This came highly recommended from an ex-student who is teaching in a Primary School. He found it extremely useful IT tool for mind-mapping online without having to register, download or do other additional steps. The tool itself is flexible and incorporates many functions such as ease of creating sibling nodes, drawing arrows and changing colour. Give it a try! I found it useful. You can even get students to use it for brianstorming. http://www.bubbl.us/

On 23 May 2007, Check Siew and I shared out experience about the school attachment I did from Januray to march this year. We spoke suring the staff contact time and I was very heartened to see many nods of agreement with the problems, suggestions and learning points we shared. I have listen some of our takeaways here too:


 

• Many of the things I teach at NIE will work despite what my trainees tell me.
• It’s a matter of thinking through carefully and customizing.
• How much and when to do – to meet own targets
• Yes, it can be tough and tedious; No, not if you work with someone.
• Timing of the attachment – good because of new syllabus
• Term one is good timing for attachment
• Overall learning experience is important
• Tap on your own strength in your groups
• So that you can try out on your own later
• After teaching for a long time – the experience of having someone looking at it differently is refreshing
• It is a Win-win situation

In summary we also pointed out about:

 

• Content drives pedagogy
• Thinking on one’s feet
• Differentiated Instruction
• Working with someone

We will adpat the sharing session as a sharing for a forthcoming forum at SEAGA 2007 (http://www.seaga.co.nr/). Do join us there!

Last Thursday was Session 2 of 2 for a course titled "Climate and Climate Change for A Levels" that was conducted at Teachers' Network. The sessions went well and I must say that despite the lack of time to cover the range of topics that the teachers' wanted I managed to convince and impress upon the teachers three broad essential questions to guide their further reading into the issues:

1. What causes climate to change on earth?
2. How does climate change affect the physical and human environment?
3. What can we do about it?

Ebe suggested an interesting way to look at these three questions (for other topics as well):

1. What makes the earth tick?
2. What makes the earth sick?
3. How do we "lick" the problem?

This must surely be an indication that Lay Cheng's course on inquiry based learning has paid off.

After three weeks of meteorology, I started paleoclimatology with my AAG233 class. We worked from the Mesozoic through to the Holocene.... I was surprised that they forgot their basic geology from year one but the looks of enlightenment at the end was satisfying enough for me.

I also gave the first assignment out in which they were told to "make the biggest cloud possible" using an online temperature profile applet. They all failed miserably as all the clouds went way above the tropopause..... we had a reasonably in-depth discussion of the need to transfer learning from one module to another.... more on this later..... Kalyani beckons for lunch and I will definitely tell her about the class today.

I was feeling apprehensive about my first lesson with the 3 girls in AAG422 as I fear that I will not be able to sustain their interests for 3 good hours.

This course has to be mounted (even if it was for just 3 students) as these returning teachers have to graduate from the programme. Lay Cheng gave me a great idea and I took it and used it.

We started the session by mapping our epistemology about SS education. In the next third of the class, the students were sent to interview SS educators about their beliefs. After that we met again to revisit the initial positions.

The session went very well and I was glad that it worked very well..

Our new blog has been launched today. Stay focused on it and we will try to keep you informed. You can read new posts on this blog via the RSS feed.

Today marks the last session on DI with the PGDE Jul intake 2007. I am using the time that they are moving around the learning stations to put in this entry.

The overall impression I get from a quick pit stop I did with them earlier this morning was the general lack of enthusiam and belief in using DI in thier classroom. I hope this will change with the hands-on activity. I can't blame them since they have only been lectured to and were only watching videos about DI so far. Hmmmm..... talk about practicing what we preach.

Anyhow, I am quite glad that the level of discussion and engagement right now (as in the moment I am typing this blog) seems very encouraging. They are deciding which DI strategy and we shall see what they have come up with in a while.