The Teacher Toolbox

I believe that the beauty if ICT is that it allows teachers to participate in activities that have never been possible in the classroom before now. As a result of my ability to engage children in this type of learning I have had a fantastic 2005 and 2006 both in the classroom and outside.

In 2006 did 8 keynote presentations to around 2000 Kiwi teachers which was a fantastic experience. I also had the opportunity to head off to Seoul South Korea to chat with educational ICT gurus of from all over the world.

A couple of months ago I flew to Melbourne (circa 2000 kms from home) and had dinner with Gary Stager and the NECC keynote speaker Michael Furdyk. Just sitting at the same table as these guys was an honour as I’ve been following there work for a number of years.

Needless to say a good year was had on the professional front. Tomorrow I’m doing a presentation to the staff of 5 ‘local’ schools (Ok it is Australia so local means c. 2hours drive to a central town) where I will do a motivational presentation that will outline just some of the possibilities that ICT offers the classroom teacher.

I will then set them the task of leaving a comment on this blog about what they thought of the presentation. Should be an interesting exercise as most teachers tend to hate filling in evaluations at the end of workshops

cheers
Adrian

PS There are no ICT Gurus in Education… just Us

Today I was asked where the solutions were to the puzzles & problem solving activities on my website. My response in a nutshell is that I think the teacher should work out the solution with the students

Here is my full response.

Dear …

I have a saying in my class, ‘This is Problem Solving, NOT Solution Showing’ lol

I believe that we teachers need to demonstrate being lifelong learners. We need to discuss the metacognition behind solving problems. We need to discuss process, frustration thresholds and the eventual ‘A-ha’ feeling we get by persevering and experiencing success. It is not the answer here that is the learning, it is the process one goes through to achieve a solution.

I’ve put hints on the webpage to guide teachers and students as the week unfolds towards a solution, but I have chosen not to post solutions so that problems will be solved rather having people do a quick web search to find the solution.

We need to build thinking cultures in our classrooms and solving a problem alongside our students is a great start. Plus, I believe it is important that teachers show that they are not the fountain of all wisdom and that we do get it wrong sometimes. I feel that it is especially good for boys to see male teachers not professing to know everything. (Sorry guys hehehe)

cheers

Adrian

It’s a puzzle, it’s a mind bender, it’s a puzzle to solve but best of all it is a fantastic thinking task that uses heaps of skills and encourages motivation towards succeeding at difficult tasks.

In this problem solving activity the students have to blow a coin over the top of the glass but this puzzle is not as easy as you might imagine.

Read more about the task on my webpage and have fun with it.
Maybe get the teachers trying it in the Staffroom

Adrian

Over the last few day days I’ve been updating my educational software site.

I’ve included a lot of the software I use in my professional development workshops and software I use with children.

Have fun exploring these applications.

Adrian

You really need to try Lego Junkbot with your students. You can talk: gameplay, problem solving, guess and check, teamwork, cheating, the a-ha feeling, how certain games lack a necessary checking mechanism to ensure optimal learning (yep they really can handle this last one).

NB Instill in them that you are serious when you say if the solution requires 4 moves or less then ‘4 moves or less’ is what is required. hehehehehe.

Every now and again you run across a child (or an adult for that matter) that their initial reaction to any problem is ‘I can’t’. I’m sure there are many reasons for this, but in the end the person wants you to do the work for them. ‘I can’t’ is a way that they have manipulated people around them and you often find that it has been a very successful strategy for them and that’s why they use it with their teachers, parents and other students.

In order to be proactive in overcoming this ‘learned helplessness’ I try to build the message on this motivational poster into the classroom culture.

‘If you are tempted to say I can’t, have the courage to add YET’

See how you go with it.

Adrian

At the beginning of this year I had several classes (Yr6, Yr9 and Yr10) explore and experiment with this Jungian / Myers Briggs type personality test. They were instructed to do the test in silence and answer the questions as truthfully as possible. The children then had to record their personality profile and use the Internet to find out a bit about their profile. The children had a heap of fun with it and I then had them mind map their thoughts on the test using the software Cmap.

Include: Your name, your 4 letter profile, 5 things that you thought were true, anything that you thought was untrue, anything that if you really, really, really think about you know in your heart is true, who is your perfect workmate (find and name them)? and the one they liked the most… what famous person do you have the same personality type as? (We Googled ‘famous ****’) Opinion – How accurate do you feel this test is for you?

I then asked them to take the results of this test home and talk about the findings with their parents.
The funny thing was that a lot of the students told their parents to do the test so they all knew a little bit more about each other.

Heaps of fun and discussion was had.

I then shared my results with the kids and invited them to share their results with their friends if they wanted to. I was surprised to find that they all were willing to.

Enjoy

Adrian