Show And Tell

This is a wine container, with the guidance of Mr. Chute, I created in Tech Design class. He was kind enough to give me some walnut to use as beautiful end pieces as you can see. I love working in the shop!

LED Project

I acquired a new skill last week--Soldering! Ask me to explain electricity and I may have trouble but I think this project turned out pretty good. The blue LEDs were so strong I had to re-solder my wiring to miss the resistor. That's because they use a lot of juice! Using these LEDs was cool because they were bright enough to lite my way home in the dark. If you look carefully at the top image you can see the On/Off switch I made to complete the circuit. The 9V battery is tucked inside the little box beside the On/Off switch.

Kinesthetic Teaching

I used this example yesterday to show folks how layers in InDesign and Photoshop works. I think they enjoyed it. I'm a big fan of teaching to the senses of touch (kinesthetic). I even had fun creating this little mock-up magazine.

Outline This

Here is a little Screencast I did for the kids at Cawthra Park Secondary. It seems they had forgotten how to create outlines in InDesign. I had taught it to them previously in their Communications Technology class. I apologize for the background noise, I was working on my laptop with a very sensitive microphone. If you listen close enough you can hear the fan from the CPU kick in.

Did You Know

I had an opportunity to attend my associate school's P.A. day on Monday. I hosted a workshop on PowerPoint for a group of teachers. It was quite an experience--each teacher displayed an archetype of every student I have taught to date. There was the one kid who always had their hand up, the student that would jump ahead in the lesson only to ask for help later, the student that sat silently and struggled, the student that constantly chatted with others while I was speaking and the student that had no idea what I was talking about. Wow.

On a more positive note, the beginning of the day started out with this informative video. I think you'll find it interesting. (Note: it runs for 13 secs before a new picture appears)

Para-Chutes

This is John Chute (my host teacher) and myself posing for a photo. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, and so for this Halloween I dressed up as my associate teacher--circa 1983. Everyone had a mullet haircut back then and so I imagined he would too. Luckily for me, he found this rather amusing as did the students. I had his outfit down pat: Golf shirt tucked in, tool belt on, safety glasses around my neck and a collection of various nuts and bolts in my pockets.

Cable Car In The Classroom

What do I do at Teacher's College? Can you believe building things like this. About eight hours of work, by the three of us, went into this cable car. It sports a drive system with a gear ratio of 10:1 (that'll impress the kids).

A Sample Of Alfie Kohn

This is not the video I wanted to show you but the premise is the same. The video I did see however, was Alfie explaining an experiment he performed on the Oprah Winfrey show:

20 kids were asked to evaluate some games and puzzles.
10 of those kids were told they would receive money for each game/puzzle they critiqued.
10 were not told about the money.

When the supervising adult left the children unattended the camera recorded this:

All 10 of the kids that were not offered a reward PLAYED with the toys.
9 out of the 10 kids who were offered a reward DID NOT PLAY with the toys.

The motivation to play with the toys was no longer intrinsic. "No more reward? Why should I continue to play?"

This is Alfie's argument against the use of rewards (aka carrots). What do you think? Bring on the comments.

Mark This Test

Myself, along with 300 other students in the auditorium were given this test to mark. By a show of hands we were asked: who gave this student a mark between 0 and 9. Hands went up. "Who gave this student a mark between 10 and 15". Hands went up. Between 16 and 25? Hands went up. The professor noted: this student could get a mark in the range of 8 to 25 just dependent on who marked it. Why she asked. Some people replied because of the student's handwriting. She then asked "Who here marked words incorrectly because the letter "T" wasn't crossed off? Hands went up. "Who here marked the words correct regardless of the missing cross because they thought they'd give the kid a break? Hands went up. She then posted on the screen the correct spellings of the words and asked us to mark it again. Still hands went up for different marks. Albeit, the margins were closer now. But honestly, different scores with the answers right in front of us. Then the culminating question: Did anyone notice that on a test scored out of 25 there was only 24 words posted? Perhaps ten hands went up.

I wonder if it was strictly coincidence that the student's name on this mock test was Chris?

The Ultimate Game

Evening practice for the Queen's Ultimate Frisbee team. It made for some interesting photos.

On The Fence

My new friend John Bos and I tried our hand at Fencing. We had a blast but are sad to say we couldn't commit to it. Our schedule wouldn't allow us to participate enough to make it worth our while. En Garde!

Awesome Teaching Video

This video was shown first thing in class today. It got me really pumped about teaching. It eases my mind to know that I'm headed in the right direction and I hope this means I'll have a job for years to come.

GREAT NEWS!!

I received great news this morning that my placement school is Cawthra Park Secondary School. For those who don't know, I've been waiting almost two months now wondering if I'd even had a placement in the Peel Board. The board I so desire to teach in.

Kids on Kingston Harbour

Beautiful weather after my first day of class led me to the waterfront to shoot some photos. These kids were english-speaking migrants from Montreal. One kid actually dumped a used bottle of Gatorade on another forcing a retreat into the water.