Science fair

I have been at school since just after 7am this morning - I think I am still residually under-caffeinated. I was here early to take delivery of science fair projects.

It is now just after 5pm and I am sitting in the drafty auditorium, presiding over 50 or 60 or so cardboard presentation boards, each one a monument to hours of work. I hate cardboard.

Next year, if we have to do a long-term project, I am so encouraging electronic submission. Aside from the fact that I won't have to hustle all the boards around the place and fret about losing things, I will also have the joy of allowing parents and community members to view online - so that I can go home.

Okay, okay, so there were some good points

One of the good things that did come out of the Curriculum Development day up here was the chance to meet the occasional interesting - and interested - colleague. I met one.

We were talking about assessing key competencies. You know, it's all well and good for everyone to howl and say "but you're not supposed to assess key competencies", but I think it's really likely that you will, at the very least, have to assign a grade on a report card, even if it doesn't carry credits. So anyway, we were talking about how the key competencies are connected, so you can't have one without the other. And then we got to talking about how you could have a day for this, dressing it up as a challenge and using a science context - for example, projectile motion for Y12 physics - to assess them all together.

I mentioned this to one of my minions, and they thought it was pretty cool too. But I am wondering how to make it more authentic and how to make it integrate more collaboration and more web2.0 thinking. But the idea has promise, if not for the informal assessment of key competencies, then at least for providing an engaging science experience in the senior school.

Professional development, and an object lesson in inertia

Generally, I love professional development. Nothing is more awesome than hanging out with other teachers and talking about what excites us and makes us eager to teach and learn.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

The Ministry of Education released the final Curriculum a few months ago. The document has a front end that is vast and sweeping in its scope, with real room for change and transformation in the teaching and learning process. It's coupled, somewhat awkwardly, with a back end of learning outcomes that aren't much different to the existing curriculum.

I should state, straight up, that I believe in the transformation of education implied by the front end of the NZ Curriculum. It was disheartening to go to the professional development yesterday and listen to teacher after teacher dismiss the changes, stating "but we already do that", or "we're not actually going to change the way we teach, we'll just add a few ticky boxes to satisfy the inspectors".

Today, I feel kind of despondent about being a teacher, when my colleagues are so visibly unenthused about anything that threatens the comfortable practice they have built up.

Exams are not my happy place

Unlike youtube, exams do not make me happy by their mere existence. In general, I find them lacking in actual applicability to the real world, and would like to cordially consign them all to a deep dark pit.

This week is going to be horrible, I can tell already.

Playing round with content creation

I have no voice today, so I am at home messing round with animoto and Stupeflix to see which one is going to work best for introducing students to the idea that they can create their own little learning videos.

I made one in each provider, both on the same topic - Air Pollution. We're studying that, briefly, as part of our unit on fuels in Y10 science.

Here is the animoto one:



I like this because:
They have music available to use as soundtracks
Their mixing is pretty funky and I love the visual aesthetic
They make embedding and sharing really, really easy

I don't like it because:
It's limited to 30 seconds only
Images have to be saved to your computer, you can't input urls
If you put in too much stuff, they cut it instead of giving you the option to cut it
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop settings and the simple uploader is hard to find

Here is the stupeflix one - youll have to follow the link, because, as I say below, embedding is not it's strong point:

Air pollution video

I like this because:
You can download a copy to your computer
You can make the videos as long as you like
The visual is pretty clean and there is plenty of room for text
You can control how long each image set appears for

I don't like it because:
You have to use music from your hard drive for sound tracks - royalty issues, anyone?
Their flash uploader is incompatible with my school laptop and there is NO simple uploader to be found (I'll be telling them about this one directly)
There is no easy option to embed and only a few sharing options are available (I will also be giving them feedback about this)


So, as you can see, it's not easy to choose. I'll have to provide the students with a step-by-step guide anyway, and I'm not sure which would be most painful to write. I think I shall discuss this with my minions and we'll decide which one is going to give us the fewest headaches while providing the coolest learning experience for the students.

Presentation success

So, presentation all done and sorted and I think it went well. Personally, I like presentations where the presenter gets to the point quickly and doesn't drone on and on reading out their slides, so my whole presentation was done in about 25 minutes. Now I'm hoping that my colleagues will take the opportunity I offered and come and see me during my regular "talk geeky about computers" time and we can come up with some constructive solutions.

Content creators - Google Docs

This is what I have so far. Notes and ideas and a rather spiffy (for values of spiffy that are plain and pared back) image that integrates the strands. Now I need the concrete parts, because teachers LOVE the concrete. I can just imagine my colleagues looking at this so far and wondering what the hell I am on about and how it could possibly apply to them.

Content creators - Google Docs