The Educated Kiwi
motivation
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.
The Playstation 3 is for Educational Research Dear…
Apr 23rd
Yeah Right!
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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.
When should children be introduced to ICT?
Oct 26th
Having a son made me question the place of a computer in his life. When should he be allowed to use one? What rules should there be around that use? Would he be better spending his entire life doing “real” stuff?
Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Motivation
Sep 22nd
Thanks to Derek for this one.

As I sat in a class this morning watching students labour over a task that only a few seemed genuinely engaged in, the teacher and I discussed what their motivation was for the task. Essentially the only reason they were doing anything in this lesson was to get the grade. Now I can’t say we can avoid this all the time and my other reason for being interested in this in the first place is because Rylee has just hit two and boy can she throw a tantrum at toothbrushing time. So what is needed how can we as teachers/parents avoid the trap of rewards? The site references Alfie Kohn who seems to have quite the library of texts on the subject I will try and find one in the library and see what I can learn.
Are you a Fox or a Hedgehog
Feb 20th
The first Keynote of L@S was Jeremy Kedian. Great presentation with a real view to change. 20/20 vision was the title relevant due to year one students graduating in 2020 and are we as educators a hedgehog who coils into a ball in the face of adversity or the fox who looks for solutions. I liked the middle ground idea of a hedgefox but look forward to how we can change with the 2008 Curriculum.
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Tags: L@Sjeremykedian keynote
Oh how times have changed
Feb 5th
“when are we ever going to need this?”
Jul 23rd
This from Doug Johnson
When asked “when are ever going to need this?” by his students about an algebra procedure, high school teacher Dan Sherman says:
Never. You will never use this.
It then go on to remind them that people don’t lift weights so that one day they will be prepared should one day, someone knock them over on the street and lay a barbell across their chests. You lift weights so that you can knock over a defensive lineman, or carry your groceries or lift your grandchildren without being sore the next day. You do math exercises so that you can improve your ability to think logically . so that you can be a better lawyer, doctor, architect, prison warden or parent.
MATH IS MENTAL WEIGHT TRAINING. It is a means to and end (for most people) and not an end in itself.
I like it and although it’s a feeling I’m sure most teachers share with their students already the weights analogy would I’m sure appeal to an element within our classes.



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