The Educated Kiwi
Mark
This user hasn't shared any biographical information
Posts by Mark
iPads in Schools
Sep 2nd
If you are wondering if it is worth rolling out iPads in your school check out Fraser Speirs blog. Fraser has journalled his experiences in removing computer labs and replacing them with iPads.
Free Documentaries
Sep 2nd
One of the good things about doing break time duty is that you get to talk to staff that you would normally not get to know. You also find out things that you didn’t know and some of them turn out to be useful. Top Documentary Films is a site which catalogues a bunch of free documentaries found on various video sites on the web. I scanned a few and some were English with foreign subtitles, others vice-versa and regular English no subs. Using the VideoDownloadHelper plugin for Firefox I can transfer these videos to our internal PHP Motion server so that students can watch them without cranking through the bandwidth. Another great resource.
iPad Guitar Amp
Aug 23rd
Was just looking at guitar amp apps for the iPad and found a cool peripheral and app from ikmultimedia. If anyone has given this a go let me know before I drop NZ$95 + NZ$25 for the app but it does look very cool.
While I was looking around I also found this:
Time for some inspiration.
Jul 28th
There are times when I start to feel a little stale cocooned in my world and I have forgotten to look outside. Thanks to my new iPad I found this as I browsed video podcasts on iTunes.
Academic: On a pedestal it doesn’t deserve?
Sep 2nd
As jobs get more scarce young people are opting to stay in education and some universities are starting to put caps on their intake, they just don’t have enough seats. The result of more people in tertiary education is bound to result in more people coming out with the same qualification, often a degree without an obvious career route, therefore creating even greater competition for the few jobs available.
I was recently involved in a discussion about the Technology achievement standards vs ITO (Industry Trade Organisation) unit standards in which it was suggested that one (unit standard) was lower in value to the other. Compared to what? There is no comparison, they are very different routes. In fact I would argue that the ITO has more long term value because it can lead to paid apprenticeship and clear pathway to employment, whereas tertiary education leads to a now common qualification and a lifetime of debt.
It is nearly 2010 and we still think that we get the most value from academia, even though both founders of Google and the founder of Microsoft dropped out of college to pursue their businesses.
It is time we stop looking from the top down to looking from the bottom up and asking ourselves, as teachers, what is the value to the individual student? What is the point in driving them hard up a road which doesn’t suit them just because of a perception of prestige?
I happen to have a degree which I earned later in life (27) and my childhood friends who left school at age 16 now run successful businesses. I feel that we expect so much of our young people at school that we forget that they a just kids and maybe we should allow them to enjoy it a bit more. In the words of Jeff Jarvis author of “What Would Google Do?” – Youth is something we only get once, education is something we can do at anytime in our lives. He is not saying we should not educate our young people rather have less emphasis on the type of academic achievement we expect.
For me the things I learned at school make up a tiny amount of the useful knowledge in my head, most of my knowledge has probably been learned in the previous 4 or 5 years of my life. I’m not really sure what that means but I guess it has something to do with trying to stay relevant, which will no doubt get harder as I get older.
Teach Tech
Aug 13th
I recently received a request for information on how ICT is used in a Hard Materials Technology class so I decided to start a new blog. I bought teachtech.co.nz back in January intending it to be a wiki for New Zealand Technology teachers but I realised that the Tech Teacher community was probably not ready for it. So when Toni Twiss the ICT facilitator at Matamata College asked me for information about how ICT can be used in a Hard Materials workshop it seemed logical to create a blog which Technology teachers can visit and get ideas. I realise it is very much a niche audience, but that is what the internet is about, and hopefully it will help Technology teachers, new and old.
If you are a Hard Materials teacher and have some great ways to use ICT in our subject you are more than welcome to become a contributor on Teach Tech, or if you know a Hard Materials teacher who is using ICT as a teaching and learning tool please let me know.
mark@tek.net.nz
New Draft – Section 92A
Jul 23rd
During the holidays the Creative Freedom Foundation sent me this email regarding the new draft for section 92a. It is worth a read so that you understand the potential impact on your school and yourself.
OECD Factbook eXplorer
Jul 3rd
This is probably more up Richards alley but I can’t help thinking how much more interesting Geography A level might have been with resources like this. Check out the video on the BBC website and visit http://stats.oecd.org/oecdfactbook/.
PHPMotion Redux
Jul 1st
Back in April 2008 I did a post on a YouTube clone called PHPMotion which was then in version 1. The software is now in version 3 and we have just installed it on our school server. The latest version is still a bit of a pain to install, it runs on PHP and MYSQL like wordpress, but is not as well supported or documented. The bottom line is you better be keen but you will save a heap on bandwidth and be able to give access to all those great videos available online. As well as YouTube videos you can also add clips from DVD’s. If you did this on YouTube they would quickly receive a take down notice from the copyright holder but with PHPMotion only accessible from the internal network people in the outside world are non the wiser – of course you must own the material to start with. As a Hard Materials and Graphics teacher I find some fantastic instructional videos on using tools and techniques which I can now share without using extra bandwidth.
Version 3 also has photo sharing which means you can keep photographs of students safely in the gated village if you so wish rather than using public photo sharing like Flickr.
If you want any help setting up a video sharing server let us know and we will see what we can do to help.
Teachers Report Assistant
Jun 25th
It’s report time again and as always I have left it to the last minute. Aah, where would I be without that last minute? Writing reports one of the least favorite jobs I do but thanks to Teachers Report Assistant from Rays learning it’s a breeze.
It is windows only and as a Mac user I run it on Windows XP under VMWare Fusion with unity switched on. It just looks like another app window and copy and paste works fine, you wouldn’t even know there were two operating systems running (2GB RAM helps).
It has been a while since I have used this app and it is now up to version 6. The new version allows you to import student lists to further streamline your work and there are a number of comment banks for different subjects which you can copy and paste from the site.
I do still like to write individual reports for those students who stand out at both ends of the spectrum but for the majority of reports this is a huge time saver.
If you don’t have VMWare you can download Suns Virtual Box for free and Windows 7 RC1 is a solid operating system and is free to download until the end of July and use until March 2010.
Unlock Moodle Potential
Jun 17th
One of the effects of the latest flu pandemic is that a school can be shut down at anytime. Our particular school policy states that we will provide materials online while students are away so that they may continue with their studies. Unfortunately in a practical based subject that is a little difficult and rather than reinvent the wheel I went trolling for links to existing material. I have to say that Workshop Technology is not well represented online in New Zealand, something I would like to rectify given the time. What I did find were these videos showing the potential of moodle in secondary education – check out these great videos by MoodleFairy.
Everlong
Jun 16th
I downloaded the guitar tab (sheet music for guitar) for “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters about 2 years ago now. It’s one of those songs that I love, especially the acoustic version, but every time I try and play it I put it back in the “too hard basket”. It also happens to be one of the songs on Guitar Hero World Tour which I score quite highly on guitar and that prompted me to have another go on the real guitar.
I have basically taught myself guitar recently from downloading tabs of songs I know and trying to replicate them but without having any proper tuition sometimes I am stumped. Then it occurred to me to go to YouTube for a guitar lesson and no kidding, I was playing Everlong within about half an hour. Even my wife said it sounded good.
I picked up a couple of key points from the video. Firstly I needed to tune my E string down to D and boy did that make life easier. Most importantly the teacher talks about holding shapes with your fingers on the frets. Trying to apply numbers and fingers and frets from a diagram is hard but when the guy says make this shape with your fingers, then move it here, then here it all becomes clearer.
I could go on to apply lots of profound educational speak about the way people learn but take whatever meaning you like from this. Instead I encourage everyone to learn a musical instrument using the internet and I hope you get as much satisfaction as I do.
The Playstation 3 is for Educational Research Dear…
Apr 23rd
Yeah Right!
These days you have to keep up with the kids. Ironically Playstation was the first console to be marketed at 20 somethings with expendable income hence its success and the playstation 3 is no exception with its price tag. I bit the bullet and the GE money genie bought me a PS3 and Guitar Hero World Tour (with guitar, drums and mic) on tick. After some hard practicing I took the gear round to Richards house for an evening of home made wine and rock and roll.
The game itself is fairly straight forward, choose an instrument, skill level and a song, play individual or as a band and away you go. Beginner skill level just requires you to keep a beat with the strum bar (guitar) or tapping a beat on any part of the drum kit and if you have never done it before even this is quite challenging for an entire song. Crank it up to easy and it gets quite intense with medium almost impossible without considerable practice.
Playing as an individual is great fun but playing as a band is even better and if someone makes too many mistakes then the band gets booed off the stage. I even had a go at playing drums and singing at the same time Phil Collins style which was extremely challenging but I managed to get to the end of Band on the Run.
Of course with a room consisting of 75% teachers we saw huge educational value amongst all of the fun and thoughts wander to how it may be used in a classroom. We also wandered if we could hook the wireless drum kit up to Garage Band and sure enough you can – just download Gamepad Companion and map the drum pads to keystrokes and use it with the on screen keyboard to play the drums on your mac. And even though the guitar playing isn’t as authentic as the drums, as a guitar player myself I could see it helping with strumming patterns, rhythm and muscle control (especially little finger fretting which I tend to avoid).
There are a whole lot of skills involved in this game and it is one of the few games that doesn’t annoy me when I get killed. Maybe it is because there are some great rock songs, we all certainly found the drumming very satisfying and decided that it was more fun than singstar because of the team element.
I would love to see one hooked up to a projector in a music department with students learning to appeciate good rock music instead of that crap they listen to these days.
Thinktech Disappointment
Apr 1st
I was really looking forward to last nights online debate on thinktech but it turned into bungled attempt by mainstream media to adopt new technology. For a start not a single member of the panel had a laptop to follow the online chat. Then both Richard and I experienced “moderation” when our comments were excluded from the chat window which also explained why the audience chat was well behind the panel. It was essentially a glorified phone in show where audience comments were passed to the host on a piece of paper, was a debate online not an online debate.
I would like to have said “Nice try” but moderating perfectly legitamate comments beggars belief. I tried to find an email on the thinktech site but they have no contact section so I had a dig in the ‘about’ page (which incidently kept resizing my browser) and found it to be run by Secondary Futures. Secondary Futures provides a number of emails for exectives so I was about to copy and paste this post but wait – they also have a blog. Thinking I could leave a comment I got redirected again to Futurelearning.org.nz, a very badly formatted blog site and left a comment which will probably be “moderated”.
Recent Comments