Monthly Archive

… whether some things are thought through before one opens one’s mouth.

Our Federal Government intends to introduce legislation that will see parents lose welfare payments for up to three months if their children are found to be habitual truants.

I’m sorry, I know I’m only a humble teacher, but even I can see that not only won’t it work, but it misses the point.

Firstly, since when has any principal had this discussion with a student?

Principal: “Why are you skipping school, Johnny?”
Johnny: “Because my parents are on welfare, sir.”

A quick Google search uncovers articles such as this one that remind us there are multiple reasons for student truancy.  Family dysfunction, cultural misunderstandings, substance abuse, bullying, poor health, and (goodness, gracious!) poor quality schooling and/or student disengagement are just some factors.  Family poverty or ineffective parenting skills are only one piece of the puzzle.

Secondly, given the multitude of reasons for truancy, the government’s proposed “solution” will fail because in many cases it will not address the root cause of the problem.  Stopping welfare payments is an easy way to satisfy voting taxpayers and give the appearance that something proactive is being done for the good of all.  A far more challenging, yet effective solution would be to drop the “Digital” from the government’s Digital Education Revolution and broaden the revolution to bring learning, not just the technology, into the 21st Century.  Has anyone considered that truancy would be reduced if all schools were safe places that every student wanted to attend?

Finally, this breaks the first rule of good classroom management, namely label the behaviour, not the child. This policy perpetuates a stereotype that truants come from families on welfare, or vice versa, that families receiving welfare payments produce truants.  Is there evidence that none of Australia’s truanting students come from well-off families?  Or is it that their truancy is not an issue because their parents aren’t costing the taxpayers of this country in social security?  Even if majority of truants come from low socio-economic backgrounds, they need support, not punitive punishment.  For a political party known as the champion of Australia’s working and lower classes, this policy could be considered to be not just ill-conceived, but offensive.

As a postscript, a survey of visitors to Yahoo!7 indicates that more than two-thirds of people think parents should lose welfare payments “for their kids wagging school”.  Of course, this survey has all the statistical integrity of a Today Tonight or A Current Affair phone poll.

Perhaps this is a topic that I should have treated with the contempt it deserves.

USB Flash Drive

Originally uploaded by Ambuj Saxena

Following my recent post, I’m now pleased that I received delivery of my new flip ultra video camera on Friday.

So why does this post have a picture of a USB flash drive?  Because it has everything to do with what I’m now going to do with my flip ultra.  The children in the class have speeches to present in the next couple of weeks (it’s an annual, whole-school initiative).  Mine will be the first class where the students’ presentations are recorded (using the flip).

This will not only provide us with a record of the speech to support our assessment data, but I’ll also be sending home each child with their speech on a USB flash drive.  The parents can then see exactly how their child went, and even copy the file to their home computer.

Now yes, I know, this could be very easily posted to the web in this Web 2.0 world.  We could even provide password-restricted access to them if we wanted.  We have given the parents some access to the Web 2.0 world this year, with our class’ homework blog, Travelling Trevor.

This project, however, may help to ease our parents in a little at a time rather than confront them in a huge way.  The way I intend it at present, it’s all pretty easy and non-threatening – play it on your computer, praise your child, save a copy if you want, and send the stick back to school.  Next term, I intend (with some colleagues from other grades who also attended the IWB conference), to prepare a much more technologically-rich learning unit with a digital portfolio as part of the deal.

So, for the rest of this term, I might work bit by bit to lead them up to that.

Today I’ve arrived in Melbourne for the 2008 Interactive Whiteboard Conference at Firbank Grammar School in Brighton, Melbourne.  It was a fairly last-minute decision to come, along with two other colleagues from my school; a decision helped by the recent increase we now have planned to our IWB rollout for 2008.

For me, this is my 2nd IWB conference, the first being two years ago at Castle Hill when we knew little of the tool and were looking forward to installing our first one in the library.  I’ve now worked with an IWB for about a year.

The hope for myself then, is that I can take myself further and go away with ideas to use the IWB to encourage even deeper and more effective learning in my classroom, rather than get the starters (although that’s where my colleagues are at, and we’re taking some different workshops accordingly).

I also hope that this conference is also about more than just the board.  Castle Hill was great two years ago because it had a broad spectrum of content that looked at a range of applications of technology in the classroom.  It was in a workshop led by John Pearce at that conference that I signed up to Edublogs and started up what is now Learning Curve (it didn’t have such a catchy title then; which means you’re now thinking “good grief, what on earth was it?  Surely it couldn’t have been worse!”).  I was introduced to blogs, wikis and podcasts – things I have used since and seen the difference they’ve made in the classroom.

Finally, I hope I can continue to stregthen existing, and make some new connections out of this experience.  I’ve already met up with colleagues I was introduced to at Castle Hill, and hope to meet some more people sharing the same journey.  The networks are what really helps us as professionals in feeling supported, encouraged and motivated; not to mention broadening and extending our own learning.

IMG 4596

Originally uploaded by iamhannah

I’ve found a new gadget that I want to try. It’s the Flip Ultra from Pure Digital.

I’ve been looking for a video recording product for the school for a while now. So far I’ve been leaning towards some of the SD-based cameras out there so we don’t have any tape dramas, no internal disks get damaged if the camera cops a accidental shunt from a student, and we can get files onto the computer via USB or a card reader.

All that was until I came across this on Marco Torres’ blog. Not only does it all look great and very easy to use, it’s very smartly priced – always a good feature for schools looking to maximise the limited dollars. All reports indicate that one of it’s great features is it’s abilities in low-light situations.

So, all I need to do is get one for the purposes of testing for school. Perhaps I can get the kids using it too…? Maybe they’ll need to get it out of my hands first…

Three just come to mind right now…

1. I was acting assistant principal today.  Ok, that’s a very long stretch – a system leadership meeting in our Diocese today left me as the second teacher in charge.  Fortunately things went nice and smoothly.  What I really enjoyed was being included by the teacher in charge in the day’s happenings around the school and treated as a member of the team.

2. I’m going to Melbourne.  It was a last-minute decision at our school to send at team to the Interactive Whiteboard Conference that’s on next week at Firbank Grammar.  I’ll write more later, but it’ll be the first time I’m travelling such a distance for the purpose of professional learning.

3. I’m using Ning.  Well, sort of.  IWBNet has set one up for the conference.  I’m signed up, now I just have to get on to using it.  Another Web 2.0 tool I’m finding a need to become familiar with.