Web 2.0 Services Pulling the Rug Out
It has now been three
FrenchFM Worksheets
Here are the worksheets for our FrenchFM channel on YouTube:
Pilot Show - Download FrenchFM Emission Pilote worksheet
Episode 1 Tricolore #1, Unit 1 - Download FrenchFM Episode 1 worksheet
Episode 2 Tricolore #1, Unit 9 - worksheet coming soon
Mass Student Shock Reaction
I announced on Thursday morning at assembly that our school had acquired 3D Virtual property.
When I made this announcement there was a shock-reaction amongst all our students. It was one of those spontaneous crowd response moments. There was a some laughter, but it wasn't mocking laughter, it was disbelief laughter. It was quite an electric moment.
The shocked reaction of the students in itself holds a lot of meaning to me.
Why would students be so shocked that technology they'd almost all be accustomed to, is being used in a school context? Why is it unheard of?
The tools that our young people use to connect socially & to express themselves creatively, ought also to be provided to them in school and harnassed for learning.
I announced that we were wanting to recruit moderators for the virtual world & that we'd let them in early. At the meeting I held at lunch, there was an overwhelming crowd and I had to turn many students away (they came back the next day to an alternative meeting).
On Friday, the day after the announcement, a core group of students had filled in applications to be moderators and had permission slips signed.
So I set them up.
I write this on Sunday evening. What a weekend it has been.
On Friday night there was chaos... students trying every wacky thing they could. Objects strewn everywhere. They immediately discovered all kinds of stuff I didn't know existed. One student wore about 8 parrots on his avatar. Others discovered they could become dinosaurs.
On Saturday I gave some of the students plots of land to build on. By Saturday night one of them had created a shop. By Sunday morning he had stocked it with a virtual version of our school uniform.
By Sunday evening, more buildings, including a paint-ball maze and a parrot shop with a teleporter to a building way up in the sky.
And that's the students, while several of my colleagues have worked on some beautiful facilities near a waterfall, and a 'fortress of physics' up in the sky. (My colleagues are on Twitter - @tim__barrett and @peter_robson).
Update on our Teen Second Life estate
Here's how things have been going...
Before Christmas we placed an order for a Private Estate in Teen Second Life, which is a 3D virtual world that users themselves create and build.
The order came through a few weeks ago, with me set up as the estate owner. From that point only I could access our virtual estate! Since then we've transferred about 5 of my colleagues who showed interest last year. In a few more days we'll transfer another 20 or so who've shown interest in the new year.
We still have to set up a system to allow the creation of student accounts. I'm waiting on Linden Lab to get that set up for me at the moment.
In the meantime, I've been terraforming our estate, ready for its first inhabitants!
I've set it up as an island covered with forest. There's only one small building... as if we're settlers in a new land.
Today I've spent some time creating special surprises for students (& teachers). I want to create a lot more before our settlers arrive.
Click on the images below to make them open in their full size in a new window:
A view of the island. Hmmm the mountains look a bit ridiculous and pointy, don't they?
This looks like just water... but...
even though under the water looks normal too... there is a hidden cavern under this sand!
So how to you get in? Well there's a hidden entrance to be found...
And after following a long, windy passage you get to the cavern under the sea...
So, next I thought I'd try something more ambitious - a much bigger hidden cavern in the middle of a mountain. As you can see, to create these hidden caverns you have to dig a ditch in the landscape and then cover it up with a ceiling... you then disguise the ceiling to look like the landscape.
Here I've just added the first parts of the ceiling over two huge, steep arms that I've extended from the mountain.
A few minutes later...
And now we jump to the final version... I had huge troubles disguising both the ceiling and the front covering. I ended up shoving trees everywhere! This will have to do for now, oh well!
Finally, I've noticed little shapes appearing around the island. A good sign that my colleagues are beginning to experiment with building.
I've have plenty of conversations with a range of teachers who are keen to give this a go with their students. I'll blog as it happens!
Punishing Students for Behaving like Adults
I often wonder about how teachers set up rules for students that adults never have to worry about. Lateness, in particular, comes to mind. Adults show up a little late to stuff all the time... but they're on time for important things, and sometimes they're early. So why do I put so much mental energy into maintaining a military regime of punctuality? Sure, punctuality has some worth, but have we perhaps lost a bit of a sense of proportion?
Anyway that's not what's on my mind right now. I ran a whole series of 30 minute training sessions for our school conference this week. The sessions went wonderfully, with my colleagues attending in droves and having a ball, and learning heaps. By all measures I couldn't be happier with what was achieved.
But I noticed a whole series of interesting behaviours in my class of colleagues. Some didn't read the instructions on the board and got stuck for this reason, some raced far ahead of me, and some remained several steps behind. When I gave instructions, in my assertive, clear teacher voice, many of my colleagues were clearly tuned out, focused as they were on what they were doing at the time. Indeed they'd talk over me, incessantly.
I smiled to myself about this even at the time. All my colleagues wanted to learn, and they were getting on with it, in their own way, through experimentation, asking the person next to them, and yelling out for me to come over and help. It was very loud and chaotic, and wonderfully fruitful. They learnt far more than if I had insisted on confining them to some rigid master-plan, relying on an 'all eyes on me, listen to me!' approach.
The punchline, obviously, is that teachers try to eradicate the very behaviours that, from what I saw this week, go hand in hand with great organic learning.
I think we do this because we assume bad faith, like we're trying to get students to do something they don't want to do. Therefore, we have to wrench control of student behaviour. In the result, we sell ourselves and our students short, and learning limps along slowly and stressfully.
But if you assume good faith, then there's no need for control, and from the chaos springs great, often unexpected, and always idiosyncratic learning.
We shouldn't
stamp on our students
when they display behaviours
that we ourselves display
when we're learning!