Google docs and collaboration

Our school changed to GoogleApps for our email last year. Bundled with that are GoogleDocs and a bunch of other apps. We've been using the Calendar, and it's been awesome, but I have learned that many teachers haven't even opened their GoogleDocs, much less used them. I am aghast. Aghast, I say.

I love GoogleDocs. I have been using them for a long time for writing and sharing with friends, and so I think they have a lot of potential to be awesome in the classroom too.

One day, I will write a really thorough blog post about a way that my students used GoogleDocs to collaborate in a constructive and constructionist way. I sometimes need to remember that it's not a huge mission to set up simple collaboration - and if I need reminding, I am certain my colleagues need reminding too.

It gets different

Here's the thing, I've never been bullied for being queer. I've been bullied for other things, but not for that. Oh, and there was the time someone wrote "Mrs Cooper is a dyke" in pencil on my classroom door (ridiculous, since all the students know I'm not married), but as a kid? Nope. I guess there were enough other things about which to bully and ridicule me without having to guess about that.

But I recognise that queerness is an important facet of bullying and victimisation in schools in Aotearoa New Zealand. Hearing 'gay' and 'fag' used as put-downs, the subtle heterosexism that prevails in books and classrooms, it all can add up to making queer - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, genderqueer, asexual, questioning and so on - young people feel invisible. Feel worthless and marginalised. Feel unsafe.

The It Gets Better project is designed to combat this with the thought that things change. You grow up, other people grow up, and you can change your life. Which is great, and I am certainly a different, more confident person now.

I was reading Karen Healey's livejournal post on the matter this morning, and so much of what she said resonated with me.

Every day, I worry that a student in my classes or at my school is being bullied or victimised and I am not seeing it or doing anything about it. I'm missing the signs, or the student is too scared to tell anyone, or, worse, I am seeing it and not realising how serious it is. Every day, I worry that I won't be able to do something positive for a student who is being bullied. I worry that I am not enough of a positive role model, that being out and living my life is not enough. I worry that the systems I work in will fail students, and that will feel like I have failed them. I worry that I'm not hard enough on students who are casually homophobic, cruel or abusive. I worry, I worry, I worry.

So, I do some small things. I am out, to start with. I am openly bisexual. I have zero tolerance to 'gay', 'homo' and other homophobic language. I use examples with queer people in them - it's hard, given that I teach science, but not impossible. I try. I try to get the Guidance Counsellor to get me posters that highlight sexuality acceptance, and I put them up with my Quit Smoking posters. If I know there are students who are having a hard time, or who are high risk, I put more effort into having a positive and encouraging relationship with them. Sometimes, these students come to talk to me about whatever is worrying them, and I take the time to listen.

But I still worry.

Does it get better?

Well, yeah. For me, it did. For my students, I hope it will get better too.

Slime and fear factor

Slime is one of my favourite things, and I am delighted that I have a unit which requires me to make it this year. Fear Factor is going to be an awesome unit, I can tell already. The cleaners are going to kill me, though, for the amount of paint and glue and gloop we managed to get on the floor yesterday.

Anyway, it turns out that the high grade PVA we get here in NZ is not the same thing as Elmer's glue. Who knew? I am disappointed, because it means that our slime is not quite the same thing as I expected, based on the instructional video I found.

One of the things I like best about teaching science is that, if first we don't succeed, we can just try again. The lab technician and I spent a happy hour making various concoctions - sometimes, I am sure I didn't grow out of making mud pies, I am just more purposeful about it now. Anyway, we came up with two possible recipes:

40mL PVA glue
10 - 15 mL acrylic paint
approx 5g borax

Sprinkle the borax onto the glue and paint mix and mix thoroughly. If it is too sticky, try moving it to another person who has clean hands, or add more borax if that doesn't work

This gives a beautiful, shiny putty that is charmingly elastic and doesn't stick to your hands too much.

We also made a slime that is quite lightweight and frothy.

1/2 cup PVA glue
few drops of food colouring
1/2 cup water
2 heaped Tbs borax

Mix all ingredients in a tip top container. The PVA will curdle and the borax will feel grainy, but just keep mixing until it starts to coalesce. This will make a firm, frothy slime that sticks to your hands rather more than classic slime.

We plan to mix grated polystyrene into the second slime and make sculptures. We expect that they will set nicely if left on a windowsill for a couple of days.

Anyway, the science that we are teaching along with this is all about states of matter and things like that. I hope the students are learning something in addition to the enjoyment of slime. Next week, cornflour slime. I love me some non-newtonian fluids too.

Cyclical thinking, the midnight sun, and connecting with others

Blame my vaguely witchy version of being an athiest (which is a post for another day), but I have always loved cycles and repeating patterns. It's just gone winter solstice here and, like every year, I'm finding it hard to haul myself out of bed every morning - but at least, having celebrated the solstice, I know that better times are on the way (at least with regard to it being light when my alarm goes off).

The next unit in Year 10 Science is Amazing Adventure, where the students 'travel' around the world learning about scientific issues in different places. One of the places they visit is Oslo, in Norway. I wanted to visit Iceland, but no one would be able to reliably speak or say Reykjavik. Also, fiords are cool. It's a shame, though, because Oslo does not actually experience the midnight sun, you have to travel North for that. Right now, I am collecting first hand experiences from people who have seen the midnight sun, and also from people who live in northerly places where they experience the long winters and blinding summers. What is it like to live in a place where the cycles are so strong, compared to the fairly gentle ones we have here? I hope to set up a skype interview with a friend so that students (some, at least) can ask questions about that experience.

Anyhow, aside from the connected learning aspect, I am quite excited about this, because cycles make me happy. I love to look at the moon each night (or early morning) and track the phases. I like to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes (and I often celebrate the other Sabbats, just because). And I like to have quite a cyclical approach to my own creative process too. I think that the most interesting part, for me, will be to hear how the really strong sun cycles affect people in the northernmost portions of the world.

Clouds *sighs*

I love visualisations, particularly wordy ones. I love how this nice little service produces charming word clouds. Here are the contents of my blog:



Cute, huh?

Today, a compliment

Well, I took it to be one, anyway. A student asked me if they have Daylight Savings Time in the Cook Islands. I kind of blinked and asked why I would be expected to know that, and he replied that I am a fount of knowledge and so it was worth a try. That was nice.

So then, I asked why he didn't just google it to find out. His answer? He's not very good at searching. He doesn't know what keywords to use, and, even if he takes a guess at the keywords, he doesn't know how to combine them or how to sift through the results he gets in order to find something that will be useful to him.

In this particular instance, he was trying to find the time in the Cook Islands based on a time in Aotearoa New Zealand, given one time when NZ is not in DST and one when it is. First of all, I explained how time zones worked and we figured out in our heads how the times related. Then, we confirmed it with a handy time zone converter.

I found one online.

This student had no idea how I found it.

So I tried to explain boolean searching. At this point, he started to have that hunted look that people get when they really, really wish I'd just shut up and let them continue on having no idea how to fix things. I am pretty much immune to that look now.

I started with some venn diagrams, as in this picture below:


He kind of got the point of this. It's using simple English conjunctions to connect search terms in a way that makes them form a combination. That's all good. But that doesn't really make much difference with the first problem - that of the lack of sensible keywords in the first place.

In the Daylight Savings question, I put in daylight savings Cook Islands as my keywords. I didn't even bother with boolean connectors, because I was pretty sure I would find a useful link on the first page. I asked the student what he would have put in, and he shrugged. He didn't even really know where to start with it.

I think I will, next week even, start working on this with my younger students. I am inspired, because, even though being the fount of knowledge is good, I'd rather be the facilitator of how to do it yourself.

Sherbet, or the fizzing taste of success

I like to think that cognitive dissonance is a little like sherbet. It fizzes on your tongue or in your mind and you find yourself having to adjust to the new ideas and tastes. I am also a bit of an opportunist. I would blame it on having a bit of crow in me, but we don't really have the crow archetype as such in Aotearoa.

Leaving aside my fondness for shiny things, I love to encourage moments of cognitive dissonance. The thing is, they take time to find and set up. Then the students take time to talk through what they've observed and come up with new explanations that are consistent with both their observations and the theory you and/or the text have provided. Today, I wished for a shortcut. I wish that sometimes, me saying "it just does" was enough of a reason for students to believe.