Educational Discourse

Over at Dangerously Irrevelant, Scott refers to two enteries found on Seth Godin’s blog. After reading “On becoming the” I was struck that the changing of two little words could really have so much impact. It reminded me of the Corner Gas episode The Taxman, in which the discussion of a and the are highlighted by a visiting taxman looking for Oscar LeRoy. In the episode, the taxman is very upset when someone says he is “The Taxman” because it makes it sound like he’s responsible for the taxes and for the misery caused by taxes. This highlights what Seth is saying about going from being an “a” to a “the”. It does change how one is perceived. For example, I am “The Principal” in town. Without saying anything, the responsiblilty of the role is summed up in the use of “The” which is different from being “a teacher at the school.” With using “the”, it distinguishes me and my role apart from others. Now, this goes for some of the other positions in school like “The” Secretary and “The” Janitor, both of which are important positions in the well being of the school.

There are times when being “The” is very difficult but these are not the norm. I thouroughly love my job and working in the school with all the students, staff, parents and community. Being in a small community, one is never “off”. I am always the principal even when friends of my children come over. But their getting use to it - especially on Saturday mornings after sleepovers when I surface with a bad case of bedhead. Sometimes one might want to be “the” but other times, it might be just as easy to an “a”. Naw!

Kelly

We are approaching the final days of our CPT class and things are really starting to get interesting. The students are suppose to be finished their ten minutes of recording, getting thing ready for editing. So, what is going on? They’re reviewing the early work we did where we downloaded various sounds off the internet  and sounds they made with the effects and combined them to make a composite production. They spent a bit too much time doing this, although some of the productions were rather humorus. Check out the Podomatic badge - Blended Monkeys. This was one that just kind of came together by accident. We all had a good chuckle!

I’m finding that the students don’t want to do the scripts or storyboards. They want to get straight into  producing, which doesn’t bother too much except that we don’t have anything to turn to if we run into time problems or editing difficulties. I’m wondering if anyone has any ideas for this. I’ve thought of using writeboard to have them do their story boards. Any ideas for this part?

My other class, grade 9 social, has begun using their blogging efforts. Some of them are really into it. I began with the blogmeister setup just for the start. I’m going to try it for the first assignment. Now that we have done a few, things are really coming along. My next little tech trial will be a wiki that will list the work they are doing on importatnt people, events or inventions during different periods of time. We do this as an introduction to the study of the Romans, Medieval times, the Enlightenment and then Native Canadian culture. This is sometimes a bit hard to tie together but we’ll see how it goes. This class is pretty excited about the blogs and they keep asking about the wiki.

My third goal is to get the staff and administrators going with blogging. So far it has been a big dud! I haven’t given up and I’m going to through Scott MacLeod’s project out to my admin group to see what happens. I’m hoping that a few of them will jump on board. I may even get to do a session for opening day next year. Pretty scary!!!!

Well, take a listen to the monkey. Let me know if you have any ideas. Off to coach basketball against our archrivals - the Eagles.

Go Mustangs Go!!

Kelly