Despite having the entire night to work out our next moves, we leave it untill the airport boards say final call to check in for our flight to Arequipa, which was when we had our first panic. (more…)
A good start to the day with an hour of presentations in Technology and Society, a variety of topics but all to do with the Internet and it’s implication on society (in 5 minutes!), Krysia gave an excellent showing for our group talking about the communication aspects. Followed by Chris who as ever entertained us with his talk of cannbalism and the meteoric rise of it since the internet became more available.
After that we had a short test in graphics covering a wide range of the things we had done so far this term. It was stiflingly hot in the room though was pretty uncomfortable to work in.
And then on to design, a bit of a slog where Gail and I just thrashed out a list of metrics to match our customer needs, still need to come up with marginal and ideal values, once that’s done we
should have our target PDS sorted and be able to start drawing something. I miss the days where you could just put your pencil on the paper, see what happened and hand that in as your finished model, none of this defining market nonsense.
Felt pretty tired afer all that but went home and did a few bits and pieces to the GUPA site. I still need a better way of displaying phots, it would be good to integrate flickr somehow but without a pro account or a collection of accounts it would be difficult. And then the pub!
Having seen it on Armin’s site here’s a map of where my readers are from. Having only just set it up, it’s very empty so go on and humour me by adding yourself to it.
Could we set up one for GUFF?
Monday 4th of July 2005.
As I was saying, when we awoke, we were flying over the snow-covered mountains of Chile, stunning to see.
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Today’s the 3rd of November which means that 4 months ago tomorrow I left the UK for a month in Peru. So, starting tomorrow I’m going to hopefully recount my travels with a little entry each day or so and maybe a photo too. Read on for a little piece about leaving Britain. (more…)
At college today, got a lot of soldering done in the morning and we had a full session of metalwork, unexpected as we were supposed to be having another session from Eddie Mack about workshop safety - much more relevant than a lot of things we do, closely linked to the courses we are supposed to be able to teach in a few short months time - but that was moved to next week. In the afternoon we got a little bit of veneer work done but not much. then back home, and that was where the fun began.
I spent most of yesterday doing things I perhaps should have left until other work was out of the way, reading and commenting on weblogs. When I got home I found a couple of comments from David Muir, really enthusiastic and encouraging - thanks for your input David! There was also the chance to read up on all the other blogs I read, there’s list of most them over on the left. Finding such enthusiastic people really motivates me to get involved in the things they are interested in - I can;t wait to get out teaching properly. Richard Ledingham took his first ever lesson today, I remember when I took my first lesson - in the same school as Richard - but the difference is that he will be a real life teacher in August, while I will be stuck in Glasgow Uni for another year after that. What a thought, to be a real teacher with real classes to call my own, I really can’t wait. My own projects to run, my own way of doing things and the chance to really put them into place - not just think about them but be unable to implement them because of the temporary state I am in when on placement.
I find myself not really composiong posts here and instead just writing my thoughts as they occur, it’s an outpouring with very little structure - I should take the opportunity to apologise for that here
I had typed out along metphor for building a house being like teaching a pupil but I realised that it was pretty naff so I’ll just leave it out for now, embarrasing that I even mentioned this much.
So in summary for the day - bottlenecks in craft today because of lack of cramps/vices/cutting mats (/enthusiasm?) followed by only a little work on the things I should have done, to do now - get GUPA working how I want.
I felt I should really put a proper entry here, it’s been so long since I have. I’ve spent tonight playing with a design for a little project that Lordy got me started with, actually got somewhere with it tonight which makes a change, then I spent a little time on the GUPA site. There’s been lots of contirbution from other people and I’ve felt myself getting grumpy about it which I promised myself I wouldn’t do. When I took it over I wanted to make sure I didn’t get too attached to it, and I have done so I’m a little paternal when I see other people using it, in case they might break it, or do things differently from how I would. Must stop that.
Riya - Photo Search incorporating feature recognition. Invitation only sign-up unfortunately
Education adn Society today and it was a bit of a slog, I’ll need to see soon if the slides get put on moodle, it was mainly looking at statistics about poverty and deprivation do to with educational performance. It will probably be a good bet that this stuff will be in the exam in May, a bit like doing Higher Modern Studies again, just learning an regurgitating facts.
After that, a short trip to the flat where I looked at some blogs, in particular David Muir’s EdCompBlog who was writing about encouraging PGDE students to blog while on placement. Blogging about teaching is an excellent exercise, as is writing about any aspect of your life - and I strongly recommend it, there are other aspects of blogs that could impact on education. It also made me think about my lack of enthusiasm for things at the moment, I need to be interacting with the things I am learning about, I can’t take in much about how well kids learn in different levels of deprivation without seeing apects of it at the same time, whereas I can think a lot about how blogs affect teaching when I read lots of blogs about it, or any of the subjects covered in blogs I read…
Then went back into uni only to find the lecturer not turning up, bah!
Back to the flat then for a while to look at some GUPA t-shirt designs then back again for the first Understanding Energy lecture, we’ll see how this course goes but by the end of the first hour we were all struggling to keep attentive, worked through a sheet of questions about energy and the issues around it, which was all well and good - got us thinking, But then we went through the questions as a whole group, comparing our answers to the ones the lecturer expected, very dry and unengaging. In groups we completed about 30 questions in about 45 minutes, it took one and three quarter hours to get through half of them as a whole class and - joy of joys - we get to finish them off next time.
Spent the evening playing with my brother’s database project, trying to get a nice front end onto it. Slowly I’m picking up nibbles of PHP to make it work, but it’s slow progress because I’m in no way learning the language, just using snippets of it.
I spent most of yesterday really thinking I should be doing something. I did manage to get a few things done but very little of it was of any significance. For the most part I was reading Ollie Bray’s blog, Ollie is the new PT of Geography at Dunbar, my old school, and now writes a daily journal of what he’s up to. Most of it is about the potential uses of ICT in the classroom, he’s a member of Masterclass who work a lot to unite apporaches and generate new ideas, another thing I can;t wait toget my teeth into when I finally get let loose on classes for more than a few weeks at a time.
The remainder of third year consists of: 7 weeks till Christmas; 5 weeks holiday; 6 weeks at uni; 4 weeks at school (at last!); 3 weeks for Easter holiday (can I find a way to get into some classes at home, revision sessions maybe…); then 4 weeks more of uni and a whole load of assignments; 2 weeks where the exams slot in then an abyss. And in the abyss… hopefully about 5weeks earning cash then 4 weeks in New Zealand, 1 week somewhere like Malaysia followed quickly by 2 more pennypinching weeks before I go out to school for a huge 10 week block. And that’s what I’ve been thinking about.
How can I make the most of my time when I probably won’t find out my school until the week before, how can I make up lesson plans when I have no idea what resources there will be. Hell, I don’t even know what subjects I’ll be teaching! I want to encourage each pupil in my classes to write a blog for the period I’m there, to have some sort of collaborative project that covers all the main subject areas somehow - a design project probably, followed by the manufacture. Each stage of the way can be documented, dicussed, monitored and steered by myself and the pupils. It reaches out of school yet doesn’t fail to reach the targets of what they should be able to achieve. It would fit in perfectly with a Curriculum for Excellence (successful learners, effective contributers, confident indiviuals, responsible citizens). But how can I do this if I have no idea what resources I can use to make it happen, how much flexibility will I have to do my own thing, will I have a PT who wants me to teach through his plans of work. Is there really any scope for experiementation, other than within isolated lessons, when you are a student teacher? I don’t think there is, not with the current system anyway.
What a purge of thoughts that was! Maybe I’ll streamline them over time into something more coherant
