Reflection prior to term

I can't say it's been the most productive or relaxing break, but it sure was needed. It helped focus what needs to be done, what I would like to do and what has to take a back seat for awhile.

Top of my list is making sure my year 12's are well supported on their way to finishing school. This means resolving the issue of the missing moderation group in the first couple of days of term. I have to get this PD out of the way on the first day back (both the presenting and participating sections)

Next is looking at my yr 10's and completing the action research checklist as put forward for my masters course. I think I need to complete this unit if I am to have any chance of getting the confidence back to complete my masters.

Next is to establish the yr 8-12 maths club for those wanting to promote their academic performance.

Last is to start preparation for semester 2. There are some elements of the yr12 course I haven't taught before and I need to work through the exercises and identify the key points.

Everything else can wait.

Study that supports extrinsic reward

News aggregator Slashdot reports that paying yr 2's to read has fantastic results in encouraging students to read. Kids were paid US$2 for each book read and answering questions on the book answered correctly.

It's worth a read.

Sorry, no $2 for doing it.

Julia refuses to show common sense

Another article showing the arrogance of Julia Gillard in the face of good advice.

Click here.

I hope the "We told you so" that is coming does not cause a complete breakdown in low socio-economic schools and foster the creation of a two tier system. The longer time passes, the more likely this is to become.

Update 13/4/10: Here she is again sounding like a petulant child.

Comment Moderation

I've had to add comment moderation temporarily as a spambot has found the blog (from an Indian University). It means any comments posted will be vetted and will not appear immediately until I've seen them. Hopefully the spambot will move on soon and I can turn it off again.

Russell.

Websites found whilst on PD

I'm not a fan of PD, but I do like the networking possibilities. One of the good things about recent PD was picking up a few online resources.

Jigsaw planet allows you to create a jigsaw that students can reconstruct.

Search-cube is a nifty 3D search engine in the Minority-Report vein.

Flaming Text allows the creation of nifty (though often annoying) animated headings

Screenhunter.com is a free screen grabber for those sick of the PrtScn and msPaint alternative.

Quick and free worksheet creator

Sometimes a student has a basic issue and directing them to MathsOnline or Matheletics is overkill. Other times you may just want a quick diagnostic tool prior to starting a course of work.

http://www.mathmaster.org/ is a great little resource as it freely generates random worksheets and answers for a wide range of simple number and measurement topics. It's tidy, quick and add free.

Being randomly generated generally creates a few sequencing errors but can be good if you are entering a test-retest-retest cycle and ensuring mastery has been gained.

Have a look!

Idiot Minister strikes again

Under the logic of "everyone is using it therefore it is good" our "Idiot of the year 2009" Julia Gillard has vowed to expand the myschool website - despite a raft of public opinion and advice from education circles to the contrary.

Given this logic I suggest the following (with a tongue firmly in cheek):

Everyone likes potato chips, therefore all schools should feed children potato chips.
A large part of the population find mathematics difficult, we should discontinue teaching mathematics.
Kids don't read anymore, we should stop enforcing reading programmes.
Everyone watches television, therefore television is good.
Everyone likes chocolate, therefore chocolate is good.
Everyone wants to be thin, we should all become anorexic.
Everyone prefers holidays to working, we should not work.

Furthermore her assertion that government couldn't have provided assistance to schools without myschool is blatantly false. The government has always had access to this information. It chose not to use it, until political gains could be made from publicising the assistance. This is very dirty politics as it uses children and their futures as pawns in political posturing. It is the publishing of this information, formalising and recognising educational elitism that is the issue.

Popularity, nor usage is a measure of the success of a project. Transparency of this sort has negative and positive effects. The negative effects in this case are not being adequately recognised. The failure of the myschool project will be measured by the negative impact on schools and students. This impact will not be seen in the short term.

Julia wake up!

Link to SMH article here.

Project scheduling "99" rule

The actual project scheduling rule goes like this:

"The first 90 percent of the task takes 10 percent of the time. The last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent."

The way we always said it was:

"The first 90 percent of the task takes 90 percent of the time. The last 10 percent takes the other 90 percent."

This is true of students. Often we can get them 90% of the way there but we don't have the time to get them the remaining 10%. That remaining 10% is found through practice and investigating the concept in a variety of contexts. I'm gaining an appreciation of the well written investigation that goes some of the way to assisting students gain this understanding.

For instance, we recently completed an investigation on radians. By the end of the investigation, students had worked through a variety of uses of radians, applied formula in a variety of ways and had to think about what the formula was comprised of and how it was derived.

This though is rarely done in lower classes - and is a real flaw in use of texts. If questions are presented in method-> practice exercise form, students rarely have to think about what is required to solve a problem. This causes a lack of retention and poor examination results (if examinations are done at all).

I've been thinking that a revision week may have their place in the programme, once a term where students are forced to reconsider earlier work with an element of training how to revise for exams.

I will think on this further.