Change, underestimated?

Well after the two weeks of the school holidays I have switched on my computer. While during the holidays I used the desktop for skype, email and chat my laptop has sat redundant. Largely this has been due to us moving house but also because you need a break. So with 835 blog articles to read at some point I guess there is a bit of catching up to do on what’s been going on.

It has been good to have this break I feel and not add anything to my Del.icio.us or find anything new and rather give some thought to the things that we can be trying this next term.

I did however still use the computer which I guess shows how much a part of our life it has become. We now have some people we only talk to through skype/ichat and whenever I don’t know the answer to something wikipedia is never far away.

I did do some reading however and this article from the independent generated a bit of discussion in our house about school closures in Knowsley.

The new centres will open from 7am until 10pm in both term-time and what used to be known as the school holidays. At weekends, they will open from 9am to 8pm.
Youngsters will not be taught in formal classes, nor will they stick to a rigid timetable; instead they will work online at their own speeds on programmes that are tailor-made to match their interests.

Children will be able to study haircare, beauty therapy, leisure and tourism, and engineering as well as the more traditional academic subjects.

They will be given their day’s assignments in groups of 120 in the morning before dispersing to internet cafe-style zones in the learning centres to carry them out.

The 21,000 youngsters of secondary education age in Knowsley will also be able to access their learning programmes from home.

There was also some discussion on Derek’s blog which is always worth a look at. But I couldn’t help thinking why do they keep trying these things in schools where there is more chance of it failing than succeeding, I know they have nothing to lose but surely someone needs to take an opportunity with a succeeding school. I know “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” but what if school could actually be memorable for most kids rather that just another gateway.

On less of a high horse note check out visuwords it’s an online graphical dictionary and pretty amazing in how it works.

Technorati Tags:
education, dictionary, newschools

Here’s something that I assume will eventually come to NZ, Google street view as viewed on google maps. Some cities in the US are completed, the following image comes from Castro street in San Francisco.

This from businessweek

Maybe you’ve seen one cruising the streets in your city: A platinum gray Volkswagen Beetle with a camera that looks like a small disco ball fixed to the roof. They’ve been driving the streets in major cities across the country, snapping some 125 million images to be digitally woven into 360-degree views of everything from New York’s South Street Seaport to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.

For a laugh check out some of the random images snapped at mashable.

Technorati Tags:
streetview, google, geography

Also of note is the experimental Google timeline which can be found here and Keith’s Blog Mataenglish.

Came across this video on the viral video chart and it interests me the power of these sorts of videos which we can access free.

 Interesting that in it the people actually state “we could sell this” but here it is on youtube for free. For us as teachers it really allows us to find some up to date resources and discussion starters. I particularly liked this one as it reminded me of the old Wonderful World of Disney documentaries that played on a Sunday night back in the eighties.

I have also came across a few more games thanks to other blogs.

Stop Disasters: Has a good sim city feel to it like electrocity that i have blogged about earlier yet this gives scenarios based around fire, flood, earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunami.

Ayiti: This game from TakingITglobal is about resource use. Also worth looking at is the TIG site itself which is an online community designed for youth who want to make a difference.

Darfurisdying: I guess the title gives it away but coupled with the darfur layer in google