Go Green

Here is a picture of me with my cousin in one of my favourite green spots: the Malvern Hills in England. And here are a couple of green games I found:

http://earth911.org/just-for-kids

http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/osw/kids/space/index.htm

I was looking for an environmental film and I just happened on this one of Women's portraits which I really enjoyed so I am adding it instead.

Do I want to Wiki?

Wikipedia: free, democratic, collaborative, becoming up to date - easy to use, edited, uses uniform styles.

I actually should check what they have on Langland - in fact they do not yet have an article on the C-Text, so I should start it.

I myself have found it a useful tool - the entry on Paradise Lost was far more illuminating than the Britannica one.

Evaluate the Examined Life Blog

Finally, do you consider that you learn better using ICT or traditional methods such as pen, paper and books?

Bloom's Taxonomy

In 1956, Bloom proposed a hierarchy of thinking skills. You may have used this taxonomy in Year 7 with your Independent Research Project on Historical Novels. Asking yourself questions at the higher levels helps you to develop your thinking skills.



Some thinkers have revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to put Creating at the top.


Exercise:

Read the account of the Death of Socrates at the following website, and answer the questions.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/socrates.htm

Knowledge: When did Socrates die? What else can you find out about Socrates?
Comprehension: Why did Socrates die?
Application:
Analysis: What factors in the Athenian legal system and in Socrates’ own character led to his death?
Synthesis: Compare the death of Socrates with the death of Jesus. What aspects of the moral teacher causes them to get into trouble with the authorities?
Evaluation: Was Socrates right to choose death rather than exile when he had a wife and young children?
Creative: Write a dialogue between Socrates and Jesus.

Look at the Monty Python Skit of the Soccer Match between the German and the Greek Philosophers. Did it give you any ideas that you might like to know more about?

Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

In 1983, Howard Gardner proposed that people display intelligence in a number of areas, rather than in the rather narrow verbal/mathematical/logical area that dominated IQ testing. His theories have had a huge impact on education. The four areas of the Examined Life Blog suggest activities in a number of areas. Try some of these and reflect on your preferred learning style (this may include a variety of intelligences.’

The Examined Life Blog

The Examined Life and Education

‘Education has for its object formation of character.’ Herbert Spencer

‘The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.’ Dean Inge



As you can see from the quotations above, education is a key part of leading an ‘examined life’ or the life which considers and develops values and thus character. Socrates, who first said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’, was a great teacher.

Death of Socrates by Jean Peyron, 1787

• So were Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, and many other leaders throughout history. In some sense anyone or anything that we admire teaches us something.
  I have always learned a lot from reading great works of literature from Homer’s Iliad (c.800 BC) through John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), to Primo Levi’s If this be a Man (1958).
  
  In preparing this Blog, I hope to give you opportunities both to think about the examined life in a variety of ways, but also to consider how you learn and what you value in learning. This is the first time I have done something like this – in other years, I have just looked at students’ journals in hard copy. But as this is the digital age, I would like you to consider some of the following ideas about how you learn, explore some of the exercises in the four areas of the Blog, and then write a reflection on how you learn best. You may submit your reflection in the Blog or by writing in your journal or in any other form (such as a skit or comic strip) that you think is appropriate. I would like you to try to answer the following questions:
  
  Did you find the Blog better than other forms of developing your ideas, or do you prefer other ways? Why?
  What are your strengths and weaknesses as a learner (See Gardner’s Multiple intelligences below and remember that you may have strengths in several areas)? Give examples.
  What kind of questions are you asking yourself in your Examined Life Project? What levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are you using?
  Finally, do you consider that you learn better using ICT or traditional methods such as pen, paper and books?

Due Date: Tuesday 5th June 2007

King Lear

Inspire me

Risk Assessment: Reflecting on John Hattie

In the rush of the school term, it is often difficult for teachers to find time to reflect, but John Hattie provides a useful checklist for teachers seeking to monitor and develop their own performance. According to Hattie, outstanding or expert teachers:

1. Relate lesson content to other school subjects, underlying principles and students' interests
2. Are passionate about teaching and learning
3. Respect students as learners and as people
4. Encourage risk
5. Set challenging goals
6. Seek feedback and analyze the effectiveness of their own teaching
7. Monitor and provide feedback on student progress
8. Are more likely to develop closeness to students
9. Have a deep understanding of how learning occurs (Masters).

He also says that expert teachers can

1. Respond to the needs of students
2. Take a flexible problem-solving approach
3. Anticipate, plan and improvise as required
4. Make decisions based on student questions and responses
5. Monitor student problems, understanding and progress (Hattie).

Personal reflection: I encourage and enjoy risk-taking, set challenging tasks, willingly admit to mistakes or ignorance. I readily improvise in response to student need: these are some of the most satisfying lessons. I am not a highly-structured teacher, but as some students find this difficult, I also provide some structured activities. However, I need to work much harder on monitoring individual student progress - I do this well in response to written work, but find it hard in the hurly burly of class-room activities. Many of my colleagues are much better at this. However, I do achieve closeness with a significant number of students, and I am so passionate about what I do that the students laugh at me.

Bibliography for ICT Assessment 1

Chaiklin, Seth. (no date: accessed 31.3.07) ‘The zone of proximal development in Vygotsky’s analysis of learning and instruction’
http://www.education.miami.edu/blantonw/mainsite/Componentsfromclmer/Component5/ChaiklinTheZoneOfProximalDevelopmentInVygotsky.html
Driscoll, Marcy Perkins (1994). Psychology of learning for instruction. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Hattie, John . (2003). ‘Teachers Make a Difference: What is the Research Evidence?’.ACER Annual Conference.
Masters, Geoff. (2004) ‘What makes a good teacher?’ http://www.acer.edu.au/publications/newsletters/enews/04_enews18/Good_Teacher_May04.html
Murray, Ken. (1995) Narrative Partitioning: The ins and outs of identity construction.’ http://home.mira.net/~kmurray/psych/in&out.html

Piaget, Jean. 1962. ‘Comments on Vygotsky’s critical remarks concerning The Language and Thought of the Child, and Judgment and Reasoning in the Child’ http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/piaget.htm

Riddle, Elizabeth M. (1999) ‘Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory’ http://chd.gse.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/vygotsky.htm

Silverthorn, Pam. (1999). ‘Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development.’ http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/Piaget.htm

Smith, M.K. (2002) 'Jerome S. Bruner and the process of education', The Encyclopedia of InformalEeducation
http://www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm.

York College (No date, accessed 31.307) ‘Evaluating Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development.’ http://intranet.yorkcollege.ac.uk/yc/new/HUMSOC/psycho/unit4/piaget.pdf

William Glasser: The Wisdom of Solomon or Hubris?

Titian, Vanity with her Mirror

William Glasser devised Choice Theory which suggests that almost all behavior is chosen, and that we are driven by our genes to satisfy five basic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom and fun...the most important need is love and belonging' http://www.wglasser.com/whatisct.htm.

Glasser is highly critical of testing, particularly closed-book testing, which he thinks is contrary to the practice of the real world, where workers are expected to find out facts they do not know rather than being expected to know everything. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3960/is_200207/ai_n9097918

Glasser instituted 'Quality Schools', begging the question whether all other schools are non-quality. In Quality Schools, as far as I can determine, relationships are based upon trust... anything below a B grade has been abolished, all students achieve some A grade work each year, 'schooling... has been replaced by useful education', students and staff use Choice Theory in their lives and in their work, parents familiarize themselves with Glasser's ideas, students perform better academically, and all concerned 'view the school as a joyful place' http://www.wglasser.com/quality.htm.

Researching Glasser on the Web, I feel he may be rather self-promoting and intolerant of other views: there are many sites for the William Glasser Institute - a feature I did not encounter when researching the other theorists. One online comment was 'I mean aren't the teachers responsible for control in the schoool. If they get friendly with students some will simply take advantage of that, I think.' http://www.wgii.ie/discus/messages/6/28.html?1148556161

Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much, and that there is considerable hubris here.

Bruner and the Inner Fire

I always loved the story of how Alfred the Great's mother promised her illuminated manuscript to the son who learned to read it. Alfred's older brothers had their minds on other things, but Alfred applied himself to learning to read and won the book. (http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=tappan&book=alfred&story=manor

I remembered this story when I read about Jerome Bruner's book The Process of Education (1960) and his concept of Readiness for Learning: 'any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development'.(cited, Smith, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/bruner.htm). One of my happiest memories is showing two year-nine English students that French spelling had not always been standard (as their French teacher thought), by reading them Le Chanson de Roland and the even more idiosyncratic spelling of Piers Plowman: although the language of both texts was beyond them, they eagerly followed my translation - a moment when I felt I had blown on the flames of their intellectual fire.

In Acts of Meaning (1990), Bruner also insists on the importance of 'mental states like believing, desiring, intending' in the development of understanding.http://evolution.massey.ac.nz/assign2/BP/Bruner.html

and emphasizes narrative rather than paradigmatic reasoning, as described by Murray: 'the paradigmatic... [describes] a world of fact, whereas the narrative... constructs a point of view which is capable of hope and fear.'http://home.mira.net/~kmurray/psych/in&out.html

Bruner's humane approach sees the importance of engaging the emotions - crucial when teaching challenging texts like King Lear. Students may be as unwilling to read it as Moses was to hear God's word from the burning bush, but if they take off their shoes and listen, they may find themselves inspired and empowered.

Has Piaget got the Key?

Piaget's idea that there are four main steps of cognitive growth has been criticized for suggesting that development has an endpoint rather than being a life-long process (Riddle). The question has also been raised whether children actually go through the stages in precisely the way Piaget suggests (Silverthorn). The sensorimotor stage goes from 0-2 years, but by 22 months my son spoke in paragraphs rather than sentences; during the preoperational stage (2-6/7) he was not egocentric, but very perceptive of others' feelings, and at 6 he wanted me to read him Lord of the Rings because an older friend had read it - and he enjoyed and understood it. I am not alone in thinking that Piaget underrates the intelligence of children as this discussion paper shows (http://intranet.yorkcollege.ac.uk/yc/new/HUMSOC/psycho/unit4/piaget.pdf), but probably I am oversimplifying here: Piaget says, in response to Vygotsky's criticisms, that 'Cognitive egocentrism... stems from a lack of differentiation between one’s own point of view and the other possible ones, and not at all from an individualism that precedes relations with others.' Certainly, after thirty-four years of teaching, I still need need to heed his warning that 'every beginning instructor discovers... that his first lectures were incomprehensible because he was talking to himself... He realizes only... with difficulty that it is not easy to place oneself in the shoes of students who do not yet know what he knows about the subject'.

(http://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/comment/piaget.htm). I do like Piaget's idea of equilibration (Silverthorn): I am continually fnding that one mode of thought is not sufficently satisfying, and searching for a newer understanding - particularly in my own writing.

Certainly I agree with Piaget's followers that learning should include activity, peer interaction and Socratic dialogue (Silverthorn, citing Driscoll). But rather than conceiving the educational process as a series of steps, I would picture it as unlocking a door so that the student can enter his or her own interior landscape and embark on a life-long process of discovery.

Does Vygotsky Light the Flame?

Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development suggests that development is a process rather than a product, as suggested by Piaget's stages(Riddle).This view is more compatible with the idea of life-long learning. However, Vygotsky's model suggests that knowledge and learning are outside the student, and that the teacher leads the student into a world beyond themselves. But Socratic method suggests that knowledge and understanding are innate, that the student must give birth to the ideas and the teacher is only the midwife.
(http://www.thomasaquinas.edu/curriculum/socratic.htm).
One of my most precious possessions as a teacher is a scruffy scrap of paper on which a student wrote, 'Thank you for seeing something in me that I couldn't see myself.' As a student, I learned French by reading it; my teacher taught me mainly by being excited by my capacity and lending me books. At university, a few lectures on interpreting art ignited a latent passion that I have pursued independently for the rest of my life.

Vygotsky's stress on the social aspects of cognitive development is important, but it suggests a hierarchy of knowledge. This can be a dangerous view. Particularly with creative writing, I can often see the potential of an idea before the student, and it's a struggle not to overdirect and impose my ideas. I believe learning is best when the teacher is learning from, surprised by, the student - when the learning process is as equal as possible.

It is a question of trying to blow on the coals and ignite the student's latent passion into flame.

http://offspring00.blogspot.com/

God's Justice

Michael's lecture on 10/3/07: I felt almost as if it was an answer to prayer. I don't say this out of flattery, but because I have been feeling a tug in the direction of social justice for some time. I found the whole day rivetting. His story of Juan Geradi and Fr Rigoberto was very challenging - I don't think I do feel a call to Latin America because I know that it would be hard on my family if I put myself in a situation of potential violence, but I was affected by his point of the importance of solidarity. I wonder how I can do this, not I think, through political action, but surely in some way through education, as I have such a great deal of experience in this area.

When Michael spoke of his parents as Good Samaritans, this reminded me of my father, who was not at all a Christian, but was definitely a G.S.

I was intrigued by Michael's account of Guiterrez and how the question facing him, the question of poverty and structuraloppression, was so differen from the questions facing European Theologians. Later, I read 'A New Way of Encountering God':

• The here-and-nowness that LT deals with
• That we are all theologians and that theology is a love letter to God
• That God (as I firmly believe) s a mystery that none of us can penetrate, and that intellectual modesty is essential
• That theology's love letter changes with time

When I came to the part about Commitment being the first act and theology the second, my heart began to burn within me (sorry to be mushy but that is what it felt like) - I so want to find a way of committing myself in this area - have been feeling this for some years now, but not sure how I can do it. I do encounter poor people to some extent in volunteering a little with refugees in Blacktown, but this is mild compared with the problems of Africa or Latin America.

I was moved by the three main parts of LT - liberation from:

• unjust social structures
• the power of fate
• personal guilt or sin

Reflecting that I do have a growing desire to confront the structural causes of injustice, I realized that in some ways I already do this - that friends and colleagues and family seem to find it helpful to talk to me, especially when they are struggling to release their creativity from the social constraints that inhibit it. I had a very strong sense too, that a particular friend is actually one of the poor in spirit, who asks for my love in a very special way that liberates both of us from some of our past fears and unhealthy patterns. This led me to reflect on the moments of poverty of spirit in my daughter and husband - moments when they need me to listen and be with them. This too is an obligation. I cannot be like Mrs Jellyby in Dickens' Bleak House, with her eyes always on the natives of Borioboola-Gha - and her own family falling in ruins about her. So I do not quite know how I will find my way through this, but pray and trust that God will open a door for me.

Jared Diamond, Collapse

Factors in social collapse (not all necessarily present in every case):

1. Environmental/Geographical issues - soil, climate, fragility of natural eco-systems
2. Climate Change
3. Hostile neighbours
4. Collapse or decline in friendly trading partners
5. Response to problems

I am concerned about environmental issues and looking at ways to reduce my footprint, as I realize that the situation now is a type of intergenerational theft. We have eight and a half acres of arable ground - now that we only have one very old horse, I am trying (with my son's help - he works in bush regeneration) to regenerate native species and eradicating introduced species (native to our district - which means eradicating Silky Oak as well). There is a long way to go, but there are definite signs of improvement and at least I have learned to identify a few of the relevant species as desirable or undesirable. Also trying to reduce further use of packaging, electricity and water consumption. It is good that I don't have to drive to work every day this year as I am part time and can take the train to university - would like to have even less car use next year. I am also tryign to organize chooks and vegetable garden so that I can maximise my efforts to grow vegetables. I'm not up to killing the chooks or I'd try to grow our own meat as well. Perhaps I can manage fish when we build a wetland in the front paddock. I also try to apply this at school - always turning off lights and encouraging others by example at least to be more conscious - it was one of my colleagues who dubbed me an eco-warrior - but I don't think the term is justified yet.

Second Lecture: Tuesday 27th March

The Moses Project: I found this lecture again fascinating and inspiring - it seemed to me to integrate my view of the Bible in a way that no church service has yet done. It allowed me to retain the metaphorical/mythological readings which enrich my own understanding of how to live my life.

It also integrated the Old (First) Testament God with the New: the God who acts in favour of the poor, oppressed, and marginalized in both testaments.

The FT focuses on God's rescue of the oppressed slave class of Egypt, i.e. the Children of Israel/ Hebrews - even if the archaeologists have found that they didn't exist as such - and believe that they were really the poor, dispossessed, slave class or apiru, and later, according to the archaeologists, the liberation of the apiru of Canaan. However, with it's more primitive world view, sanctions using violence against the First Born and Pharoah's Chariots, and also grants an exclusive status to The Chosen People. Later the Prophets seek to reignite the flame of this idea when it congeals into a new status quo. Jesus follows in this tradition, but without violence (Turn the Other Cheek) and without being exclusive (the Kingdom of God). I would like to read more about this.

Lead Out

Educate comes from the Latin e- (out of) and ducere (lead or draw) - it means that education is about leading out of the student what is already there. Socrates (according to Plato) thought that the job of the teacher was to help the student to discover what he (mostly he in those days) already knew. This is the underpinning of my philosophy as a teacher.

My other core inspiration comes from Roger West, who said that 'The heart of education is education of the heart.'