Pekka Kucha – highlights:

Presentations that made me think:

Ian’s haiku presentation was very well thought out and gave a lot of space for contemplation and reflection.

Rich’s presentation on dirt. I know that Rich used to deliver sermons as a pastor and every now and then I would get a glimpse of his sermon on dirt…

Presentations that I learned something new:

Michaela’s glass presentation

Liam’s joinery presentation

Levente offered a web app for photo manipulation. It looked like an excellent resource for free software.

Classroom management is like managing my kids – except that my kids don’t listen…

I have used a behaviour contract with a group of kids during a summer camp.  It worked well in that everyone knew what the new expectations were and what the consequences were for not following them.  It also gave me a document to give to the parents to explain the situation.

Another strategy that I have used with my kids is to ask them what they think their punishment should be.  For example, they stayed up 30 minutes past their bedtime.  Instead of reacting with an immediate punishment I offered for my kids to decide what would be fair to them.  This empowered them to make the right decision as well as not make me the bad guy.

I am planning on making my class so interesting that students won’t have the chance to misbehave.

The only things constant in life are: death, taxes, and change.

As change agents going into the schools, teachers will be looking to us for guidance and help with developing their curriculum.  Getting buy-in from colleagues that do not understand or agree with the new curriculum may be the most difficult to convert.  Culture trumps strategy and finding cultures battling against change will be an interesting environment to be in.

Industrial education originated from the Industrial Age and Technology education has evolved with the Information/Technology age and even before we have fully transformed/reformed our curriculum a new age has quickly descended upon us.  The imagination age has overlapped and it is challenging to keep up.

As we hopefully join other teachers excited about teaching, learning, collaborating we can accelerate the change.

We are fortunate to be teaching Tech Ed and that we have the ability to use many forms of media and methods of teaching compared to teaching Math or other sciences.

Powerpoint slides can highlight techniques and provide details in process that require replication.  It can also be used as a study tool as we have experienced at BCIT.  There is a lot of flexibility of using Powerpoint as not only a presentation tool.  For example it can be used for formatting posters using the graphic design element, it can be used as a teaching tool using the animation element, it can be used to showcase photographs, it can interact with hyperlinks to create multimedia rich environments.  Most people use it solely as a presentation tool but with the a little creativity can be used for so much more.

We had an experiment using tokens to take turns speaking using tokens.  It was effective in some ways and detracted in others.  It helped manage people speaking and forced people to think about what they wanted to say and did not have to fear being interrupted.  I felt that after I used my tokens it was easy to disengage because even if I did have a point I had no way to articulate my thought.

I think I would try this in a game format rather than a debate/discussion format.  Divide into two teams, each person gets two tokens. Have questions Jeopardy style.  The token amount is doubled if the question is answered correctly, token is forfeit with the wrong answer.

Makerspace SWOT

We had a lively discussion with regards to makerspaces and their place in schools and communities.  Most of the contention was between the usefulness of makerspaces and displacing shop classes.

One of my points that I brought up with the group is to try to stray outside of your box even if it is uncomfortable because most growth will occur outside of your comfort zone.

My philosophy is that currently there is a lot of interest in makerspaces and lots of administrators wanting to support these programs.  Usually this support comes in the form of equipment and money.

Reflective practice.  Brain dump.  Thinking out loud.

Part of reflection is being present enough to have thoughts on discussions, to be able to look back on what was said, and then look forward to how things can either change or at the very least become more self aware.

I think reflective practice is a good way to become self aware even though it is from my perspective.  The reflection will do as the name suggests and reflect my state of mind, state of emotion, and any other thoughts that I project onto the world.

This week I completed the Teaching Perspectives Inventory. The context of taking this survey is from 20 years of varying work and life experiences.

It highlighted my lack of integration of Social reform in my teaching experiences.  Most of my training has been practical training: electronics, aviation, flight school, military. In many of these areas the  purposes are explicit and did not require much introspection.

I will include sustainability as an area for development that will be an explicit portion of my class.  Also embedded within the structure of the class will be inclusiveness, accessibility, and over all a socially safe environment.