Week 3

American Michael Phelps wins a record eight Olympic gold medals in the pool, Grant Hackett misses out on his third consecutive 1500m win ….. and it’s Monday in the technology lab discussing spelling, creative writing and reading to children.
Oh, and good news from the net. Anna Snowstill won gold in the women’s triathlon taking Australia’s medal tally to nine.
Now down to business … Greg opened up with an introduction to a spelling exercise which was quite cute. Switch on computer, create a word document, turn off monitor and repeat and tap away after me:

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plainly marks for my review.
Mistakes I cannot see.

I strike a key and type a word.
And wait for it to save.
Whether I am wrong or right.
It shows me straight away.

Switch on screen and hey presto, a mini spelling test without the spell-checker. We then discussed our mistakes in the typing and how to recognise children’s problems with spelling of similar sounding words (eg) straight and strait, plainly and planely.
We then moved on to creative writing skills – a ditty of an exercise. An example is below.
Create and write an introduction to a story for two minutes and then shift to another computer and continue on with the narrative. I think I gave a young character who enjoyed eating pastries, bulimia. But we won’t tell Sze.

A boy named Buddy.

He’s tall, dark and handsome and kicks plenty of goals for Hawthorn. He can kick goals from almost anywhere – except 20m out in front of goal. But all Hawks fans love the No.23 in the gold and brown jumper.
Of course, I’m writing about Lance ‘Buddy’ Franklin – the star full forward for the mighty Hawks.

Well a hawk fan may worship at the alter of saint buddy, but as a committed Collingwood fan (and thus lifelong masochist) I find myself more often resenting the the draft system which rewards mediocrity, (more often though, how does Collingwood get it all so wrong so often) I also love to whatch the number of points that this supposed superstar manages to kick each game. Yes he gets a million shots at goal, but if he scores at less than 50% he’s useless!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Buddy Franklin decided that he had had enough of playing footy. So went to Bali and became a Nun.

The exercise highlighted the skills required to develop a story – structure, detail, spelling, excitement, humour, sentence and paragraph structure, extending vocabulary and use of compound words, pronouns, common and proper nouns, verbs and adjectives.
Greg stressed that to undertake this exercise, you should know your class. We don’t want to encourage any cyber bullying or covert stalking in our classrooms.
At the morning lecture Greg discussed issues and strategies surrounding students working and learning in an online environment. How do we as teachers, protect children from cyber bullying and untoward websites, blogs, chat rooms and online communities? We must encourage students to behave responsibly and safely in such an ever-expanding cyber world and culture. Privacy and respect were the two glaring standouts for me in this discussion. Protection of privacy and property and respect for others – you treat other people how you would like to be treated – are the mantas here.
Greg has already got me nervous about introducing website investigations / projects / exercises into the classroom. I admit I’m a little old-fashioned in regard to using the web in class. I think it opens a can of worms, a genie in a bottle, a recipe for disaster … and there’s plenty more clichés where they came from.
And damn those Poms! They are going to beat Australia in the Olympics gold medal tally. Let’s hope for a few more Aussie gold and few more provocative technology issues before the week is up.