TBC Moodle

So it is that I have started my new job at Tauranga Boys’ College. I am now a teacher of Year Nine and Ten Social Studies, covering New Zealand history at the moment and Year 11 Geography and History.

One of my year Ten classes is a laptop class, 29 students with nice shiny Macbooks. This week we have been charting the voyage of Captain Cook to New Zealand which we have done with iStopmotion, a great little piece of software and also meant we could familiarise the boys’ with the machines again after the holidays and reintroduce some of the software changes from the holidays.

I’ve also been working on our school Moodle site at moodle.tbc.school.nz. bringing the previous moodle sites into one and adding a link to google apps with single sign on has been exciting especially as we have had a number of network issues that we thought were our fault but in fact were out of our control. So I look forward to the challenges of the coming months both in my classroom and digitally, Not to mention the impending arrival of our second child next week.

There are a number of other games on the site including the Amazing Mammoth Hunt which is world geography as well as an interesting NZ investment game that might be good for economics. Have a look at IQ Ideas.com for their full range. I have to say this one is going to cost my department but it will be money better spent than on another set of textbooks.

And to think this was the first thing I blogged after an ICT conference, I might finally be getting this 21st century learner thing. Multimedia.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nznationalparty

Last week we had the privilege during our ICTPD home group meeting of visiting a number of Auckland Schools. I will try and put down my thoughts here so they stay fresh in my mind. I guess the one that stood out the most was Albany Senior High School, ASHS as it is known is a year 11-13 college on the North Shore. In fact the school does not exist in the google images and it is being built further down the road.

There are a number of development that make the school quite different from our own. Among these is the fact that the school only has students from years 11-13 (with only year 11 at the moment). This alone makes it much more flexible. The school runs in 100 minute blocks during the day and each subject is given two 100 minutes blocks a week. On Wednesday morning after a sharing session students are given time to complete an impact project of their own development. This project is not assessed presently for national qualifications but I’m sure as it develops more cross curricula credits will be brought in.

Also interesting was the treatment of the students as young adults. There are no separate staff and student toilets, students address staff by first names and the learning spaces are very flexible in their design to allow for more movement and remove some of the rigid methods we are forced into with traditional classroom design.

As far as students addressing staff by first names I guess this further moves the teacher from the front of the classroom to beside the learner. I have also noticed that this is a trend of society as a whole. As a child I remember calling any adult Mr or Mrs and it wasn’t until my late teens that I called any of my friends parents anything different. The only exception being my rowing coach. Odd how I recall this now but I am Richard to most young people now, I almost feel I’ve missed a stage.

The toilets is interesting as well, Warren pointed out that there are no toilets in malls for under 18s and maybe this would stop vandalism and smoking in the toilets if students knew teachers went in to the toilets regularly. A small point but very different from the norm.

And I guess the impact project and the class times are the ones that should be given the most thought but I think I will leave that until another visit so as not to be premature in my judgement of what seems risky for teenage boys especially but with big benefits as well.

I say good luck to the team as ASHS and I look forward to following their developments.

( I have not written about their decision to be an open source school as thats been both covered and a whole new post.)

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.

It is also now that I find the students use Moodle and elearning more than any other time in the year. You see despite the fact that the notes have been on Moodle all year many have just given these resources a cursory glance, whereas now it takes on true meaning. I like this as I guess my students can access the information when they would like to rather than when I allow them.

So I will be adding a number of new quiz/revision activities as well as linking them to a selection of sites that can help them.

I am trying to make the class Moodle page for the Year 11 History class very much a hub for their study while the year 12/13 ICT are more for putting up ideas and techniques to help them with their individual projects. I have also started using google docs extensively as it allows me to collect in volumes of work and then give feedback on it quickly.

So one week till the practice exams and then the a few short months till the end of the year.