Not the end of Prac, but a new beginning!

   by  seanrnicholson 

Here I sit, on a public holiday Monday, procrastinating on assignments that desperately need my attention.  Prac has come to an end and I have no lesson plans to write and no excuses to not start the next necessary part of my course!  I live on an acre and my boys want to be my study room, talking, playing and arguing, I keep asking what is dad doing? Hoping to encourage them not to be within one metre of me today, while I struggle to find the motivation to study.

Just as Jill wrote, I’m a little sad that prac has come to an end, just as your getting into the gist of teaching it all dissolves and now the next part of my education journey begins/continues.  At least this prac has defiantly confirmed that I haven’t wasted the last four years of my life (what life, my social life has taken a dive due to family, study and work commitments).  I really enjoy teaching and the last three weeks have been hard work, but the satisfaction is in the students faces when you know they are interested and they have come away with something positive that I have taught them!!

So this weekend I have indulged a little, well maybe a lot, as of Friday afternoon 4pm,(Yes my last day I stayed until 4 I am a nerd) I have put uni aside and enjoyed a few wines and spent some time with my neglected family ( apart from my earlier rant about trying to study with my boys within a metre of me).  Today is usually my quite study day alone, but it’s also a public holiday, but I am grateful as there was no morning rush to get to the 7:25 bus, no uniforms to organise, no breakfast to rush through and best of all NO LUNCHES TO MAKE, (lunches are my pet hate!)

I guess the moral of the story is I love my family and I love teaching I just have to find the balance.

MAKE

   by  abac077 

Hi everyone,  I was just reading Carlee’ blog and noticed that her class was doing a monologue for assessment.  I am also doing a monologue with my year 9 English class, our is the play ‘Children of the Back skirt, It’s not the full play but you can get an idea of what it is about.  I am not teaching this particular class until next week, but we have been discussing props, settings and character analysis, quite similar to what Carlee is doing.  The students have been drafting and using google docs, which is fantastic, I have created a Year 9 English folder on my google drive and the students have been sharing their drafts with myself and the teacher( I also shared my folder with my mentor teacher).  It’s great as you can see the students progress as well as making sure they are on the right track, you can add comments and suggestions in ‘real time’ the students have been taking all my comments on board and using the advice I give them, to enhance their drafts.

The best thing about google docs and google drive is that it is free, I hope it stays that way!

I am teaching three, double practical lessons tomorrow and won’t be able squeeze in any ICTs tomorrow, have a great day!!

Hello Prac Day 2 Week 1

   by  ucumari photography 

Well my first day was interrupted by school photos, I had planned an lesson for Year 12 Hospitality with amplifying and transforming ICTs and of course my class was no where to be seen, yes the dreaded school photos ran late and into my lesson!!  Well that is one less lesson I have to prepare for now, I will tweak it though ready for the next time I have them for theory!! So as Jill mentioned in her blog, we are constantly told to plan plan plan , but I think more importantly we have to be flexible and adaptable.  So my next theory lesson with that class isn’t until next Monday, I have one less lesson to organise on the weekend, SCORE, as I have an English assignment looming!!!

Today was far more successful, I taught a maths equation to a hospitality class, I showed the class how to cost a recipe, I plugged my computer into a smart TV and opened up the cost analysis in google doc after I shared it in their planning folder.  The class could see the cost analysis doc on the screen as well as on their own devices. Once I had taught the formula we costed a recipe as a class and each student had to cost an ingredient on the recipe.  This was great I could see each of the students working and imputing the information on the doc.  When each student finished I gave them another ingredient to cost.  The students also had to access woolworths online to find out the prices of the ingredients instantly, they also had to search as conversion chart to change measurements from cups to grams.  Defiantly an amplifying and transforming lesson and received awesome feedback from my mentor.  One ICT lesson ticked off!!

Hope the bubble doesn’t burst and I continue to have great lessons.

Connect.ed

   by  Konfu 

Hi all

When I was reading blog’sploitation’s post I was more connect.ed to what he had to say about his experience, then with the program itself.  There was nothing really new, I guess this is a fantastic program that should be taught before any of us go on our first prac, but by the time most of us are heading toward our fourth prac, it was just a revision exercise.  Especially in the secondary setting, most of the students are more IT savvy  than any of us will ever be.  Especially if you were born before 1990( could be giving way my age here).  I have been working as a teacher aide in a secondary setting for 5 years now, and there is not much some of these students don’t know about computers, internet and how to make something disappear temporarily when the teacher approaches. Students need to be internet wise from an early age,(primary school), as most of these students have ipods and can access the internet from anywhere and any time.  My ten year old son has a phone as he walks home from the bus to our house with his brother.  I don’t let him use the internet in his room and he has to go surfing out in the lounge when I am there, and I have a password on the phone so he can’t download or buy any thing.  However I am sure he will surpass his old mother with ICTs in due time, until then I will have to teach him about the good, bad and scary of the world wide web!!

So yes it was a great REVISION exercise, but perhaps we need to be connect.ed a little earlier in our education degree.

Tanya

Its raining Prac Alleluia!! OMG!!

   by  Victooooooor 

Well at approximately 2:31 and 29 seconds(ok exactly I was ‘patiently’ waiting for a call). I rang the prac office and I had a placement,FINALLY, that I helped arrange, (ok sometimes ya just gotta take things in your own hands).  So I was able to briefly meet with one mentor this afternoon, but will meet up with my others on Monday, (it was Friday afternoon wasn’t going to push a meeting with the other two).  I will be teaching year 9 food technology, three senior hospitality classes and Year 8 English, I have a lot of functions and practical classes in the next three weeks so ICTs may be a challenge , but I don’t care at the moment as I have been placed.  So the excitement of prac has finally begun for me so I can be as excited as  Brooke and Jessica who have posted about their upcoming prac experience.

Good luck to those who haven’t been placed yet and I hope that some miracle happens sooner rather than later!!!

Still waiting for prac, so no spring just yet!!

   by  HikingArtist.com 

I was reading Carlee’s blog about the hype and excitement of finding out our prac placements, my spring isn’t quite there yet.  However, she also mentioned how hard it was to find a placement for hospitality, I guess that is why its been a struggle to find me anything.  I am a chef so I can teach food tech and hospitality from 7-12, I have also completed, cert III in commercial cookery, my cert IV in training and assessment so I can teach VET and certificate courses and my second teaching area is English which will be a major.  So why is it so hard to find a placement, I know that schools in my area are struggling to find hospitality teachers, hopefully finding a job when I finish will be a whole lot easier than finding a prac placement.

Looking for that spring

What Professional experience!!

Well I have read a few blogs this morning of some relieved EDC3100 students, finally finding out where they have been placed.  However, unfortunately I don’t fit into that box, I am yet to have a placement, still waiting and a number of emails later still nothing, I was informed that it would be up by Monday.  Well Monday has been and gone but still no placement, so I phoned yet again today and no answer, perhaps they are on the phone organising my placement.  So IF I find out today it gives three whole days to juggle work, visit my school and meet my mentor and continue with my uni subjects.  This is the first time I have had a placement allocated to me, I hope that next time I can do it myself.  During the placement process I was informed that my BEDU program had changed, still doing the same subjects, but it as called something else which wasn’t anywhere to be found on the specific major site, so they had to create a new one.

I wonder if today will be my lucky day or will they keep me hanging for a little longer!!

ALERT!! INBOX FLOODED!!

   by  Cayusa 

I have two email address, one for work and one for personal/uni, however I don’t often check my personal and mainly use my work email, which brings me to the POINT.  I opened up my personal email inbox today and it has been taken over by all my uni colleagues, catching up on compulsory learning activities. I too have been guilty of working on assignments and neglecting my learning paths, and since 11:30 am on Monday I have been smashing it out and working through the moodle books and learning paths.

So a BIG thank you to everyone out there in EDC3100 who has been madly catching up on learning paths and moodle books over the past two days, you make me feel some what normal in an Alien world isolated by ICTs, assignments, exams, PE stresses!!!

Tanya xx

Not Naplan again!! To test or not to Test!!

Well it’s that time of year again when every Year 3,5,7 and 9 students are hyped up, psyched up and smothered with Naplan preparation.  This year is no different, expectations from the principals are passed down to the teachers and teachers expectations are passed down to the students.  Teachers are suppose to squeeze in what little time they have into preparing students with old Naplan tests at least two weeks( and some schools its months of preparation)  before the actual test instead of teaching to the curriculum, and for what??  These tests were designed not to be practised for.  Elite schools ‘apparently’ don’t allow their under performing students to take this test, so the results aren’t accurate anyway.  One particular student was getting stressed about under performing and letting down their teacher, and the teachers response (trying to reassure her )was ‘don’t worry they aren’t important anyway’  then of course the big question is so why are we doing them??  One of my boys sat the test last year and it’s my other son gets his first taste this year, and is already getting hounded, the upside for him is that there is no homework for the next two weeks.

Here is one link and one opinion if you want some further reading.

I would love to hear your thoughts

Internet Service Providers!!!

What did we do before the world wide web???

   by  Mental Health Humor 

Probably spent that time looking things up the old fashion way, hand wrote letters, went to the post office and watched the news on the TV and read news papers.  I am reflecting on a blog from Jill about all things annoying ICTs and internet service providers!!

I too have been on the phone a number of times in the past 5 weeks to my ISP and not once was the phone call taken in Australia argh!, How can someone in the Philippines diagnose my internet issues??  At the beginning of this course started my old modem died, but out of the 15 stores we have locally none of them carry new modems,  it was a mobile modem with only 8gb  it was about a two week wait to get a new one, which wasn’t covered under warranty.  I decided to upgrade and get a plug in modem(no NBN in my area yet!) with 200gb and for the past five weeks my internet has has been cutting in and out, not real handy in an ICT subject.  Finally I had someone actually come into my house and fix the problem, it was the wall bracket/socket fixed in half an hour.  This could have been done five weeks ago, so my complaints file at the ISP is as long as the federal budget, now I will have a BIG credit coming my way.

I have at least had a solution, only in week 9, I hope that Jill can get the same ‘quality’ help I received sooner rather than later.