Simple Post

After discussing materialism and dualism today, my student M. said, "Philosophy is so cool."

Thank you, M., I needed to hear that today.

Update from Bangkok Learning & Teaching Zone

This boy is jumping into the ChaoPraya river near the Sathorn
Pier. The current is very strong and the boy may be having
fun, but he is taking great risks with his wellbeing. The water
is both powerful and dirty.

Bangkok has been threatened by floods for about three weeks now. There is a long backstory to this flood, but what's important for the perspective of this blog is the effect it is having on education. The impact is wide: from teachers and students who simply can't get to school to teachers and students living in evacuation centers or having lost loved ones to drowning, electrocution or disease. A large portion of the country's rice crop is ruined. Tens of thousands of jobs are at least temporarily if not permanently lost due to flooded factories.

On my local level, we have missed ten days of school for this flood. The Thai Ministry of Education mandated that we close for eight of those days. Right now it's unclear when we will open. My school is not underwater, nor are the roads around it, but there are shortages of supplies in the city, travel in certain places is difficult (you have to take a boat or hitch a ride on a truck), there have been threats to the water supply, and nobody really knows the direction the water will go or the path it will take. There's also a constant threat to all of the flood barriers put up to protect inner-Bangkok because those flood barriers, while keeping the water out of inner-Bangkok are keeping the water from leaving the areas behind the flood barriers. There's quite a bit of political play involved in the whole thing, but I'm not qualified to address it all nor is this the place.

photo from @_bjb. We have not seen this situation
personally, but it is a reality in Bangkok now.

In the midst of this, we are to go on with what all of Bangkok seems to be calling elearning. Some schools and some teachers are more prepared for it than others. I'm pleased that I had already introduced twitter and blogging to my students. It made converting my lessons to elearning easier. I also had the benefit of doing my MEd online, so I felt confident to create a clear lesson. Many of the teachers at my school who had not had much experience using technology in the classroom have switched to edmodo, which seems to be working fairly well for our secondary students.

It is rather normal to see boats in the back of trucks lately.

You can see there is a large cement wall in front of this store.
Many businesses have quickly put up cement walls to protect
their shops.

My husband lets you know what he
thinks of the smell of the water.

It is at times like these, though, that I become very aware of the noise and interference that students have to deal with, and that we as teachers often deal with. My students have been traveling to avoid floods, have been evacuated from their homes, have been without electricity or reliable internet. Granted, some have taken off to the beach and will return refreshed and relaxed without checking in on their elearning, these are the same students that are apathetic on a regular basis. The diligent remain diligent even during the crisis, though I can understand the low-(sometimes high) level of noise and stress in their heads at this time. I hope that I'm a flexible teacher who sets realistic goals for my students. We claim in our mission statement to teach the whole student. I believe that entails understanding the whole student, including their physical circumstances. It means being flexible in times of crisis.

Collaboratively experimenting

My World Religions class is breaking a lot of new ground for me. We have been studying Buddhism and it's about time for an assessment. Instead of doing the traditional tests or even the less traditional "make a project comparing and contrasting" idea (both of which still have a place in my teaching repertoire), I have decided to really climb out on a a limb this time. My class did a performance instead of a project. When I suggested the idea of a performance, some of them were quite confused. I finally got them to understand that what I meant was that they would take on the role of a Buddhist. We would have students represent several different branches of Buddhism. Then they would have to role play how that particular follower would behave in the situation.

The first thing they needed to do was to decide what the situation would be. We brainstormed scenarios on the whiteboard. One students took a picture of the board and posted it to twitter. That night's homework was to check our blog, as usual. On the blog was a picture thumbnail of the picture of the board so that the students could remember what their ideas were. I then directed them to wallwisher and asked them to tell me via online sticky note in 160 characters or less to tell me what scenario they would chose and why. Here is the wallwisher


The next day in class we sorted the post-its according to categories. Only the ideas that were mentioned remained eligible options. That means that if a student liked a particular idea and did not bother to check the work, the idea might have been lost. We were left with about four ideas. Each student who wrote on the wallwisher was allowed to make a quick pitch for their selection. The students then voted in class on the whiteboard.

The next few classes were spent gathering and organizing information collaboratively. Students broke up into different groups and gathered information about a particular division of Buddhism. The next class period, we created a collaborative google doc and the students looked at specific topics or issues from different Buddhist perspectives.

Only after the information gathering was over did the students learn what their assigned roles were. We had seven different types of Buddhists with two students representing each type. They were assigned to study the information that the class has collaboratively created in order to further prepare for their role.

The next class was our Amazing Race. Stay tuned for details and video.

Sample student work

My World Religion Students handed in projects on Hinduism on Monday. One thing I started doing last year was to let my students chose the medium in which they wanted to work. I learned that students would gravitate toward powerpoint because it was easy and they knew it. This year, I outlawed powerpoint. I have given students a list of web 2.0 tools to use for their projects. I encourage them to find other tools to use if they wish. They are given a general description of their task and the characteristics that their work will display if they want a high grade.

I hope you enjoy this student work on Hinduism.

Latest projects

There hasn't been much time to blog lately. We have been doing a lot in class, have had two cases of influenza a in the family, and have spent some time out-of-town. Between all of that, blogging has taken a bit of a backseat, at least this blog.

My blog for my students is humming along rather well. (www.philoteacher.wordpress.com) All of my students are now on twitter and have blogs. I'm in the end stage of getting all of their blogs on our websites' blogroll and into my rss reader. Although this blog you are reading is made in blogger, my student blog is in wordpress. I'm learning  a bit about how these different blogging tools work. And I have students using tumblr asking me questions as well.

I am very pleased at how well my students have done in their use of technology. We aren't immersed, but they seem to be able to follow directions and get the work done. They also are engaged. Furthermore, using technology has solved a problem endemic to my school: students finishing work at the last minute in the hallway right before they walk into class. My students are forced to sit down in a relatively quiet space (at home I presume) and focus on their work.

This week prepping lessons has taken a lot of time. I have been home first with my son sick with influenza a and then with influenza a myself. I've been creating lessons using screenr for my students. I can create a lesson that is quite similar to what I do in class, except of course I am not there to interact with students. I have mitigated that somewhat by being available on twitter during certain class times. I had hoped to host a webinar with one class, but I could not get the technology working. That will come in time.

Here is the link for my class website - www.philoteacher.wordpress.com and here is a sample of a screenr lesson I prepared for my students.(Listening to this now, I realize how sick I was when I made it. My thoughts are a bit jumbled and my voice sounds very weak. Usually I am more articulate and much more animated in presentation.