It's for your own good!

Over on twitter, there has been a bit of a discussion going on about e-learning. You know, just for a change. This post is not about that, or, at least, only tangentially. I will try to have a thoughtful and well-reasoned critique of the pressures of NCEA vs institutional stagnation vs teacher effort at some point. This is not that critique.

Instead, this is based on the extremely unscientific poll I took with my Y13 class today. I asked, "Would you like it if we spent less time doing book work and talking and more time using online resources and making exciting things online?"

I left it nice and vague, thinking that there would be a fair bit off discussion. I was not wrong. There was a lot of discussion, and it was quite interesting. Here are some responses:

"No. When the hell am I ever going to have to make a podcast or whatever those thingies were that you wanted to make?"

"I like it best when we talk in class and you explain things and we all write on the board together."

"Online is not interactive enough."

"Is this worth credits?"

"You like computers. We don't."

"Can we do some physics now?"

I was intrigued. Also, just in case you were worried by the last one, we had just spent a mentally exhausting 50 minutes exploring the Bohr model of the atom and relating it to atomic line spectra. There had already been plenty of physics.

I dug a little deeper. You see, this class is curious about things. They want to know what the speed of light is doing in the mass-energy equivalence equation. They want to know about why Nicola Tesla was eccentric, and why Lise Meitner is a classic example of women getting shafted in the sciences. Here is the rub, though. They want to get through the NCEA standards more than they want to know all this other interesting, exciting, fascinating stuff.

Personally, I can't say I blame them. I'd be concerned about my NCEA level 3 exams too, if I was in their shoes. So, I think the reason they said 'no' to my original question comes down to a couple of big things:

1. They have NCEA level 3 exams soon. We really don't have time to do anything time-consuming. If they have to master a new skill to do it (like learn to use Googlesites), then they're not interested
2. They have NCEA level 3 exams soon. If it's not contributing to their credits, they're not interested.
3. They don't use computers and online resources the way I do. These particular students use computers for some very specific things: writing word documents, and checking facebook so that they can keep up with the lives of other people that they know

It took me a long time to figure out what they meant by that last one. Then I realised that, for this class, social media is about strengthening connections with people they already know. That's what the response about online 'not being interactive enough' was about.

So, I am going to take a while to think about this. As I see it, I have a couple of future directions that I need to reflect on. First, how do I make enough wriggle room in what I do so that we have time to learn about interesting things like Tesla's thing for pigeons? Second, how do I learn more about what students are interested in doing with e-learning, and how do I find time to make that work?

The two questions are related. But tomorrow, when I see these guys, we're going to take a moment to learn a little more about Lise Meitner. It's important.

Fashion or refashion?

I am usually all about the upcycling, refashioning, and general diy goodness. My current example is a project I am going to try in the spring - growing plants in a converted pallet, as in this post from Life on the Balcony. Doesn't it look awesome?

Just so that there is some educational link (aside from my daughter growing strawberries and cherry tomatoes), the Horticulture teacher is going to try with one class while the Horticulture block is being upgraded and therefore unavailable for her usual beds. This is a clear example of how my google reader provides useful and practical ideas that I actually use.

But the real topic of this post is to talk about fashion, and was prompted by a conversation with my Y13 class. I was introducing the idea that I had made a presentation (embedded below) and that I expected them to watch the presentation themselves and then bring their questions to class for clarification and extension, tutorial style. So far, so good, right?

But I said that there were fashions in education, in the sense that teachers follow trends in education, just like other trends. Someone has a genius idea and then people trial it and riff off it and it spreads. My students snorted, and when I asked them why, they said that all their experience of teaching was that it was pretty much all the same, and the differences came down to the style of the teacher, not the fashion or trend of the moment. These students have been at this school for over six years now, so I was pretty intrigued by this. Do they really have teachers who are still stuck in the educational equivalent of Paris Hilton as a fashion icon? (apparently, 2003 was also the year of cargo pants, monograms and Chinese embroidery)

I don't claim to be at the leading edge of educational trends and ideas, but I know my teaching tools and techniques change over time. One of the things I am playing with now is the idea of presenting lecture material online, to give students more time for talking and tutorials in class. I'm starting out with some presentations on present.me and then perhaps some video of me doing worked mathematical examples on the board. The Horticulture teacher is planning to do videos of practical skills, and the Chemistry and Biology teachers are investigating what's going to be best for their presentations.

It's interesting stuff. Is it fashionable? Probably, but it's interesting and educational. I'm enjoying the experimentation. Anyway, here is the presentation - NCEA level 3, all about Simple Harmonic Motion:



Or you can go and watch it, on present.me

I love school *displays unseemly enthusiasm*

This morning has kicked off brilliantly - although I could do with more coffee. My Y10s did an interesting reading exercise about fossils, my Y13s estimated the rotational inertia of each other and used it to explain why we put our arms out when we balance, and my Y12s demonstrated Newton's First Law with an egg. Have some video evidence:

I'll stick this video on the school site too, so the students can access it. They had a lot of fun making it, even though there was a lot of "no, YOU do the voiceover" going on. We didn't have time to add a proper audio track, sadly. Nevermind, it's pretty good for their first ever attempt at using Movie Maker and Audacity on the same day.