SKO's blog

I’m on holidays. I’ve been on holidays now for about 6 weeks. Four and a half of those weeks (up until yesterday) I spent with my leg in a brace and walking on crutches. That gave me some time to think since walking was quite an effort! During that time I finally did something with some photographs I took a few years ago. And I thought I’d share it.

I lived in the USA from the January 5th, 2004 to August 28th, 2005. Whilst there I worked as an au pair in south-eastern Pennsylvania. One of the things I set out to do while I was in America was to photograph a licence plate from every state. I didn’t actually realise how great of a task this would become until I found out I was to be living in a fairly rural area with zero public transport, no tourist spots (well besides Lancaster which was 40 minutes away and Philadelphia a good hour away) and 90% Pennsylvania-licenced vehicles (the other 10% were Delaware-licenced)! I did do a little bit of travel through the west and east coasts, as well as being lucky enough to visit New Orleans in the South a mere 2 weeks before Hurricane Katrina. But in my year and 9 months I nearly didn’t succeed in photographing all the licence plates.

Alaska turned out to be easier than I thought. Hawaii I got in a Kohls carpark in Delaware. Oregon I got while trespassing (with permission!) on someone’s property in upstate New York. Montana I got near John Kerry’s then house in Boston. And Nevada I got in a Jersey City carpark. From memory, the hardest ones were Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wyoming, and Montana. I wanted to make sure I got the general licence plate for each state so in some instances I took photos of states I knew I already had just to be sure.

I almost thought I was going to fail in the project after I’d left my host family in Pennsylvania to travel the west coast for 2 weeks en route back to Australia and I still had about 5 states left to photograph (I wasn’t happy with the Montana photo I’d taken in Boston because the word Montana was in a shadow and hard to see). I managed to get the last state – Nebraska on my last day in the USA. I’m pretty sure I took my first photograph on my first day in the USA. So I was pretty happy.

Below are the results of my project. If I managed to photograph your car and you’re reading this, I’d love to hear from you.

For some reason the Flickr slideshow embed code is not working, so here’s a link to the page I’ve saved them on. And here’s a video I created because I had a bazillion hours of spare time with nothing to do:

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As much as we don’t like to admit it, we’re all selfish. We live our lives selfishly everyday. You might read that and disagree. You might be someone who helps others all the time. You’re not selfish, you think to yourself. You do things for other people, you think of them before you think of yourself. But why? Because at the end of the day, helping others makes you feel good about yourself! Of course doing good things for people will make you feel good about yourself. Doing good things for yourself makes you feel good too.

I think despite what we want to think, humans are born to be selfish. It’s how we take care of ourselves. Think about it, when you’re a baby you cry when you’re hungry, tired, or need to be fed. Because you have no other way of letting people know that you want something. When you start crawling around, you want to explore everything, you don’t care who or what’s in your way. When you start to get stronger, you’re not satisfied with crawling, you want to walk.

But walking’s not enough for humans. They want to talk. So you can ask for what you want much easier. Then you get a little older and you want to make friends, because friends help you learn to socialise, learn to communicate effectively in society, and you can have fun. Who is benefiting from this whole thing? You.

When you become a teenager, you fight with your parents, because you want to prove to them that you can be independent. Because being independent means you can do more of the things that you want. You want to get your drivers licence so you can get around easier. You might also use it to drive other people around. So you’re helping others. But it feels pretty good to do that hey?

When you’re in your 20s, most of the things you do are for yourself! You might travel. You might be trying to find/start a career. You might be thinking about getting married, or get married. All of this is to make – you guessed it – you happy!

In your 30s, you’re most likely taking care of your kids. You want to make sure they get the best you can give them. It feels good to be so uncaring of yourself right? At the end of the day you’ve given life to someone else. That must make you feel great!

In your 40s, you’re probably still taking care of your kids. You might still be working. Or you might not be working. You might be looking for work. You might be thinking about going back to studying. Or you might be doing none of this. You might just be trying to get through every day. Why? Because you want to feel good about your life. You want to make sure you’re happy… Any patterns here?

I was thinking about how selfishness is seen mostly as a negative virtue. People accuse others of being selfish. They never compliment people for being selfish. Why is that? When we’re born selfish really. When you accuse someone of being selfish are you thinking about why they might be acting the way they are? Perhaps they have something else going on that you don’t know about. By accusing them of being selfish, you have placed your expectation on them. That seems selfish. Why expect others to be who you want them to be? Let them be themselves.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being selfish. Most of the time. Being selfish gets you through life.

Filed under: life | Tagged: selfishness | 3 Comments »

Golly is my nickname.  I started a 365 day photo project.  You can see my blog here. Or join the Flickr group here. By the time you read this there should be a few photographs already on there.

Here’s a sample of my first few shots:

Filed under: photo 365 | Tagged: flickr, photo365 | No Comments »

My last post was about reflecting on the things I learnt last year.  I’m a big believer in everything happening for a reason.  I think that every person who comes into our lives and every experience we have – be they positive or negative – happen in order to teach us something.  I don’t like to have any regrets.  Sure there are things that have happened in my life that I wish could have happened differently, but I don’t like to have regrets.  Because to me a regret is a lesson unlearned.

2009 was not a great year for me.  I would like 2010 to be better.  Based on some of the lessons I learned in 2009, the following is a list of things I would like to do professionally in 2010.  And I hope along the way these and all my other 2010 experiences will teach me something.

Plan better
I’m not the world’s best lesson planner.  I have a good memory, not great, but good, so much of my planning is done in my head.  Or on the go – which can often be the best if your students are intrigued by something you hadn’t actually planned for… I digress, anyway, this year I want to plan more technology into my teaching of Chemistry.  It will be made slightly easier by the fact my Science department is going paperless for the first time this year.  We’re the only department to do so and we’re trialling all of our staff using tablets instead of laptops/desktops.

Take some time out
I really LOVE my job.  Sometimes too much.  I don’t get enough down time and I think in future years that may affect me negatively.  So I plan on taking time outs from working outside my working hours.  Sometimes.  This includes Twitter!

Encourage others
I want to be someone who inspires.  Not someone whom others are intimidated by.  For whatever reason I seem to come off as aloof to many people.  When I speak I’m quite confident but I don’t speak up about issues unless I’m confident in what I’m saying.  I believe that technology is a HUGE part of education now.  I am trying to come up with the best way(s) to encourage my fellow staff without intimidating them.  At the moment they’re intimidated.  I think more about the technology than me though.

Blog/tweet regularly
I plan on updating this blog more regularly.  It is starting to gain some more followers so I plan on sharing more practical resources that I’ve learned and how I’ve learned them.  And less rambling posts such as this one!  My PLN is developing quite nicely on Twitter and a couple of nings so I want to continue to use these resources to my advantage.

365 Day Project
This is just a random idea I sort of stole from Alec Couros (@courosa on Twitter) who posted a link to a Flickr slideshow he’d created of the year. (seems many people have this idea… I will be posting to EdTech 365/2010 on Flickr).  I want to take a photograph everyday this year.  I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with the photographs – whether I’ll publish them somewhere or not.  I’m not a professional photographer.  I’m probably not even an amateur one either.  But I want to take a photograph of something that has meaning every single day.  Hopefully I manage to do it.  Maybe I’ll learn something along the way.  I also plan to blog about this, but perhaps not on this blog.  Will update again with the URL.

I want to be able to look back at this post at the end of 2010 and see if I fulfilled my goals.  And write about what other lessons I learned as well.

Filed under: teaching | Tagged: edtech, photo365, PLN, prediction, reflection | 2 Comments »

So it’s nearing the end of another year and it’s the time when everybody gets reflective about the year that has passed. In keeping with that, I thought I’d share some of the interesting things I have learnt during the year that Twitter took off!

Early in the year, I learnt that if you really want something that badly you can do it if you put your mind to it. I had always been fairly thin, very fit and never worried much about what I ate. Although over the past few years I had been putting on some weight, in the end it was about 20kg in about 3 years. I started to feel really disgusted with myself and lacked confidence in much of what I did. In March I decided to do something about it and went on Jenny Craig. I was so dedicated to losing the weight that people started making comments almost straight away. I was very diligent with my eating, and I started exercising again. I was starting to enjoy life again. Over 6 months or so I lost about 15kg and was much happier.

In 2009 I learnt that adapting to a new syllabus is HARD! Especially when the teachers involved are not supportive of the new syllabus. Putting things off until the very last minute is NOT a good idea! But because of good, supportive staff within our department we rallied together and managed to finally get our Chemistry work program approved – only 2 months late!

In 2009 I learnt that I LOVE my job.  I always knew that I liked it, but this year I really realised how much I love it.  I went through some fairly emotional times personally throughout the year, which I don’t need to get into here, but the people I work with were absolutely amazing.  Understanding, supportive, and helpful in any way they could.  It taught me about the value of humanity.  But not only the staff, the students too.  They genuinely care about each other as well as their teachers.  It’s absurd!!

In 2009 I learnt about Web 2.0.  I started using Twitter, Delicious, wikis and I started this blog.  I still have a LOT to learn, but I really think that is what it’s all about.  Our job is about learning.  We say that we are trying to create (for want of a better word) “life-long learners” in our students, but really to do that, I think we have to be life-long learners ourselves.  I intend to be anyway.

In 2009 I learnt that I might actually be an alright teacher.  I had never taught Grade 8 before, and this year I had a Grade 8 class for tutor group (roll call, form class, whatever you normally call it) as well as 2 subjects.  That meant that I saw the same 20 excited, silly, immature (compared to all other Grade 8 classes), high demand, amazing students for at least 40 minutes, often more, EVERY day!  At the end of the year they secretly put money together to buy me a Christmas present.  Everybody paid.  And we had some students in our class who have NO money (indigenous students who get maybe $20 a month – sometimes).

Also I had a REALLY difficult Grade 12 class who I’d taught since they were in Grade 11.  When they were in Grade 11 they used to verbally abuse each other all the time.  And in fact, 2 of them got suspended earlier this year for physically assaulting each other (one boy, one girl).  Much of the lessons last year and for some of this year were me being a mediator rather than teaching them the subject.  By the time they finished, I got gifts from over half of them; I got: “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me for the past 2 years” from the most difficult ones; and all of them asked me to write in their yearbooks.  It made me thankful for the effort I’d continuously put in to them (only to be treated like crap again the next day).  In their final semester, some of them got their first A’s.  I was incredibly proud of the changes they’d made in 2 short years.

In 2009 I learnt that I really shouldn’t play sports that require rapid directional changes, twisting, or jumping because my knee can’t handle it! Consequently, I will be spending my entire (besides about 1 week at the beginning and 1 week at the end) summer holidays (8 weeks total) on crutches unable to put weight on my leg after I went through my 2nd ACL reconstruction:

From this:

To this:

In 2009 I learnt that patience is a virtue.  I know that is an old saying so let me explain to what context I’m referring.  I’ve been teaching at my school for almost 3 years (give or take a term) now and the first 2 years I worked as a supervisor in the boarding house as well as teaching in the day school (we’re a co-ed day and boarding school).  This required me to work about 17 extra hours per week.  I LOVED this work as well – getting to see the students in a different light.  Learning about the different places they come from (China, Hong Kong, Germany, Northern Territory, cattle stations all over north Queensland, tiny isolated Indigenous communities in Cape York, tiny islands in the Torres Straight [between the tip of Australia and Papua New Guinea], and small country towns in the outback to name a few).  I loved it.  But I needed some time to myself – some of the reasons for this I cannot publish on here.  So I resigned from boarding at the beginning of 2009, after a great deal of deliberation with myself.  By the middle of 2009 I realised that I really do enjoy the boarding work, and by the end of 2009 was given the opportunity to return, in a higher paying, more responsible role.  Patience is a virtue.

The most important thing I learnt in 2009 is that in order to be happy, sometimes you have to make a little bit of an effort.  If I hadn’t made the effort to lose weight, I would still be unhappy.  If I hadn’t accepted help from others, I would still be unhappy.  If I hadn’t bothered learning about Web 2.0, I wouldn’t have discovered my amazing PLN.  If I had refused to teach Grade 8, I never would have met an amazing, inspiring bunch of students I hope to teach in the future.  If I hadn’t put a mound of effort into my Year 12s, I would still resent them.  If I hadn’t had the surgery on my knee I would have continued to hurt myself at random, unpredictable times – sometimes whilst walking in a straight line minding my own business!  And if I hadn’t spoken up and told my Principal that boarding makes me happy, I would never have gotten a promotion.

So, please do something that makes you happy in 2010.  Or do a bunch of things that make you happy, even if they require a little bit of extra effort.  Whatever you do, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, or whatever religious festival you celebrate and that 2010 teaches you how great life is.

Filed under: life, teaching | Tagged: 2009, happiness, knee surgery, reflection, teaching | 2 Comments »

This is another blog post taken from my staff PD blog, but I thought I’d like to share it with the rest of you. Many of you would be far more versed than me in the use of most of this Google stuff so I welcome any comments you might have.  Also if anyone can tell me why that silly RSS image is a funny shape/size even though I uploaded it onto my other blog without any problems, I’d greatly appreciate it!! <– seems to have righted itself…

Lately I have been flabbergasted (to say the least) at the extent of Google apps (applications) that are available online. Once you realise what Google really has to offer, it makes sense that the Google brand is worth about $100 billion. Why do we care what Google’s worth? Because Google can offer us a number of products – or applications, all of which are FREE to use – that we can utilise as teachers. I’ll attempt to explain as precisely as possible the main ones that might be of interest to you. If this info is too basic for you, check out Google for Educators or Google Tools for Schools.

There are of course the ones most of you would have heard of:

• web search
• image search
• maps
• video
• news

The above apps are all fairly self-explanatory. Did you also know that Google owns YouTube as well? They do! Please read about the following list of apps that you may or may like to check out for your own use. The ones labelled with an * require you to have an account with google.com (which just means you need an email address – doesn’t have to be gmail).

Scholar
This is a search engine that searches academic documents such as journals and other similar publications. Great for senior students.

YouTube
You can actually create a YouTube account of your own (see how to do that here) if you want to upload your own videos. Of course, you don’t have to have your own account if you just want to view videos. You will have to know what you’re looking for though. You can embed videos onto blogs, wikis, websites, nings, etc. by copying the (HTML) embed code located next to the video. Alternatively, you can just copy and paste the URL of the video. If you want to download the video so you can also put it on a PowerPoint document, go here for instructions on using savevid.com (just click on “How Can I Download Videos”).

*Calendar
This app is again, fairly self-explanatory, it is a way of keeping yourself organised, and it can be accessed online. That means you can look at it anywhere where you have internet access, regardless of whether or not you’re using your own computer. Go here for a more detailed explanation.

*Docs
Docs is short for “documents”. This app allows you to not only save your own Word, Excel, Powerpoint and PDF documents online, but it allows you to edit documents from anywhere. You can also share your documents (or not share them if you so choose) with anyone you choose. GoogeDocs can also create online forms you can use to survey people and the data will be collated in a spreadsheet – also saved into your GoogleDocs. Check out this video from the GoogleDocs community that shows how teachers and students have used GoogleDocs:

*Reader
Some people like to read blogs or subscribe to newsgroups. Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of all the blogs or websites you want to read, because they’re updated all the time, and we don’t always have time to go back and check each specific webpage. You can subscribe to the RSS feed of your particular blogs/newsgroups and they will be saved in your Reader for you to read at any time. You can even read them when you’re offline. This makes it easier for you to keep up to date on the things that interest you. Webpages with the RSS feed logo (see pic below) located in the URL bar will allow you to subscribe to them. Sometimes the logo is blue, but normally it’s orange like this:

Gmail
This is a web-based email client that you can sign up for. It’s the same as Yahoo! Mail or Hotmail or any other kind of web-based email program you have used before.

Chrome
This is a web browser. Much the same as Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. It is supposed to be super fast (faster than all those other ones) and is now available on Macs in a Beta version.

Picasa
This is photo editing software. It’s very similar to standard photo editing software that comes on both Macs and PCs however it has some more features you might like to use. This app needs to be downloaded on to your computer, but can also be accessed online. Check out this video to see the features of Picasa:

Finance
Interested in finance and the stock market? Check out Google Finance. I know nothing about finances and therefore cannot really comment much on this app but I’m sure if you go there it has all the information you’re looking for.

Labs
According to Google:

Google Labs is a playground where our more adventurous users can play around with prototypes of some of our wild and crazy ideas and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them.

There are plenty of interesting Labs apps that are easy to play around with – such as City Tours, which suggests walking tours for you based on an area you are in (uses GoogleMaps). Or Image Swirl which is just a more creative way of showing image search results, see example below:

Wave
This is a trial project and only available to users by invitation. It is like instant messaging on crack! Users can collaborate on documents, or just have real-time conversations. Educators are quite a keen bunch of wave users. I haven’t really found much use for it unless there are a large number of people you wish to collaborate with. The users that are participating in waves are invited by the wave participants. Check out this link to get a better idea of GoogleWave. For those that are interested in trying out GoogleWave, I have some invitations – just email me and I will get you set up.

LASTLY, but by no means least, check out Cybraryman’s Google page – it contains absolutely anything Google-y a teacher would want to know (it’s WAY better than this blog post!)

Filed under: web 2.0 | Tagged: chrome, gmail, google, google calendar, google docs, google labs, google reader, google wave, picasa, RSS reader, scholar, web 2.0, youtube | 1 Comment »

An issue I’m facing at the moment is how to begin successfully implementing web 2.0 tools into ICT! In ICT, which really should be the forerunner for using web 2.0! We can use it in other subjects but if we’re not using it in ICT what’s the point? So I’m trying (with support/help from my HoD) to design units for year 8 and 9 ICT that will use web 2.0 tools and successfully allow students to not only understand the implications of their digital footprints, but begin stamping their digital feet. Because what surprised me this year was that very few students really know how to use many web 2.0 applications. Social media to them is for gossip and games.

When I set my year 8 students a task to write on our wiki what they use technology for, half the class failed to complete the task – they didn’t really know what to write. These are students who use the internet everyday. When I set them another task for the wiki – to include a website (just one) they think would be useful to the other students in the class, three quarters of the class were unable to complete the task. Because the (only) parameter I set were that the website must have some educational benefit – I even said they could include games. I think that parameter was too hard for them to understand. Their immediate instinct was to go to google and search for educational games and click on any link whether it had the word educational in it or not! Then play the games and hope I wouldn’t think they were wasting my time.

What this experience taught me is that our students are using technologies without knowing what kind of real benefit they can gain. Without realising that the internet is more than something you can just access whenever you feel like it. Digital citizenship is not even a term many of my students would have heard of. This scares me as from what I read and witness, today’s youth generation are playing violent video games that require you to kill a certain amount of people or beasts or aliens or other fantasy-themed characters, before advancing to the next level. They do not see that they are killing things, they just see the killing as a means to advance. This tells me that they see through the messages in these games, and perhaps they cannot see the harm their online behaviours on social media sites like Facebook and Myspace are doing.

How can we emphasise the importance of creating a positive digital footprint? How can we emphasise the importance of our students not involving themselves in cyber bullying or other inappropriate online behaviours? One way might be to show them this video:

Find more videos like this on The Educator’s PLN

Thanks to Steve Johnson for posting this on the Educator’s PLN ning. I would think many of my fellow teachers would be interested in viewing this video as well. The only problem is, how do I get them interested too? But that is for another blog at another time…

Filed under: teaching | Tagged: digital footprint, online behaviour, PLN | 2 Comments »

Edtech is quite a new journey for me.  In fact, I was invited by a fellow teacher at my school to be a part of an IT focus group that was tasked to learn about Web 2.0 techniques over our June-July three week break and report back the following term.  Three weeks.  That’s all we had.  We were made up of 2 teachers from the junior school (Prep – Grade 6), 2 teachers from the middle school (Grade 7-9) and 2 teachers from the secondary school (Grade 10-12) – we all teach at the same school.  We were given a short list to help us start. Most of the things on the list I can’t remember, and I’ve lost the list so I can’t write them here!  But the most important things I do remember are:

• Twitter
• Nings
• Wikis
• Delicious

I definitely remember checking out the websites of all the “things” (I can’t come up with a better word than “things”) on the list, but I remember focussing mostly on the list above.  After some time browsing each of the relevant sites I signed up for accounts on twitter, ning.com, wikispaces.com and delicious, and started this blog.  I immediately became hooked, although this was not really a surprise since I’ve always enjoyed technology.  I was surprised at the speed at which I was able to connect with others – I’m not referring to internet speed, I’m referring to how quickly I was able to find others online to collaborate with on this edtech business.  After my short 3 week (well if I’m going to be truthful I didn’t actually spend any of my holidays researching – I spent the week I was forced to be off work due to contracting H1N1 on my return after the break researching!) foray into these tools, I thought it would be a good idea to try out a wiki on one of my classes.

I had the perfect class to try this on – in our middle school we run this class called Investigations.  It’s pretty much that – you have the students investigate pretty much anything you (or they) want and then assess it.  So I tried it with my Year 8s.  Ironically these 13 year olds had never heard of a wiki.  But when I explained that Wikipedia was the first ever wiki, they started to understand.  This particular class was quite a high needs (without actually having any special needs students) class – many individuals who all demanded individual attention a lot of the time but believe me, by the end of the year I had grown very attached to these students.  Anyway, they ate up the wiki concept.  They learnt (for the first time!!) how to:

• email using their school accounts, and attach files
• create hyperlinks
• use different types of text formatting
• upload (rather than copy and paste) images from the web
• upload files
• add a widget (an avatar from doppelme.com) by copying/pasting the code into the wiki

They also learnt a little about personal safety online and they heard and understood (also for the first time) the term social media.  Although this was only through a few lessons of classroom discussion.  In the future I think it’s probably best for me to set up an actual lesson plan for these sessions.  But throughout the whole unit (which ended up lasting about 12 weeks) I became more and more excited about the prospect of using web 2.0 at school.

Next year, for the first time I will be teaching ICT (I’m a Science/PE teacher but offered my services to the ICT department should the need it).  Apparently my enthusiastic approach the the IT focus group gave others the impression I was fully capable of being a “tech expert” at school.  I personally believe all my knowledge of web 2.0/edtech is solely due to what I’ve learnt on Twitter.  Anyway, I’ll be teaching Year 9 ICT and have been asked what I think should be taught.  What I think!  Wow, I was completely flattered.  But very excited.

This is where you come in!
This year in 9 ICT they did Gamemaker and web page design (students only take ICT for 10 weeks – there are other “electives” in grade 9 they take for the rest of the year).  I thought for a while about what I wanted to do next year.  That is where the readers of this blog come in.  I was thinking about keeping the gamemaker idea – or doing animation instead, and changing the web page design section to either developing wikis or a ning.  My problem is I really have no idea where to start.  The school has recently purchased an Adobe suite that contains CS4 which I believe can be used to create animations.

If anyone can point me in the direction of where I could start planning this 10 week unit I would be grateful. I would like to go with the animation creation as well as developing a wiki or ning. If anyone has taught these and would like to suggest somewhere for a beginner (both students and teacher) to start I would really appreciate it. Please leave your comments below.

Filed under: edtech, teaching | Tagged: class, edtech, ICT, PLN, teaching, web 2.0, wikis | 1 Comment »

After writing my last post, I found an amazing post written by Stephanie entitled Shift Happens – What Now?  Please visit this link, it is an amazing read and probably a solution to many teachers trying to get other teachers interested in tech.

http://www.ed421.com/?p=453

Filed under: teaching, web 2.0 | No Comments »

I haven’t really been blogging on this blog much lately – too busy at work with end of year stuff (marking, reporting, functions, etc.).  But recently a particular issue close to my heart has reared it’s ugly head again.  I tend to write a lot when I’m passionate about something so I will try to limit myself to what I feel is REALLY relevant!

The issue of age discrimination has ironically been close to my heart since I was very young.  I have experienced many knock-backs due to my age, being offered the excuse that I wasn’t experienced or knowledgeable enough to do certain things.  How do you expect to gain experience or knowledge without being given a chance?  And now, despite finally being given a chance – and a promotion – at work, I was still reminded that I am quite young to be given the new position.  Was the reminder really necessary?  I know how old I am.  I’ve always known.

While I have personally been affected by age discrimination for being too young, I am well aware that we make many discriminations against older teachers in the workplace as well.  Especially lately with the advance of technology.  Many of the older, more experienced teachers find it harder to learn these new techniques simply because they have not grown up with them.  Yes that is true, they have not been exposed to computers and technology since they were infants like the students of today have.  Some teachers may not have been exposed to computers for even the first decade or more of their teaching careers.  But that’s where the problem lies.  Teachers using this excuse are kidding themselves.

Unless you have worked in an extremely remote, economically deficient school for the past 5 years, you would know that the students of today use more technology outside the classroom than anything else.  When we teach lessons to students we constantly have to evaluate ourselves to make sure we are engaging the students, allowing them opportunity to develop skills and techniques, getting the message across.  Engaging the students is normally the first step in reaching the students – we can’t expect to develop their skills, or for them to learn what we are trying to teach if they’re not interested in listening to you in the first place.  Engaging students is about piquing their interest.  How do we as teachers pique their interest if their interest is something we know absolutely nothing about?

Let me attack this from another angle.  I have been out of high school for 10 years.  As a teacher I am teaching from different syllabi to those which I learnt from, despite teaching in the same state I was educated in.  This is because the syllabi are being updated.  So everybody has to follow the curriculum.  But along with the curriculum, the students we teach are also changing.  Why do we not change our approaches?  Age has nothing to do with it.

For the past 6 months I’ve been developing a PLN (personal learning network) on Twitter and other sites.  I’ve been developing my digital footprint and trying to learn ways that I can use technology as an educational tool.  Most of the members in my PLN are older than me.  Many of them are from the baby boomer generation, or older.  Very experienced teachers, yes, but they are all digital immigrants.  They have taught themselves, or learnt from others all about educational technology.  But the point is they have made the effort. The have not used the excuse that they don’t have time.  They have not used the excuse that it takes them longer to learn than other, younger generations.  They have not used the excuse that they didn’t grow up with today’s technology.  They have seen that using technology as a tool in education will eventually become a prerequisite and they don’t want to get left behind.  They have seen that embracing the use of technology in education has benefited their teaching as well as their students.  They are all willing to share their knowledge.  It’s a pity so many people still don’t want to hear it.

I do not want to discriminate against older teachers based on their inability or lack of desire to use technology in their teaching simply because they are older.  I have dealt with discrimination against being too young my entire life.  But I am sick and tired of hearing the excuse that it’s all too hard.  It is not too hard and many teachers prove that.  Some of my favourite teachers when I was a student were quite old.  My physics teacher was in her 60s when I had her and she was my favourite teacher.  She knew what interested us and she knew how to get our attention.  Age was no barrier for her.

For the past couple of weeks I have been writing a blog for staff at my school yet the only people who have read it are the two teachers that share my passion for embracing technology.  One of them is the Head of ICT and the other is the librarian.  Yet even these two have only read the first post.  Even the other staff in my own department (normally a very supportive department) have admitted they haven’t read any of my posts.  Because they don’t think they’ll understand.  Or because they don’t have time.

As the “tech expert” at school I am fully aware that I know very little really about technological tools to use in education.  But that has not stopped me from trying to learn.  So I follow other educators on Twitter, I belong to educational nings and I frequently read blogs written by other educators.  I also spend a considerable amount of time using my computer.  I am passionate about my job and I am passionate about the students I teach so I want to make sure to engage them.  People better not continue to use the excuse that it’s easier for me to make connections with students because I’m young!  Age is no barrier.

Filed under: teaching | Tagged: edtech, generation gap, teaching | 7 Comments »