For anyone who went to college in the late 90s, you know why this is monumental. We played this game way more than we should have. I can’t believe it is 10 years old already.
Can you imagine what college dorm life is like now that Xbox Live allows users to play multiplayer games across entire campuses? Chaos. I bet nothing ever gets done!
So, I basically stole that title from Engadget but I don’t care. It was too cool not to reuse!
It’s true.
Sending your kid off to school these days isn’t what it used to be …”
Still don’t believe me? Watch the news report.
Interested in buying one: Here’s their website.
I’ve spent the morning re-reading a chapter in Robert Fried’s remarkable book, The Passionate Teacher, about the necessity for teachers to develop a “stance” in the classroom.
What we have going for us is a philosophy, an attitude, a bearing, a way of encountering students based on a set of core values about kids and their learning potential.
I would argue that every teacher has a stance, whether they are aware of it or not. Even the cranky teacher down the hall, years past his last real moment in the classroom, has a stance; a message that he conveys to his students about learning, the content he’s teaching, and life in general.
The crux here is knowing what your current stance is, striving to achieve the ideal stance you have in mind, and knowing when a positive stance can no longer be maintained.
For instance, as is typically the case with new teachers, I talk way too much in my classroom. I fear giving my students control, so I lecture. I also fear not “covering the content” to the point where I frequently feel I’m no more than an animated encyclopedia of facts. And, as a result of this “stance” that I maintain, I always feel stressed in the classroom.
My stance, whether I like it or not, is ‘experienced’ by my students. While I make my lessons as fun as I possibly can, I have created a passive relationship between my students and their education. They come in, sit down, and take notes. I talk, and demonstrate, and change slides. I am essentially enabling thier ignorance!
As you can tell, this is not what I would prefer! I would much rather my students talk, demonstrate, and tell me when they’re ready to change slides.
I saw last year as a learning year for myself. This year will be a stance year. I will work harder at becoming the teacher I want to be.
At the end of last year, my administration asked if I could expand our Moodle installation to include the middle school and sixth grade center. I agreed to do this as long as we created two new installations so that we would have one for each building.
While I still think it was necessary for the sake of user management and security to separate the buildings into their own installations, man is it turning out to be a pain! Everytime I find a bug in one, I have to change it in all three. Every time I add content to the front page of one, I have to judge whether it’s appropriate for the others. Then, on top of all that, how am I qualified to write “howto” instructrions for sixth graders! I tried to write things as simply as I could, but I have no idea!
Anyway. I’ve been working feverishly over the past week or so on these so I might as well show them off. Look at them! If I could, I’d ask my wife to put them on the fridge.
Here they are:
Back to the grind!
Last night I had a dream that I was teaching my first AP Psychology lesson this fall when I noticed a student turn to share an instant message with the person behing him. Then, all of the sudden, I realized that every student in my AP class was in my Freshman U.S. History class last year and they were all very uninterested in my lesson! So, every one of them started talking, texting, and pulling out iPods.
I ran around the room yelling at them about how AP Psychology requires so much more discipline than U.S. History, and that they weren’t freshmen anymore, and every other thing that a teacher yells when he is losing control. I grabbed cell phones, iPods, and Trapper Keepers as I flew around the room. I even threw one cell phone at the wall, crushing it to bits.
Then I woke up. Anxious. Never more relieved that sophomores are not allowed to take AP classes.
The school year is too near. Far. Too. Near.