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Monday, November 30, 2009

Technology in the Classroom

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I have decided that there are 6 ascending levels of technology in the classroom. They go as follows:

1. Blackboard (if you can really call it technology)
2. Whiteboard (hm, guess boards are racist)
3. Overhead projector
4. Powerpoint projector
5. Smartboard (guess boards are intelligencist also)
6. Laptops

A blackboard is the most basic. I consider whiteboards an upgrade primarily because of the ability to write in different colours - even though I was never the type to take notes in multiple colours, in any level of my education, I've firmly adopted the practice as a teacher, and many students follow my lead (or already possessed that habit), making their notes that much more organized and insightful.

Overhead projectors are the next level, and in public education, is probably the level most schools are at, and are attempting to transition to level 4, Powerpoint projectors. By the way, when I talk about schools being "at" a certain level, that means the technology exists in every classroom. In most cases, technology is in either all or just a few classrooms. There are few schools that have, for example, Powerpoint projectors in half their classrooms. It's usually everywhere, or one for each department, for example.

Smart Boards are the new hot thing, and the 1:1 laptop program (where every student has a laptop) is clearly a step up from even that.

Okay, now a bit of context. Ontario public schools are generally at level 3, and almost all schools have bits of level 4, while many have a few level 5s and 6s (by "a few level 6s" I mean computers in the classroom - computer labs are not part of this discussion because they're not in the average classroom). International/private schools have a much broader range - my first practicum was at a fully level 6 school, while many others are 4 or 5, some with a partial 6.

And then there's the low end of the international school spectrum, which brings us to the impetus for today's post. My school is a level 2, with a very few 3s and 4s available for occasional use, and no 5s or 6s whatsoever (there is a computer lab, but it's almost always in use for computer class, and there are no computers in classrooms). I can honestly say that, less than a year ago, I never would have thought I'd be teaching in a classroom without at least an overhead projector.

You might be thinking my whining is a little extreme; of course there are thousands of classrooms far more ill-equipped than mine. But this is an international school, a school for the elite, and I don't see any reason why they shouldn't at least be on par with the public school system in Canada. It can't be for lack of money, I don't think.

Look, technology is not a gimmick. It is a teaching tool, and if you ask me, an essential part of the classroom. Here's how technology would improve my classroom:

Level 3: I would be able to prepare all my lessons ahead of time, so that when the students enter, it's already sitting up there. This forces them to get to work immediately. I would also never have to turn my back on the students, which makes a big difference. They grab onto those moments and it's difficult to wrest the class back.

Level 4: It's cleaner and nicer-looking than overheads, and has many more capabilities. Specifically, it's great to be able to create shapes and insert them into the class slides - which is certainly possible on overheads - but the big difference is, you can animate the shapes with PowerPoint. This is incredibly powerful in math, as you can show shapes changing size, rotating, flipping, etc. Another advantage of PowerPoint is being able to e-mail the notes to the class at the click of a button.

Level 5: SmartBoards may seem like a small step up from PowerPoint, and in many ways they are - many of the main advantages are extensions of PowerPoint capabilities, such as the ability to manipulate shapes and other stuff. I will readily admit I'm no SmartBoard expert, but I've seen some amazing stuff they can do, and I hope to soon be in a classroom with one so I can learn a thing or 2. But I think in 10 years or so SmartBoards could really start to explode - computers are moving towards touch screens, and as more and more people start to use things like iPhones and touchscreen computers, the population will get much more comfortable with this type of interaction, making the SmartBoard a more intuitive and useful tool.

Level 6: I'm sure many teachers would dread 1:1 laptop programs, since they'd assume the students would just be on Facebook the whole time. It's a legitimate concern, and I'm not sure it would be a great idea at my school, but in my first practicum last year, it was amazing. There are huge advantages when this type of program works: the teacher e-mails out the notes ahead of time, so students never have to spend any time writing notes down, and the entire lesson can be spent actively learning.

These aren't just minimal improvements. Each level of technology is a major step up that adds quite a bit of value from an educational standpoint. Except for maybe the jump between level 1 and 2, for which the main advantage is the ability to use colours. Not really that big a deal. And yet it's the only leap my school has taken.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

My First American Thanksgiving

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My first American Thanksgiving also happened to be my first Colombian Thanksgiving. Now, Colombians don't actually celebrate Thanksgiving, but because my school is kind of American, we got the day off. Only they don't really "get" Thanksgiving, so we got Friday off instead of Thursday.

Anyway, my colleague Karen had previously made noise about trying to make some pumpkin pie when Thanksgiving rolled around, so about a week ago I reminded her of this promise, since I love pumpkin pie. Well, we eventually decided to make a whole Thanksgiving dinner, so on Thursday we headed to the local supermarket for supplies.

The biggest question was what we would use for pumpkin, since there are no pumpkins here, and there certainly isn't canned pumpkin. In fact, I haven't seen any pies here (that's sort of a lie, I think there are frozen Sara Lee or whatever ones, but I haven't seen any at bakeries), and after asking a couple of Colombians, we discovered they don't even have a word for pie.

Anyway, we found what we decided was the closest thing to pumpkin, which became known as "The Thing", because we forgot its name. Here's what it looked like:



Yeah, I dunno, some kind of hybrid squash/pumpkin/green thing. It actually smelled/tasted more like pumpkin than anything else. Upon the recommendation of Karen's relatives, we baked The Thing for a few hours to soften it up for the pie. When we took it out of the oven, we really had no idea if it was good to go, but Karen decided to live by the tenet "as long as you can stick a fork in it". I decided this was a lesson that should be applied to many facets of life.

The other challenge with the pie was that we didn't have a pie pan, so we ended up making something more like pumpkin pie squares, but in the end it turned out pretty well.

The rest of dinner consisted of a chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato carrot purée, a Rooke/Rutt family tradition (with The Thing substituting for sweet potatoes), and a salad (Karen took pictures, if and when she puts them up I'll let you know). Pretty traditional Thanksgiving stuff. We had briefly considered the fact that, since Colombians don't celebrate Thanksgiving and don't have any expectations, we could really make anything we wanted and claim its place in the Thanksgiving canon, thus enabling us to include dishes such as nachos or pizza or whatever. In the end, though, we went traditional for our own sake, even if we were celebrating on the wrong day (and in the wrong month).

While dinner was distinctly North American, the guest list was distinctly South American: by which I mean, highly subject to change. When my mom asked how many people were coming I said "somewhere between 5 and 12". When the designated time rolled around, it looked like we weren't even going to fit into that overly broad range; there were only 3 people, Karen and I and one guest, our co-worker Cecilia. Fortunately, Elizabeth, who had been feeling very sick, mustered enough energy to join us, and brought her boyfriend Yoyi. And continuing in the Colombian tradition, 2 more guests wandered in at various points. Though this meant they got cold food, it also facilitated another Thanksgiving tradition: seconds (and beyond). Each time a new guest arrived, everyone (or, at least, I) went for a new round of food, partly to keep the new arrival eating-company, and partly (okay, fully) because Thanksgiving dinner is great.

After dinner, the traditions continued with the traditional loosening of the belts and the traditional almost falling asleep on the couch (despite the lack of triptyphan (I'm sure I'm engaging in yet another Thanksgiving tradition of misspelling that word)). We finished off the wine Cecilia had brought, and soon we were all snugly in bed, full and happy. A very successful Thanksgiving.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

The Science Fair

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So, I bet you're wondering what that picture is all about.

Well, it came about as a result of the science fair my school had yesterday. Let me tell you about said science fair.

But first, I should say that as far as I can remember, I've never been to a science fair. I vaguely remember doing a science fair project in grade 7 or 8, and my topic was optical illusions; you know, the old/young lady, vase/face, straight/diagonal lines, etc. But I barely remember how all these projects were displayed; it might have just been a little in-class fair. And that was the only event I remember attending even coming close to a science fair. In high school, science fairs were an extra-curricular activity that only a few people partook in, and I didn't come across any during teachers college last year.

HAVING SAID THAT, I knew what to expect, since the science fair is a pretty well-known phenomenon. I had even crossed 1 or 2 projects in their preliminary stages, so I was ready.

I arrived at Combarranquilla, the location of the science fair, which is also some sort of cross between a country club and a rec center? That I got a membership to as part of my contract but I don't actually know what the membership does since apparently I still have to pay to go there? Anyway, there were 2 big rooms: one for grade 2-6, the other for grade 7-12. Shortly I was tracked down by Gilberto, the chemistry teacher, who thrust 3 projects into my arms to evaluate, because another teacher had called in sick. This suited me fine, because it would be more interesting than the alternative, being on duty, and would also be considerably less work, since 3 projects really isn't very many. Others were evaluating up to 10 and were busy all day. Oh, and when I went to evaluate the third, for some reason it had already been judged by the specified number of 2 adjudicators, so I really only had to grade 2. On top of that, the remaining 2 were almost the exact same project. And they were about music. I think it's safe to say I got off easy.

So, I totally just used that crazy picture to draw you in so you'd have to read my boring stories. Suckers!

Just kidding, the explanation is coming. Hold on to your horses.

So, naturally, I took advantage of all that free time in a couple of ways. First, a co-worker and I took a leisurely 1.5 hour lunch (who am I, an investment banker?) and walked around the club, checking out their facilities, which included 2 cafés of different fancinesses, a bar, a restaurant, a gym, a pool, a couple of party rooms, and a small cinema, which is currently playing Gone With the Wind, and which I tried to find a schedule for, only to discover the theater opened literally a week ago and they haven't figured out any sort of schedule system yet. (The whole place was only 4 months old, someone told me.)

The other thing I did with all my free time was check out most of my kids' projects. Here are some anecdotes:
  • one group of grade 7 boys studied the effect of cell phones on muscles. In order to do this, they had me hold out my arm without my cell phone in it, and then pushed down on it, instructing me to resist. Then they repeated this trial while I was holding my cell phone, attempting to prove that I was weaker while holding my phone, because of the electromagnetism or whatever. Except that they pushed down WAY harder when I was holding my phone. Haha. I don't know if this was their methodology for the whole project, but, um, guys?
  • another group of grade 7 boys made things out of banana peels for their project. It was pretty sweet, actually - they made soap, air freshener, and one other thing that I can't remember.
So what about that picture?!?!?!?!!? RELAX YOU WILL FIND OUT SOON.
  • A group of grade 8 girls studied contraceptives, asking whether we should use them or not. Their conclusion was that we shouldn't, instead we should use abstinence. Sounds like a sex ed. video. I really have no idea what their methodology was to get to this conclusion, but that's not what I wanted to mention. On their poster, they had a series of 6 pictures of the effects of STDs. While examining the poster, one of them (the girls, not the pictures) asked me if I knew what the second picture was. It was a guy with some sort of rash on his face. I was like "um, I dunno", to which she replied "c'mon Mr., you know what it is." and I was like "um, some kind of rash?" Her response: "No Mr., it's a penis!" to myself: "okay, that is clearly a man's face, not a penis. What?" Then she pointed to the picture, which was a different one from the one I was looking at. It was the 2nd picture in the bottom row (2 rows of 3), so it really could only have been referred to as the 4th or 5th, depending on the order in which you count. I dunno where she got 2nd from. Anyway, regardless of the fact that it was her fault I was looking at the wrong picture, it's definitely embarrassing.
  • Speaking of embarrassing situations, I was checking out the project of 2 grade 8s, a boy and a girl. The girl was really enthusiastic to show me the project, and at the end gave the boy a big hug and said something like "I love (name), we're such a good team!" to which I replied "Great! Good luck!" She misinterpreted this strictly science fair-related sentiment and quickly clarified "oh no Mr., we're not dating!" I told her I was talking about the science fair, which in retrospect was a mistake, because she was embarrassed and probably wouldn't have been if I had just been like "oh, okay."
The day wrapped up around 2:30, and I was hanging out in the judges room waiting for some peeps to be ready to go. It was at this point that someone brought in a cage of 4 hamsters, and announced that the kid who had acquired them for their project had decided at the last minute not to use them, and was going to just throw them away! So the grade 9-10 biology teacher humanitarianly decided to adopt them. Naturally, she was showered with compliments about her generosity, and also one warning from the grade 7/8 English teacher: "be careful, you might get rabbis!"

Thursday, November 12, 2009

(Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things, Part 5

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Before you read this, check out (Colombian) Kids Say the Darndest Things Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4!

Unlike the other entries in this series, this isn't a collection of little darndest things; it's one big, amazing darndest thing.

The set-up: my grade 8s did a project on probability. The first part was some pretty plain mathy stuff, but part 2 involved researching something in real-life in which probability is useful. This actually wasn't very well done, including the one I'm going to relate to you; most kids just made something up that is completely unrealistic. It was mostly my fault for not giving detailed examples of what I was looking for, though.

Anyway, here is one full response:

Keith is totally in love with Annie Jane, and they have been dating since they met four years ago. They both think they make a great couple, but Julien, Keiths best friends thinks they are not meant for each other. So Keith is gonna have two blind dates to see wether he stays with Annie Jane or with one of the new girls Julien have selected for him.

If Keith feels bad, imagine how Annie Jane is gonna feel while she stays at home waiting for Keith to come back from his blind dates.

At the end, he needs to choose who he wants to keep seing his girlfriend of four years or the new girl, Julien have selected for him.

The probability that Keith selects or chooses Annie Jane is

97/100

and that he selects one of the others is

1/100 1/100

and that he stays alone is

1/100

because he is totally in love with Annie Jane and he doesn't even know the other girls.

Brilliant.


Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Steves

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One night last week, I met a former co-worker for drinks. She now works at a different international school, and she was with a few of her current co-workers, and even though I'm trying to avoid hanging out only with other gringos, it was nice to relax and not have to concentrate really really really hard on every word being said.

Anyway, one of these new friends, Tom, told me that he plays basketball regularly with some other teachers. I asked him if I could join in, and he wasn't sure, because it's actually a league, rather than just regular pick-up ball, as I had originally assumed.

On Saturday, I went to a party hosted by another teacher at this other school, which is called Karl C. Parrish. I met a lot more gringos (the teaching staff of Parrish is nearly half North American, as opposed to my school, which has 3 of us), including a couple more members of the basketball team. They told me a bit about the league, and related some fun basketball stories, including one about an interesting character named Steve. Steve, I gleaned, is your traditional nicest-guy-ever-but-incredibly-intense-when-playing-sports. Not to the point of being a jerk, just hyper-competitive. Apparently, you can't tell Steve to calm down, because his response will be (with crazy eyes): "I am calm."

Anyway, I got to experience the legend of Steve first-hand last night, because one of the bball party-goers had been the captain, and he got me onto the team no problem. The descriptions of Steve proved accurate. The best Steve moment was when he was on the bench and an opposing team member was standing close by, waiting for the play to start, and Steve remarked very calmly: "what, are you gonna shoot? you could build a chimney with all the bricks you're putting up" despite the fact that the other team was all Colombian and didn't speak English. Just the Steve way, I guess.

Later on, I was chatting with another team member, Joe. Joe told me he was from Minnesota, and then asked me something like "so, where are you from, Steve?" It threw me off for a second, but then I remembered: in order to get me on the team, they had to claim I was someone else, someone who works at Parrish, I guess. So, on the team, I'm Steve #2. We'll see if I inherit any of the traditional Steve traits.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The Number Two

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The end of the trimester is approaching rapidly at school. Trimester exams start on Friday and run through next Friday. The math exams are on Monday, so I spent the weekend making the two that I had to make (grade 7 and 8). And then, yesterday, I made the study guides for my classes. I printed them off today, and before lunch, during one of my breaks, I looked around for each of my 4 classes to get the study guides in their hands as soon as possible. In the last class I visited, I asked one of my students to bring me the extra copies. She did just that - she found me in the hall right after lunch started as I was on my way to the bathroom and handed a few extra copies to me.

Wow, today's blog entry is just fascinating, ain't it?

Anyway, then I was in the bathroom. (this is only getting better.) I did my business, which in this case was of the prolonged type, as the title suggests. I looked around. There was no toilet paper. I checked the paper towel dispenser - there was nothing there either. So I panicked. This was a single bathroom - no other stalls I could quickly move to. I thought about the possibility of walking extremely carefully to the closest bathroom, but it was a floor down, and a bit of a hike, and I really didn't want to go that route.

Then, I looked behind me and saw the study guides that I had just been given.

Right, so you fill in the rest of the details.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Minca in 10 Pictures

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So I never really got around to blogging about my trip to Minka a couple weekends ago, even though I wrote a whole preview about it. I dunno, I think it was just a little daunting after setting the precedent of a whole week of blogging from my first weekend getaway to Taganga. Anyway, I thought I'd just pick 10 of my favourite pictures to semi-illustrate the story.

(for more on the Minka trip, check out K's coverage!)


We met a Colombian family at a coffee shop in Minca, and they offered us a ride much higher up into the mountains. I had a huge ass-bruise the next day.

I got a lot of great animal shots on the Taganga trip, but this was the only really good one this time around.

High up in the mountains there was a bird reserve. We saw this guy right after entering, which seemed promising, and then barely saw any more for the next 2 hours.

For mom and dad.

Cool mountain house.


Cool mountain mist.

A domesticated monkey. The funniest was when the father of the family we met was playing with it, the little girl of 2 or 3 was delighted, except when it came to close to her, and she burst into tears. This happened on an alternating basis for quite a while.

Cool mountain river.

Dude we found hanging out in our cabana the first night we stayed in Minca.

This is Chuzo, a popular dish around here. What you see are tiny crispy potato shavings, kind of like hickory sticks, covered with a couple of mayo-y sauces. Underneath lies pieces of yuca, a root that's kind of bland on its own, but provides a nice comic foil to the chorizo sausage (it can also come with chicken, beef or any combination of those 3 meats), lettuce and a ton of grated cheese. I actually think it's too much cheese, and next time I stop by my local food stand I'll ask them to hold back. (this picture has nothing to do with Minca, just thought I'd throw it up. The picture, not the food)

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Watching the World Series

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So, yeah, I know, I haven't posted anything in about 2 weeks. It's not that I haven't written anything - I've started several posts only to get stuck about halfway through. I think maybe I'll start posting shorter entries to keep myself motivated, since 2 or 3 paragraph snippets are much easier to whip off in a few minutes. I'm sure you guys won't mind losing some of my long-windedness.

Anyway, something that occurred to me as I'm sitting here watching the World Series: there are many ways to follow a baseball game. You can watch on TV, listen on the radio, or follow on the Internet by following someone's live-blog, or using one of the real-time graphical interfaces like the one on mlb.com. You can combine media to make it more complicated, too - personally, I've watched the game on TV, muted the sound, and turned on the radio, since the Blue Jays' radio broadcasters are great. I've also listened to radio broadcasts over the web while loading up one of the real-time GUIs to get a bit of a visual. Here's another one: I've followed games by constantly texting friends who were watching the games. (it's also possible to text a service that sends you an automated update.) The possibilities are endless.

But I think I've hit upon a new one. I'm following the World Series in a way that baseball might never have been followed before. Here's how it works: I'm watching on TV, but the broadcast is in Spanish, so in order to get some analysis, I'm constantly checking Twitter for updates from the 4 or 5 baseball writers I follow who are tweeting about the game. I call it: "twatching". No, never mind, that's not what I call it, that's terrible, sorry.