was not necessary and who started what.

One of the most dis-respectful things happened during this time. Protestors BURNED the Australian Flag.

Whilst it is certainly not illegal to burn the Australian Flag there has been many attempts at making it illegal. I do understand that they were angry, sure everybody gets angry. However to burn the countries flag that you live in, has got to be the most disrespectful thing anyone can do. In the United states it is illegal, as with many other countries. This sort of disrespect and lack of pride for the land that you live in regardless of past issues is something that I can not forgive.

No matter the issues that have happened in the past Australia is moving forward as a country. There is no denying that, and there has been great steps forward to recognising the crimes of the past, however for the country to move forward a few things have to happen. Firstly a better effort then the current Northern Territory Intervention is required, its a government initiative and therefore is pretty much half a job. Leaps need to be made in closing the gap between education and health issues that exist in the Indigenous community compared to the rest of Australia. However the more important thing is to move forward, sure things have happened in the past, but as evident throughout the world with past atrocities if you don’t forgive and move forward, you will be stuck with the same bitterness and the same gap and double standards.

To move forward in education, there has been many steps forward in not only recognising the indigenous culture but working with it by the Northern Territory Department of Education. They have done some fantastic things with integrating indigenous languages in curriculum, and recognising that things need to change. If only the other states followed some of their lead. I guess the interest level in school and education would not be as high in the indigenous children as their role models may have issues. However I think as a teacher it will be my duty to encourage and nurture an interest level, so that is what I shall endeavour to do.

If you have any comments please feel free to make them below!

Update: One of my friends on Facebook commented this.Instead of turning it into a troll fest on facebook, I thought I would explain my thoughts below:

Why should indigenous Australians have pride and respect in a flag which represents their oppression and genocide? To say that they should do so despite ‘past issues’ demonstrates a failure to understand the gravity of the injustice served upon them.

Their burning of the flag should be of no concern to you Justin. It is an image which represents different things to different people. If you don’t want to burn it or if you don’t want to protest that is fine, but to tell others that they shouldn’t is absurd.

I understand that Oppression and Genocide has occurred in the past, though I fail to see how they are currently still oppressed. When I have worked throughout society in Australia, or now as I am currently at university there is always that little box that asks am I from Indigenous or Torres straight Islander descent. Making this differentiation makes a difference in government funding in both a school and educational environment and also helps with equality in the workforce. The fact that there are not many jobs in the country side throughout Australia is a well known fact and those who normally live there if they are motivated to work on something other then a family farm or business will normally move to the city. However the Indigenous community is ingrained in their land and will not want to leave. Funnily enough I understand and respect this, however you can not ask for a hand out or more money from the government if you are not willing to work and if that means changing location so be it. Sorry I have drifted off topic.

My big bug bear is this, no matter what the symbol of Australia as a nation is our flag, our nation is forged by people coming from different lands and this land and assimilating into one complete united nation. The nature of the nation is Democracy, if you don’t like something you do something about it. When one travels over seas for an extended period of time, you take great pride in simple symbols of home such as the Flag. They hold a special sign of sovereignty and often give you a sense of belonging. To see this emblem of my and all of our freedom for mine shows disrespect. Sure you may not agree that this flag represents the founding people of this land, however this symbol represents the entire nation and should not be used as an effigy. I can assure you that if this was burnt and spat on by a youth of an ethnic descent they would have been hung drawn and quartered by the media, the general public, and the RSL’s.

Please comment below if you have any comments you would like to make.

The Problem with learning a computer Language these days

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I have a major issue with trying to learn a computer programming language these days, and its not that I don’t particularly get what they are trying to communicate. Its just that they are doing it wrong!

What do I mean by they are doing it wrong? Well lets take for starters the SAMS Teach yourself the C# Language in 21 days book that I am currently going through. It states that is aimed at beginners who have never touched another language. I’m currently up to only Day 6 of the book and already I can tell that there are pit falls that I would have fallen down if I had not had any prior knowledge.

Lets Delve deeper into this abyss. The first problem is the program that I am meant to learn on. You can either use Microsoft Visual Studio or another IDE that Sams preaches, though it doesn’t start off at the very beginning. It does not offer an explanation between building a cursor file or a windows form app. So for the past few days I have been stumbling around these applications trying to work out when and where to use the appropriate type.

Thankfully after searching around for other resources there are MSDN videos that explain what it is all about, though that is not the point. Assumed knowledge is required. Then there is the issue of practical versus theory. Where it explains the theoretical side in brief detail and then asks you to do a practical example. Whilst doing the practical example you are just basically typing what is in the book, and then it tries to explain what you have just done. Though If you have just typed it into the IDE what is the point of doing this if you do not understand what you are doing.

Then there is the issue of changing speeds on what you are teaching. Most books start with just type this in, don’t worry if it doesn’t make sense it will later. Each chapter is meant to be a different topic, building on knowledge that you have gained. Sometimes this information is a great leap that you don’t fully understand, and then sometimes it is information that you have already covered.

So how do you fix this?

As a future teacher prior knowledge is Key. However even books that preach that no prior knowledge is required used terms that do not make sense to the layman. What should occur is to help with accommodating these new terms is using an existing schema of something that everybody knows like a kitchen. Where you can break down the main concepts into something that is understandable and practical. Like when cooking its no good just saying that this is the recipe and this is how you bake a cake it is more useful for the person to know the ingredients, what they taste like and how they combine together. It may not be cooking, it may be sports that you relate to it, however it is easier for the pupil to relate to an existing infrastructure that they already know then to give them something new in which you have no way to associate it with anything else.

What else can be done? well as technology is changing so should the teaching and learning. The use of multiple resources is becoming more prevalent. If you are going to learn something in this day and age, just googling an answer does not mean you understand the question, so If Blooms taxonomy is applied to these types of learning events by ensuring that higher order thinking occurs then the pupil will actually understand the subject more. Would this approach help others? That unfortunately I can’t answer its just my view.

Reflecting on how I learn

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I started a journey not so long ago on trying to discover how I learn.

The journey started with a subject I am taking at university that made me consider how I learnt to read and write. It was quite surprising at how difficult this was, as the years have passed by and being able to remember how exactly I learnt was difficult. For this task i enlisted my parents to fill in some of the blanks of what i did. I also had memories of specific encouragements my parents thrust upon me to spark my interest in reading.

On analysing how I learnt this initial but important first step, I then started to analyse how at university, my learning style and capability. What stood out for me is that I like many other people don’t learn from direct instruction, but by actually doing a task related to the subject. The particular object I was learning was how to program in a specific language which in my case was Java.

So to test my theory I decided to try and learn a completely new computer language but without direct instruction. What does this mean? Well it meant that I looked up some code from the internet and tried to make a game using the code that had been scraped to form this new game. This meant that I did not read a book or watch videos on the new syntax, but rather just tried to jump into the deep end. The result was a complete and utter failure.

Image by: Flickr user Garrettc

Then I sat down to ponder why it was such a failure and came up with this example. When you make a sponge cake, there are different skills that you need to be able to perform to make the cake properly. If not your cake turns out like a flat biscuit (This is from experience). First you need to know the different ingredients i.e. what they look like, and the different tools i.e. a whisk, electric beater, oven, cake tin etc.. Then you need to be able to follow instructions whilst being able to interpret the recipe on what each stage should look like. I.e. when beating the egg whites to form soft peaks what are soft peaks and what do i use to beat it? When combining the mixture, what exactly is folding? I can do that with paper, but its not the same. What would happen if I was to make this cake without the recipe? well from experience it turns out to be a biscuit, which is not what was required from the ingredients.

Image by: Flickr User Vanessa Pike-Russell

Direct instruction be it from a book, a teacher or a peer helps to establish a base line of knowledge on a particular subject it guides us from having no knowledge to some. However having a recipe for a sponge cake is all well and good, but it doesn’t mean i can make it. So going through the process of physically making the cake, knowing the possible problems and also how to make a solution comes from actually doing it.

So as a future teacher and as a university student what does all this mean to me? It shows me that when learning about a new subject that prior knowledge and the existing schema of a person needs to be taken into account. As a learner by analysing what do i know? where do I want to go? and what parts of this recipe need to be completed before I move onto the next part are all parts of the learning puzzle that need to be considered.

 

Summer Holidays – To do list 2011

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I have now completed university for the year, hopefully this will allow me to have more time to get more content on this website. In the past few weeks it has been migrated over to a new host VentraIP who are graciously giving me free hosting for the year.

So what are my plans and where am I headed now that I have the time to sit and think about it.  This is what I have come up with:

  • Re-design this entire site
  • Build a footy tipping comp website from scratch
  • Build an android and iPhone app for it.
  • Build a small game for android.
So what will this involve? Basically I will need to learn a few different languages my knowledge in Java, SQL will have to be refreshed. Then I will need to learn a few new tricks PHP, Android API, Ruby on Rails, and possibly HTML5?
Why am I doing this? Well as a future teacher, if I have the knowledge behind me on being able make applications both Java and others maybe teaching in my class room at least wont be stuck in the 19-20th Century and will embrace technology. I have seen many forward thinking teachers lately appearing on twitter trying to embrace the growth, however most apps are a one size fits all and don’t allow for differentiation and inclusion in a classroom.

Moving forward with Technology in the Classroom

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Its the dread of “Will this work for me”, that Technology is reluctantly used in the classroom. The Irony that little Technical IT skills are taught to teachers incomming into the job is not lost on me. I’m currently doing a dual degree IT and education. The reality is things go wrong every day. Servers go down when you don’t want them too, Devices freeze, Devices are not compatible or the worst of all the “Policy” of the schools IT agenda is 3 years behind and is only now allowing Ipods in the classroom.

As a university student I spend a lot of time on a PC, whether it be listening and catching up on lectures (flipped classroom theory) or doing notes from readings I am doing to doing assignments. Though as soon as I am out in the real classroom my addiction to technology is meant to stop I have to teach children and use IT in educational ways.

Technology has invaded life as we know it. Not is or will be but has and the more accepting of this by the older generation the less of an age gap there seems to be. Though the Irony is not lost on me, that in Primary school the public want and need us to teach skills such as handwriting but by the time they are in highschool they are equipped by the government (In Australia) to use a laptop for taking notes. This along with the great firewalls placed around schools where nothing is suitable to view unless its been approved. The children in most homes aren’t this protected in terms of what they can find on the internet. Some parents have a filter of types or Net Nanny or something but many just place a PC in a main area so they can “See” what the child is doing. Though the mobile device in their bedroom i.e. ipod touch, has wifi access to Facebook and Twitter.

So as a teacher what will my role be with the young students? Another one of the many things that i’ll have to contemplate before starting as a teacher. I’m sure what I can use is going to be restricted for the safety of children. Most teachers as i have said before only have an elemental knowledge of online innovations and therefore those restrictions should be in place. Especially to protect the children from some of the content out there.

What would I like to see? I would like to see a general IT/Education course be introduced as mandatory, i’m not talking about just SmartBoards but give an indepth knowledge of what you can actually do on a PC/Mac these days to get pre-service teachers up to speed with the technology out there. Also how do use social media for educational needs like my idea on how to use twitter in the classroom.

Secondly I would like for the IT policy not to be 2 years behind, and encourage students to explore what they can do with their BYO devices to be used educationally. We’ve seen that in the past a total ban on devices is not effective and that students Socio-cultural experiences are expanded by being on facebook and sharing ideas. So why not use these as effective learning devices. I know the last thing I would want to do as a student would be to do “Educational” things on something i have fun on, and therefore I would take up another interest (possibly sport) So why don’t we embrace the technology and use it for learning?