General

English is Fun

Probably since the first grunts of English – or any other languages come to think of it- there have always been arguments between the purist grunters and more evolutionist grunters about the proper and correct way to speak. Some linguists feel we should all speak the Queen’s ‘English’ while others would argue that even the Queen herself doesn’t speak the Queen’s ‘English’, anymore.

However there is at least one phenomenon of English that welcomes change and free expression. Not only that, it ever so neatly leads on from my last blog. As you all know because you all read it ‘blog’ is first and fore most a Portmanteau word.  Portmanteaus are new words that are made from two words spliced together, making a new one, blog being a combination of web + log. Like playground slang Portmanteaus throw up new examples which reflect their age. Consider Bollywood from Bombay + Hollywood fanzine from fan + magazine and motel from motor + hotel. Needless to say that the internet, not content with already saturating itself with new jargon, is busy making portmanteau words out of portmanteau words that have only just come into existent; blog and span advertising is blam, fake and blog is flog.

Don’t be content with just using other people’s portmanteaus, make your own. I’ve been test driving the word fugget, a combination of fun and nugget. I use it to express the idea that fun or happiness are not in endless supply but quite precious. Fuggets can be viewed in relation to time or money. Spending lots of money won’t necessarily gets you lots of fuggets , but that's only a guesstimate.  Try your own and do some portuction.

Checkout   http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/portmant.htm

http://home.tampabayrr.com/memawscorne/word%20play%20fun.htm

Half a mouse brain

According to this Guardian article researchers at IBM and the University of Nevada have used the world's biggest computer to stimulate half the activity in a mouse brain for ten seconds. The computer was slower than a mouse brain unfortunately and so the simulation only really ran for one second. The equivalent of a mouse thinking 'I smell cheese' I would imagine.  It's interesting to see how far away computers are away from human thought, in spite of their impressive records in chess games, but it also prompts some reflections on the impact of silicon memory on our own rather impressive cranial furniture.

Pre-literate societies are big on memory - Homer kept all 24 books of The Odyssey and The Iliad in his head for instance - but as soon as people learn to read they start 'dumping' memory onto paper. This means that detailed arguments can be reproduced and new generations can talk to old ones rather than learning things by rote. The Greeks were the first truly literate people and that's why their intellectual achievements stand out even today.

In my grandparent's generation everyone had a party piece, a song or a poem that they could recall to entertain people. Who needs to remember the words of a song now when you've got an iPod or even a karaoke machine? Equally, when I was at school I knew that I could read some old newspapers if I was prepared to dig them out of a microfiche at the local library; nowadays the entire Guardian and Observer archive is online and I can, if I make to make the effort of walking over to my computer, read past newspapers from Australia to Zimbabwe.   

It seems we need to know less and less but be able to access more. This is a challenge for teachers in the 21st century. This article from the UNESCO Courier (see what I mean?) Suggests that we risk a great deal if we don't manage our memory usage better.

I will be discussing some of these issues at my course on December 5th. Hope to see you there.

Using computers in education

Hello, I am posting this as the trainer who will deliver Using ICT for RS, and Using ICT for English, and Using ICT for PSHE.  I'll keep this general so that readers can get a sense of who I am and my position on education.

First, I am not a technophile.  I don't think that every teacher should be an expert in ICT, nor even that every teacher should have to use ICT if their teaching isn't improved by it.  I can think of a number of teachers from my own schooling whose lessons were interesting because of who they were, for whom pupils worked hard because we respected them, not because of flashes and whizz-bangs.  My dad was a case in point: he taught English from 1956 to 1997 and was always a brilliant communicator, and he never used PowerPoint.  He didn't use computers to help children to appreciate Macbeth or to learn to use appropriate register for a letter of application; yet children responded to his clarity, his consistency, his kindness, his enthusiasm and his encouragement - the only performance management targets that matter.  The work of teachers like him is not  improved by using computers if their hearts are not in it: their work is ruined.  I am angered by the number of inspiring, caring, competent teachers whose work has been hampered by vacuous, facile dictats from Blairite ministers who have seen in technological investment a politico-economic opportunity for state subsidy of the profit-making sector, under the guise of equipping our children for the demands of the 21st century.

But just because politicians saw political reasons for embracing new technology, that doesn't mean the new technology itself should be discarded.  I think that there are immense liberal, humanising benefits of using computers.  Democratising creativity and professionalism.  Enabling blistering knowledge transfer that leaves more time for processing.  Making cross-cultural communication quick and easy enough to be meaningful for more children.  My only interest as a teacher is to enthuse other people to enjoy the world, and to learn to benefit from it by exploiting opportunities for helping others.  I want other people to be able to find as much matter for growth and flourishing in a Chinese proverb, in Socratic questioning, in Islamic art and architecture, as in Hamlet and Beowulf.  And then to use that growth to benefit someone else's life.  Computers help me to do that better.

And whilst working as a teacher I found that I enjoyed helping other teachers to use computers with their pupils.  So that brought me to OSL.  If you'd like to use computers to help your pupils enjoy their work more, to broaden their horizons, to help them be more engaged and more successful, then I look forward to seeing you at one of my sessions next year!

Cars Scraped

Part of my journey into school takes me onto the M4 and Hammersmith flyover. Yesterday this area had several laminated signs posted along it saying 'Cars Scraped - Free' and then a telephone number. I did not note down the telephone number as I was too busy wondering why people would want their cars scraped. Is this some sort of insurance scam? Or possibly people in West London like to have their cars scraped to give them an authentic urban look?

On the other hand it might be that several people went to the trouble of printing, laminating, and hanging up these posters near a very busy road without noticing that the key word in the ad was misspelled.

Google SketchUp

Most people have heard of the astonishing Google Earth and the wonderful photo display and manipulation program Picassa but Sketchup seems to be  less well known.

SketchUp is essentially a 3D design program which can be used to make models in Google Earth but it can also be used to provide interest in geography, maths, art and citizenship lessons. The program allows you to pick up snapshots from Google Earth which can then form part of the 3D environment. The measuring tool within the program automatically scales itself to the snapshot which means that geographers can do all sorts of survey work without leaving the classroom. Maths classes can explore 3D plotting in a context that makes sense to the students and art students can produce aesthetically pleasing building designs. In citizenship you could add new buildings to an area to enable discussion of planning decisions.

SketchUp is free and is available here.

School sizes

There is a fascinating article in The Observer about school sizes. Apparently debates about class sizes of 30 plus are not even in the right ballpark any more. We ought to be looking at school sizes of around 150. This idea has been around for a while and is discussed in The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. He points out that hunter gatherer societies rarely have group sizes over 150; that some churches impose a similar limit on congregation size; and that GoreTex never use business units over this 150. I also came across an article suggesting that our brains simply can't cope with groups larger than 150; we can't retain enough data about each individual above this level.

One implication of this is that teachers must always be stressed as in most schools teachers with a full class load tend to deal with about 200 students.

The other question that sprang to mind was what would the curriculum look like in a 150 student school?

Put a bit of Colour in your Life

The word ‘blog’ is one of those words that have some sort of mystery about them, an expectation that there is something special, something that some people know about and others don’t. I remember having a similar feeling to the word ‘barbeque’, it sounded exotic and exciting, it came as something of a disappointment that all it was - was cooking outside - rather than in the kitchen; the main difference being that the food got burnt more.‘Blog’ almost falls into the same category, on the surface the only perceivable difference, between a blog and an article is: - one is on a page of paper and the other on a webpage. Just to make sure I’m not getting the wrong end of the stick I googled it. Wikipedia give the technical answer: ‘a blog (portmanteau of web and log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. ‘Blog’ can also be used a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a Blog’. It goes on to mention that blogs can also cover particular subjects such as food, politics or local news. Perhaps the best description of ‘blog’ is the one that does what it says on the tin; that a blog is a diary of web sites visited with comments about them plus a few thoughts and ideas made available to the world . That sounds good to me. So here are a couple of websites I’ve visited………

http://www.citycol.com/basic_skills/dyslexia%20%20newfonts.htm

http://colormixers.com/mixers/cmr/

fun and fairly interactive.