I just a call to do a demo class for grade one students at a local primary school. Now when you are doing a demo class you don’t really know what you are in for. I had already been teaching kids in China for a number of years now, so I always expect the unexpected. But I never expected what I was getting myself into this time. Most schools have what they call a multi-media classroom that sits around 300 students. So when I got there, there were around 300 students sitting in their class groups and they were squeezing more in. The multi media classroom is like a mini lecture hall with the teacher at ground level and all the students are looking down at the teacher. All I had was a cordless microphone, a whiteboard and an overhead projector, and a whole bunch of flashcards I brought myself. The whiteboard was near useless as the pens were not very bright and the kids couldn’t read.
Anyway I turned it into an entertainment event. I would say “How are you?” and then point the microphone to the kids and they would yell back “How are you?” or “I’m fine and you” depending on how much English they knew. Then I would call out the class groups, like Class 1 and they would answer. I would do this hopping between classes. As I held out the microphone to each class, they tried to yell the loudest. Then I walked up and down the stairs to get a bit closer to the students. And they were making the most of the microphone. I would keep the questions really simple like ‘How old are you?” “What class are you in?” On the stairs I could ask “What is your name?” As long as all the classes had a chance to speak, they loved it.
Then I started showing the flashcards. They were simple animal flashcards ideal for grade 1. I would put the flashcards up on the overhead projector, sliding them into the light so the whole flashcard slowly slid into view. And the students had to guess what animal it was. It was actually dead silent in the classroom as I slowly slid the picture down into view. Then the yelling started. As they all tried to out yell each other. Then I would put the flashcard up on the whiteboard, with little magnets I used to carry with me. I made up sentences with the flashcards., like “What color is the elephant. Class 1?” Class 1 would answer and if they couldn’t I would call another class. As long as every class was involved they loved it A lot of fun had by all, and to date I would say that is my most successful class. It was my introduction into ‘Teaching Goes Massive’
Teaching kids in Asia is a ton of fun, but you need to put in a bit of effort. Kids love you if they can do things in your class, as there is a lot of pressure to succeed. If you can turn your class into a fun class and the kids learn a sentence or two, then everybody is happy.
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It is about the trials and tribulations and how having young modern teachers with internet experience and a principle who wanted to use technology even though she didn’t know very much about it herself.
The young teachers were using power point in the classrooms and the classes all had internet access. Just standard stuff nothing spectacular.
I’ve been teaching ESL to kids for a number of years so I know what I am doing. But in China you, as a foreign teacher are expected to do the unusual without any warning.
I started off my China experience in the standard classroom in a primary school with anywhere between 30 and 70 kids in a classroom. That was standard and i perfected my flashcard and drawing on the blackboard teaching.
But then In China nearly every school has a lecture hall they call a multi media classroom, seats probably 300 and you have a book projector and a white board at the front plus a hand held microphone. It is like a lecture hall with the teacher at the bottom and most students staring down at you. To save money they figured if they put me in there I could teach all the classes at once, except they forgot to tell me that they had changed the schedule. When I got there there was every grade one student, 6 year olds, about 400 of them sitting everywhere. On the stairs and they brought in extra seats for the gap at the front. The kids were actually seated in their class, in the big hall with their English teacher controlling them. I think there was 8 classes in there.
It was a very successful class, i turned it into an entertainment event and the kids loved it, but they all knew me so that was a plus. I taught all the kids in the whole school this way. That was from grade one to six. This was my first experience of teaching a very large class.
Now we get onto the internet bit. I was back to teaching one class at a time and the school, being a private school had to upgrade to get a higher rating in the private school list in the city. So they put these huge 2 meter TV screens hooked up to the internet in all the classroom. There was one young English teacher there who spoke perfect English and had never left China, but she spent a lot of time on the internet. And she figured with my help we could join up all the classes in one grade and i could teach one class and the other classes could watch the class on the TV.
That was easier said than done as the principle said we could give it a go as long as it cost nothing. First we tried secondlife.com. I had a strange feeling that is where she went to speak English. It looked good but not really very engrossing and the kids faded out very early on in the class. It was easy to set up we just downloaded the software to most of the computers in grade 1 – 5 and 6 year olds. We had one avatar on each computer. Secondlife dropped the under 13 level I think so we were all on the main virtual world. The little kids were fascinated but the parents were not to impressed, which is nothing unusual.
But in secondlife I couldn’t do anything like the flash cards or writing on the board. So the kids could only repeat what I said. And they could yell and scream as much as they liked and they could hear themselves and they loved it. I used to call out the class number so they could repeat what I said, instead of all the classes answering at once. We all met at the Library of Primitives Sandpit in secondlife. And we could make as much noise as we wanted and nobody cared. The underlying learning theory
The only learning theory we struck was Collaborative Intelligence where the class functioned together and followed me the teacher. The mass brain of everybody in the class made the learning memorable. We could have used a bit of the Multimodel Meaning with flash cards and chalk and voice. The other learning theories fell by the wayside. That was because the classes were all kids and all Chinese and they were learning English words and simple sentences.
It was really good and we did what we set out to do. Which was one teacher over many classes. To be honest I faded out before the students as I was just repeating myself. After 15 minutes i think we were all pretty bored, so we started looking for something else.
So we tried ustream.tv. Now ustream.tv has two big glearing issues, one the screen size is fixed, you can’t go to full screen and there is no return audio, everything is done through a chat box. But it is very easy to set up and very easy for the classes to hook up to ustream.tv and watch the class. But they couldn’t join in. It was live and I could use the flash cards and write on the whiteboard, which kept me happy. The size was an issue and after the kids realized that I couldn’t hear them they lost interest. When we were on secondlife the kids knew I could hear them so they yelled as loud as they could, and they tried to drown out the other classes. The Technology in practice
So we went looking for a free audio and video conference call with as many windows as we could get. To teach all the classes in one grade we needed seven screens. I already had an account with oovoo.com and had used them before when they had 6 screens. Now they have 12 screens, just what we were looking for. We had to download the software just like secondlife, but the learning curve to get it all set up was pretty easy. That meant showing the other teachers how to get online and join in the class. In most of the grades there was an internet apt student that could put it all together.
Anyway we played around with the screen sizes and somehow managed to keep my screen on top so I hogged most of the screen, while the classes videos were on the side bar. Anyway the kids loved it as they could see themselves and me and they knew they were live. In most cases there was just my screen and the class screen visible to one class. We started off with all the classes on the one screen but then we slowly cut a few off. Also we could record my screen and the kids could watch it again whenever they liked.
We thought we were set and we were. The principle took a liking to ustream.tv since the whole school was linked on ustream. And the principle could give talks live to every class and to the whole school. Before she used to use the speakers now she used both. Critical reflection
We finally got all the bugs out of the system and everything was back to normal until. I worked for a private school company and they had a number of schools scattered around the edge of the city. The owners came and had a look at what we were doing and they were very impressed. They wanted to make sure we were not breaking any rules to do with putting stuff up on the internet. Then when they realized we were not uploading anything except me they were quiet happy.
Everything was going well until the foreign teacher left one of the other schools. Then we had to go and set up that school, so they could also receive the video lesson. It was just enough as there were 6 classes in each grade. We had a few more teething problems but we got it together. I first had to go to the other school to give lessons so the kids got to know me. And this way I could alternate between the schools to give the main lesson to different classes. I was doing that now at the main school, so I was actually teaching a different class each time.
When we had a guest teacher in who was just going to give a talk. We would either hook them up to secondlife, so the whole school could join in and listen and ask questions or ustream it. And the kids could just listen.
Having all the classes linked together gave the school a lot more options. Some teachers were worried they would lose their jobs but they were still needed to keep control of the classes during the video lessons. Conclusions and recommendations
Follow Nike and just do it and learn as you go. If you don’t know something “Google it” As the process evolved we changed to keep up. It was a process but it was more about learning what was available as opposed to following a set pattern. We knew what the end product was to be, all we had to do was get the tech so we would get the end result. We basically started with the end in mind and worked backwards. We re engineered the tech to suit the end outcome. We looked at lots of different tech but since we had the end in mind it was easy to ditch what wouldn’t work like Moodle or other LMS platforms.
A big part of teaching kids is flashcards. Kids love pictures, mainly because ‘a picture tells a 1000 words’ and it is easier to remember a picture. Have a look at the videos to see how I introduce a picture. I usually get the kids to show the flashcards.
Now with flashcards you can do many things. As long as the flashcards are in plastic covers or basically indestructible there is a lot you can do. But your flashcards will be ripped, screwed up, thrown around and whatever else little kids can do. And you will be amazed at what they can do. I have my flashcards in plastic folders and the kids still manage to rip some. At one stage two kids both wanted the same card, and they both had half each and were pulling as hard as they could. The card survived but only after I took it off them. So expect the unexpected.
For kindergarten the most common game is find the card – you put about 6 to 10 cards on the floor and call out one card and the kids has to find the card. I used to hang the cards on the blackboard, if the blackboard is magnetic. I hang around 10 on the board just high enough, so the kids couldn’t grab the cards. Then draw lines down between the cards and draw a little hand on the board.
To draw the hand I would get a kid to put his or her hand on the board and then I would draw around it. Next I would line up up to 10 kids, call out the name of the card, and suddenly realize how much the kids didn’t understand. Then I would call out another name, then another and another.
I do everything fast and the kids are running all over the place. They loved it. Next I’d get another 10 and start all over again. And that usually meant drawing the hand again. As some kids sole aim in class is to rub out everything you write on the board. This is easy to set up, just takes a few minutes and the kids love it. And you can do it many times. The kids don’t seem to get bored as they are running all over the place, and there are new pictures.
If you do this on the floor expect the cards to be thrown around, trampled on, pulled apart and generally destroyed. So try and use the blackboard. If the board is not magnetic I have problems. In one class I tied a piece of string across the blackboard and used clothes pegs to hold the cards. It was OK except the cards keep falling of the string and then the kids would rip them apart to give them back to me. Magnetic boards are the best.
I like to make sentences up on the board and the kids love it. See the video. Even though there are a bunch of cards on the board, the kids love it, as long as it is fast and there are not to many cards on the board. In the videos I use lots of cards, but usually I don’t use that many as the kids get lost and lose interest.
Teaching Kids whether kindergarten or primary school in China is a wonderful experience. So start your working life after you leave university by going to China to teach kids. Or for that matter you can go at any age or anytime you need a change. Getting a job is really no problem, whether you get one before you leave your home country or after you arrive. Check out my book about getting a teaching job in China, and you will see how easy it is.
Now when you go for a job the first thing you have to do is a free demo class. You are put in front of a class and you teach it with a few teachers and administrators watching. So be prepared. If your demo class is good they expect all your classes to be similar.
Some demo classes are daunting. I don’t know if that is deliberate, or the school just wants to see what you can do. In some cases you are doing a demo in front of nearly the whole school. In some out of the way places that will happen, especially if you are volunteering and end up in a village. You could end up doing a demo in the village square, with the whole village watching.
I’ve had to do demo classes in a park with whoever wants to watch, watching. Quite embarrassing to say the least, but you have to soldier on.
It might be an idea to upgrade your public speaking skills. As I have had to do demo classes in lecture halls in front of around 1000 parents, teachers and whoever just dropped in. In one primary school they put me in the multimedia classroom and gave me a microphone. All I had was an overhead projector and a whiteboard. In front of me there were all the students from grade one, about 500 of them, sitting in their class groups. So expect the unexpected. For this class I used flashcards. The whiteboard was no good, because the pens where not dark enough, and the kids were too young to read. I used class groupings and the class turned out excellent. The students loved me, and that is what you want.
Peter Legrove has nearly finished his new book taken from his experiences of teaching English in China. He recommends after you or your children finish university spend some time teaching English overseas. It is a great experience and you might learn the language of the future.
Teaching English As A Second Language In China
China is screaming out for English teachers. Just go to any of the teach English job sites and you will see so many jobs you will be paralyzed. Go to Dave’s ESL cafe at http://www.eslcafe.com/ and see what you can find. There are many job sites like http://www.tefl.com/, but here they would like you to study for there ESL teaching certificate, but you don’t need really need one. No one ever asked to see my certificates.
After you get to China this is the job site to use http://www.echinacities.com, This is the job site for getting jobs once you are in China. If you just want to find out about life in China have a look there. Also try out this website http://www.jobteachworld.com and do the online CV so your CV is up online.
Just remember in China a lot of sites you use everyday are blocked in China. Like youtube and Facebook. But that is not a problem just take an unblocker on your laptop or on a stick. I use- ultrasurf -and that worked extremely well. Anyway someone in China will give you an unblocker. That is not a problem. You have to take the download with you as most unblocker sites are also blocked.
I put my video CV up online on jobteachworld as it is not blocked, whereas most video sites are blocked. But you can put a video up on the Chinese video site like youku and tudou. They are possibly the two most popular sites.
Now for an introduction to China all I can say is ‘Be amazed’. I don’t think anyone outside of Asia has any idea about what you will expect and neither do you. I say “Welcome to the next superpower” because that is where China is heading. The whole place is moving, everywhere you go there are people and lots of them. And they are all enjoying life, spending money, buying things, eating out and what ever.
Get a recent copy of “Lonely Planet China” and follow it until you have a fair idea of what you can do yourself. Landing in China is very daunting, you can’t read the language and you can’t speak it so follow the book. It is chaos to the max.
Japan is very organized, Korea is not crowded but it is a bit of a disaster, until you know what you are doing. At least you can get a seat on the bus and the trains. In China forget it. Standing room only on the buses and trains, you get used to it.
Buses have numbers so as long as you know the bus number you should be able to find your way around. The subway stations are in pinyin so you can read them and it is pretty idiot proof. And a lot of the subway people speak English, or they will find somebody who does. So it is pretty good.
If you start in Hong Kong the shock will not be so great. Hong Kong is an overcrowded place that used to be the Pearl of the Orient but it got left behind as China overtook it. I used to live in Hong Kong but I never go back there now. China is the place. Hong Kong has stayed the same while China just bounded ahead. But you can get acclimatized in HK to the chaos when you go across the border.
Years ago when you went across the border between HK and China you used to go back in time. Now you are going to the future. After you come out of the immigration building, you just stroll to the railway station, about 5 to 10 minutes. Your last quiet stroll in China.
Once you get to the railway station, welcome to China. The lines to the ticket windows can be anything from 20 people to the back wall. Sometimes less than 20 but not very often. When you get to the window just say “Guangzhou” and get your ticket. You need your passport to get a ticket so have it handy. Some windows have an English sign meaning they speak English, so it is pretty straight forward.
The tickets are pretty self explanatory with the train number, your carriage number and the seat number. The trains leave every 15 minutes, sometimes 10 minutes and sometimes 20 minutes. Usually you have to wait for three trains before your train number appears on the screen. Then you follow the crowd, you wont get lost, everybody is getting on the same train. When you are on the platform find your carriage number, climb in and find your seat. Pretty straight forward. You have about 10 minutes to board the train before it takes off. Then you are barreling along at about 160 kms/hour. Not bad for your first hour in China.
Peter Legrove will be giving a speech to his daughter’s school about the future of education as it could evolve. The internet has changed the world as we know it, but education is a bit slow to change. Just remember the mighty dinosaur was replaced by a rodent the size of a cat. At the moment we do not know what is the dinosaur or what is the cat.
Hello parents, students, teachers, Members of the Board, I’m after a bit of information, thank you.
Has anybody here had anything to do with the Khan Academy, please? Khan spelled K H A N, Thank you, thank you. Has anyone taken part in the Khan Academy, please?
Now, we are at school so you can raise your hands. Thank you, thank you.
Now. What about OpenCourseWare please. Has anyone here had anything to do with opencourseware, like know what it is, or what it does, or have you doen anything from opencourseware. Thank you, thank you.
Now has anyone got any idea what a MOOC is, please. M O O C thank you. Has anybody actually done a MOOC. Thank you.
Raise your hands please we are at school, thank you.
One more thing ‘have you heard of “The Hole in the Wall Project” thank you.
OK thanks.
Now my question to you is. “How can you steer this school into the future, when you do not even know what the present situation in education is?
We are at school now, so for homework preferable this week, but definitely before you make any decisions on the future of this school, google, yahoo, bing or whatever search engine you use.
Khan Academy and watch one of the videos, or better still watch one with your daughter. Khan academy was one of the first threats to the schooling system of today. It started when one person wanted to help his school age relatives to get better at math. And it has now gone around the world. Khan Academy started in 2006.
Next up google MOOCS and find out what they are, then do one or better still, you and your daughters do a different one each. So you know what the present situation in education is. MOOCs are a disruptive technology, that is upsetting the entrenched bureaucracy of the established education industry around the world. MOOCs are changing education as we speak. They are less than three years old. If you do not understand what a Disruptive Technology is, there is a MOOC about it. Do it and find out the future.
Opencourseware is a free online lectures for world class universities around the world, We are talking M.I.T. Yale, Harvard. To be honest Massey is not there.
Now we move onto the “Hole in the Wall Project” An internet connected computer was put in a slum in India to see how the slum kids would react. And they taught themselves English with no teachers, no textbooks and no classroom. They knew English was important so they learned it. The kids taught themselves and each other. Do you know what this means for your daughters? It means your daughters are competing with the slim kids of Calcutta. To find out more, google it. This project was the winner of the TED talks award in 2013. To find out more go to TED talks and listen in on some of the videos, they are usually only 15 minutes long and are very informative.
Your daughters are up against the lifelong learners who learn math from the Khan academy, get qualifications doing MOOCs.
The internet has leveled the playing field in ways you cannot even imagine.
The top 10 most in demand jobs in 2013 did not exist in 2006.
That means life long learning is the future. The jobs your daughters do after they start their working life have not been invented yet. There are two skills your daughters need to survive the future in any profession. Does anybody know what they are? The first one is typing at 60 words a minute plus. Can your daughters type at over 60 words per minute? It looks like video is taking over the future, but the internet is still text on a page. And you have to type to put it there.
The internet is information and to absorb the information you need to survive the future. Your daughters need to be able to read fast and understand what they are reading. Therefore speed reading is part of your daughter’s arsenal for the future. And these two skills you have to learn yourself. Your daughters should start learning these skills now in their spare time, because they will need them.
After the financial crisis of 2007 the world changed. The middle class was destroyed, now the middle class is dead. How does that affect your daughters? Primary school prepared kids for secondary school, secondary school prepared students for university and university prepared young adults for the middle class. Now there is no middle class. If you want to find the middle class you have to go to Asia, Russia, China and India and possible South America. In Europe, America and possible in the Pacific the middle class is dying.
So you can ask, why send your daughters to university, when about half what they learn is obsolete before they graduate. Why let your daughters go into student debt when there is no guarantee of a job. The future is lifelong learning. So what are your daughters going to do. At present university is still on the road to the future and it is still recommended. But for how long.
The system we have in place now does not prepare you for the future. To become a master in your chosen field you need to do 5,000 hours of learning. To become a grand master you need 10,000 hours of learning. So start reading now and doing MOOCs.
The future is Asia. After your daughters graduate from university let them have the option to go to China, Russia, India or possibly South America, to teach English so they can also learn the language. The languages of your daughters generation are Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Spanish, and Portuguese for Brazil.
The future of this school is in the choices you make, but before you make them, google it.
Thank you for your time.
Phonics are the building blocks of learning to read. But lately they have taken a back seat to the Look See Method in some countries. Most students can learn to read, no matter what method they are being taught, but the struggling learners need phonics. It has been shown time and again, that phonics are a better way to learn to read, for struggling readers.
The Look See Method has the beautiful books with lots of pictures, while the phonic books are pretty drab, filled with rhyming text that don’t always make sense. But you need rhyming to learn to read. And students will learn to read using the Look See Method, but struggling students will have problems.
To be honest, I don’t know why some students learn to read easier than others, especially nowadays. But I think it has a lot to do with home life. Parents of reading kids help their kids. They don’t live in front of the tee vee, and they use the computer for knowledge, not to play games or watch videos. But that is not always the case. I had a brother and a sister in different classes, the sister was top of the class and the brother couldn’t even read. He left school to start a trade, and she went to uinversity.
In another extreme case, a girl was in the top of the class, every morning she could read the homework easily and perfectly. Then one day I asked her to read a different text in class, and she couldn’t read it. And I asked her why, and she said at night her daddy used to read the homework to her, and she would memorize it and spit it out the next day. I had serious problems with her, but with Montessori Phonics she finally learned to read. Montessori Phonics takes the student away from looking at the word to feeling the word, and that was the only way to get her to learn to read.
Back in my day when I went to school, we were taught synthetic phonics, where you learn the phonic sound then move onto words then sentences. Another method that has since become popular, is the phonics method where you start with sentences, and move back to words, then syllables, then right down to the phonic sound. Really it doesn’t matter which way your children learn to read, as long as they learn.
At the moment video and audio is taking over the internet, but to play around and work on the internet, you still have to be able to read and type. So to survive the future your children have to be able to read, write and type. Speed typing is a must for the future, as well as speed reading. There is so much information out there, that you need to process in work and everyday life, that you need to be able to process it very quickly. To survive the future you need these skills, and they all start with learning to read.
With the internet there are a number of online phonic sites, where you children can learn phonics and some are very good, I mean exceptional. But even with all the information on the internet some children do not learn by looking. Around sixty percent do, but reading starts in your ears, not with your eyes. You have to hear the phonic sound first, then match it with the written word. So if your children have problems learning to read, get their ears checked. There might be something mechanically wrong with their ears. Usually not the case. It is usually just a case of matching a learning method, with your child’s learning style.
I call this, the method of last resort, even though it has been around for over 100 years, and it started out teaching children with severe learning difficulties. This is the Montessori method of teaching reading, and if everything fails try this out. It is a hands on system of teaching reading. You just can’t plant your children in front of the computer, and expect the computer to do the teaching. You have to be there or an older sibling can help out. Basically you need to get hold of some sandpaper letters, whether block or cursive, depending on what you want to teach your children, then start teaching. You will also need a phonics chart, and some phonic sounds, which you can get of the internet for free. It is a very simple system, you make up a simple word, for example ‘cat’, in sandpaper letters. Then your child traces the sandpaper letters, while saying the word. You must emphasis the phonic sound, so your daughter can translate it to other words. Then repeat the system over and over again with many words that rhyme. A very effective system, it must be used when everything else has not worked. It is my last line of defense. If the Montessori system doesn’t work I’m lost. I don’t know if it works with dyslexic people, but it is worth a try.
Anyway for the future you need to be able to read, write, type and then learn to speed read. Probably in that order, except most students learn to read then go straight onto a keyboard, so writing gets left behind. Now it has been shown that people who write in longhand or cursive, write faster and they are also more creative. So if your children are aspiring to be creative writers, or into writing advertisements, then they should learn to write in cursive. Also at present when you sit an exam, you have to write in longhand not block letters. So until that changes, it might be an idea to bring in the cursive writing skills, to give your children the upper hand in exams.
This is how a primary school class evolved into an internet class.
This is a case study about the evolution of how teaching ESL in China evolved from teaching one class to a multi-media classroom with over 300 kids in one grade all being taught by one teacher.
To teaching one class to teaching all the classes in that grade in one school over the internet.
To teaching all the same classes in the one grade over the three different schools in the one private school company.
It is about the trials and tribulations and how having young modern teachers with internet experience and a principle who wanted to use technology even though she didn’t know very much about it herself.
The young teachers were using power point in the classrooms and the classes all had internet access. Just standard stuff nothing spectacular.
I started off my China experience in the standard classroom in a primary school with anywhere between 30 and 70 kids in a classroom. That was standard and i perfected my flashcard and drawing on the blackboard teaching.
But then In China nearly every school has a lecture hall they call a multi-media classroom, seats probably 300 and you have a book projector and a white board at the front plus a hand held microphone. It is like a lecture hall with the teacher at the bottom and most students staring down at you. To save money they figured if they put me in there I could teach all the classes at once, except they forgot to tell me that they had changed the schedule. When I got there there was every grade one student, 6 year olds, about 400 of them sitting everywhere. On the stairs and they brought in extra seats for the gap at the front. The kids were actually seated in their class, in the big hall with their English teacher controlling them. I think there was 8 classes in there.
It was a very successful class, I turned it into an entertainment event and the kids loved it, but they all knew me so that was a plus. I taught all the kids in the whole school this way. That was from grade one to six. This was my first experience of teaching a very large class.
Now we get onto the internet bit. I was back to teaching one class at a time and the school, being a private school had to upgrade to get a higher rating in the private school list in the city. So they put these huge 2 meter TV screens hooked up to the internet in all the classroom. There was one young English teacher there who spoke perfect English and had never left China, but she spent a lot of time on the internet. And she figured with my help we could join up all the classes in one grade and I could teach one class and the other classes could watch the class on the TV.
That was easier said than done as the principle said we could give it a go as long as it cost nothing. First we tried secondlife.com. I had a strange feeling that is where she went to speak English. It looked good but not really very engrossing and the kids faded out very early on in the class. It was easy to set up we just downloaded the software to most of the computers in grade 1 — 5 and 6 year olds. We had one avatar on each computer. Secondlife dropped the under 13 level I think so we were all on the main virtual world. The little kids were fascinated but the parents were not to impressed, which is nothing unusual.
But in secondlife I couldn’t do anything like the flash cards or writing on the board. So the kids could only repeat what I said. And they could yell and scream as much as they liked and they could hear themselves and they loved it. I used to call out the class number so they could repeat what I said, instead of all the classes answering at once. We all met at the Library of Primatives Sandpit in secondlife. And we could make as much noise as we wanted and nobody cared.
It was really good and we did what we set out to do. Which was one teacher over many classes. To be honest I faded out before the students as I was just repeating myself. After 15 minutes I think we were all pretty bored, so we started looking for something else.
So we tried ustream.tv. Now ustream.tv has two big glaring issues, one the screen size is fixed, you can’t go to full screen and there is no return audio, everything is done through a chat box. But it is very easy to set up and very easy for the classes to hook up to ustream.tv and watch the class. But they couldn’t join in.
It was live and I could use the flash cards and write on the whiteboard, which kept me happy. The size was an issue and after the kids realised that I couldn’t hear them they lost interest. When we were on secondlife the kids knew I could hear them so they yelled as loud as they could, and they tried to drown out the other classes.
So we went looking for a free audio and video conference call with as many windows as we could get. To teach all the classes in one grade we needed seven screens. I already had an account with oovoo.com and had used them before when they had 6 screens. Now they have 12 screens, just what we were looking for. We had to download the software just like secondlife, but the learning curve to get it all set up was pretty easy. That meant showing the other teachers how to get online and join in the class. In most of the grades there was an internet apt student that could put it all together.
Anyway we played around with the screen sizes and somehow managed to keep my screen on top so I hogged most of the screen, while the classes videos were on the side bar. Anyway the kids loved it as they could see themselves and me and they knew they were live. In most cases there was just my screen and the class screen visible to one class. We started off with all the classes on the one screen but then we slowly cut a few off. Also we could record my screen and the kids could watch it again whenever they liked.
We thought we were set and we were. The principle took a liking to ustream.tv since the whole school was linked on ustream. And the principle could give talks live to every class and to the whole school. Before she used to use the speakers now she used both.
We finally got all the bugs out of the system and everything was back to normal until. I worked for a private school company and they had a number of schools scattered around the edge of the city. The owners came and had a look at what we were doing and they were very impressed. They wanted to make sure we were not breaking any rules to do with putting stuff up on the internet. Then when they realised we were not uploading anything except me they were quiet happy.
Everything was going well until the foreign teacher left one of the other schools. Then we had to go and set up that school, so they could also receive the video lesson. It was just enough as there were 6 classes in each grade. We had a few more teething problems but we got it together. I first had to go to the other school to give lessons so the kids got to know me. And this way I could alternate between the schools to give the main lesson to different classes. I was doing that now at the main school, so I was actually teaching a different class each time.
When we had a guest teacher in who was just going to give a talk. We would either hook them up to secondlife, so the whole school could join in and listen and ask questions or ustream it. And the kids could just listen.
Having all the classes linked together gave the school a lot more options. Some teachers were worried they would lose their jobs but they were still needed to keep control of the classes during the video lessons.
Some parents debate whether learning to write is necessary as all around them they see computers and keyboards. I sometimes wonder myself as I was brought up on a notepad and pencil and all around me kids are using computers. As a school teacher I still use the blackboard and chalk, but most of the young, new teachers use the computer and power point presentations. I have tried using the computer in the classroom but it didn’t suit me, as I like to stand and walk around. I think the kids prefer the blackboard as the teacher can create the lesson as they go. But the debate still continues whether students like using a computer in the classroom or not. We have already got the paperless office and for some courses in the university we have the paperless lecture. But they are basically to do with highly computerized courses and it is to the advantage of the student to use a computer. But not all courses need a computer.
Now back to school life. A lot of students have computers but there are a number of socially disadvantaged students in the lower area schools who can’t afford computers. These are the students without a voice only school teachers know about them. The people who do all the talking and want computers in the classroom, are the parents of the socially adjusted students not the socially inapt students. And most of the older teachers like me, don’t like computers because the students know more about them that the teacher. And most students are better on a keyboard that the teacher.
Anyway with the number of students who own computers you would think they would do their homework on a computer but not so. They do the research on a computer but then they hand in written assignments, albeit in printing not in longhand writing. Most children use the computer for entertainment as opposed to working on one and they have this mind set that the computer is a plaything not a work tool. People from my generation appreciate the computer because we know what life was like without one and the younger generation do not.
The computer is a great time saver as well as an extremely good time waster and a lot of students have mastered the time wasting side of the computer. They have to be taught how to use the computer as a time saving tool. At school we don’t do that, we just teach them how to type. And parents don’t bother, they just let them lose on the computer so they are not destroying the house.
One big change I have noticed that has been brought about by the computer is longhand writing verses printing. My generation all wrote in longhand but now nearly nobody writes in longhand, it is all in block letters. That is partly due to schools not teaching writing and also teachers using block letters. On the blackboard I use block because the students can read it but everywhere else I use longhand. The only time I use longhand is in a kindergarten where I teach Montessori writing with sandpaper letters to a bunch of kids after class.
Anyway I think the pencil will dominate over the keyboard as long as the students think the computer is an entertainment tool not a work machine. At present this thinking process only changes for some students while at school. I still don’t know why some students do their homework on a computer but I do know most of them don’t and most have access to a computer.
I like the Montessori system of teaching writing and reading and this is the course I recommend
I was utterly amazed with the National Geographic program My Brilliant Brain. It is amazing what our brains are capable of. After watching the program about the girl chess master it seems that we have to somehow transfer the knowledge from our short-term memory to our long-term memory. In the story when the girl was very young the girl’s father kept showing her different chess moves from the grand masters. This constant repetition instilled her chess knowledge in her long-term memory. This is not an isolated case as the father used the same approach with the younger sisters and the three girls are now all grand chess masters.
I think a similar approach is how we learn reading. When I was a kid I think the Nuns taught me synthetic phonics at school, as that was in vogue at that time. And because we didn’t have as many distractions as the kids of today, we implanted reading in our long-term memory. We did this by reading and more reading. I lived in the library and read a lot and my reading skills now are quite good. I tried a speed-reading course and because I kept at it my reading speed improved. Speed-reading came in handy when I was reading novels or fiction especially science fiction as I love reading that. With science fiction and fantasy you have to imagine what you are reading and that takes you into another realm of speed-reading. Anyway as we get older it is easier for us to read as we have had lots of practice. We have basically implanted the words in our long term memory and we can recall them instantly. I would say very similar to the girl grand chess master. She could instantly recall the many chess moves as they were implanted in her long term memory.
Also I was brought up with a pencil in one hand and to compete in the modern world I had to learn to type. Typing involves memory and with constant repetition typing just becomes second nature like reading. I can now do it without thinking but I first had to implant the different moves of my fingers over the keyboard in my long term memory. And that is where constant repetition comes inby just doing it. To start I had to force myself but over time I settled into the new typing way of not looking at the keyboard. But it did take time. These things don’t happen over night, they just happen.
Now back to reading, I will admit when I was a kid I loved reading so I was pretty close to being a bookworm. I lived in the library and I had an endless collection of books. But it all started with phonics and once I understood the code to turn the word into a sound I understood, I could read. So getting the 44 phonics sounds instilled into your child’s long-term memory is a must. But it does get complicated with the same phonic sounds having many different spellings and meanings. So it takes time but you must get all the different combinations instilled in your child’s mind. Then they must read and read to plant the phonics sounds, meanings and spellings in their long-term memory. Learning the phonics is only half the equation they must use them as they read. This second step is quite crucial so keep them reading. Get them away from the TV and computer until everything is planted in the long term memory then they can read on the computer if they like. Forget the TV if you can.
Now, my daughter had incredible problems and it was only after I started stressing phonics that she slowly improved. Every time she asked me to say a word I would break the word down into syllables and phonics. Then I would read the phonic sounds backwards so she could see the different combinations of letters. Now she is okay but it took a lot of effort on my part. So if your kids are having problems get them started on phonics as early as possible and keep reading to your kids.
I like the Montessori system of teaching writing and reading and this is the course I recommend