MYP Personal Project Exhibition

Today was the big day for the grade 10 students to present their Personal Projects to the rest of the school and to the parents. The students had a choice of "displaying", "discussing" or "demonstrating" their projects and they have done a great job of all three!

This is a day I've come to love because I get to discuss the students passions with them. They speak eloquently and knowledgeably about a wide range of topics. Today, I learned about making a computer, Foot and Mouth disease in Korean farm animals, wakeboarding tricks, the battle of Normandy as seen through Google Sketch-up drawings. I spoke to a student who researched child soldiers and then wrote his own short story. I saw students dance, play their own musical creations using software, perform their own musical scores, one with a Chinese guzheng and another with harp, who incidently, also sang!

Thank you to Mr. Mark Patton for overseeing the entire process from start to finish as our Middle Years Programme Coordinator. He has again raised the bar for the current grades 9 for next year's exhibition. Thank you to all of the teacher supervisors who supported the students in completing their projects, edited their personal statements and monitored the displays. It has been the efforts of many that have made today a success.



But the biggest thanks goes to the students who have put in countless hours following their passions and creating the projects that we saw in today's exhibition.

Congratulations!

Howdya Like Dem Apples - ADE '11 Greatest Moments

I'm still fairly new to the international education gig, but in my seven years I have had the opportunity to attend a number of conferences, workshops, institutes and courses (Which I would like to thank the Canadian International School and it's directors for supporting). The ADE 2011 Institute ranks very high on the list. I dare say the top in terms of educational collaboration and connection, and consistent (and seemingly never-ending) positive energy. Yes, I guzzled the Kool-ADE. Here are my 11 Greatest Moments of ADE 2011 (in no particular order). Some of these obviously apply to all 60 of us, some are more personal and focus on the fantastic groups I had a chance to work with. Feel free to add your own to the list in the comment section.

1. Warm-up, ice-breaker and group activities presented by Rebecca Stockley. More activities can be found at http://thiagi.com/


2. Photo sharing and tips by Joseph Linaschke.


3. Thinking different with Rob Ferrin, Hillary Daniels and Jabiz Raisdana. Creating a video for the Saigon Race contest that satisfied the least number of criteria ... and winning.


4. Feeling like bumbling idiots, scouring the streets of HCMC with Sean Deetlefs, Steve Katz and John Wu looking for potential interviewees ... while Br. Dennis Magbanua, Dianna Pratt and Hillary were holding new born babies.


5. Fantastic Food!


6. Evening connection time.


7. Meeting the sweetest little girl in the market. And the ensuing conversations about her story.


8. Being introduced to the "3 Idiots" ... not literally ... the movie.


9. Spotlight Sharing (the REAL TED talk) and Un-Conferences (thanks Rebecca and Mano)


10. Accessibility session and the tricks and tips learned! Thanks Sarah!


11. The stories of Chow Pei Sze and Chai Yee-wei.


12. I had to add a 12th ... watching the amazing 59 other application videos and tortuously waiting through all four days to have mine shown second last.

Thanks Adrian and the rest of the Apple Team, the ADE Alumni and the ADE Class of 2011. I'll see you online soon. Ted

ADE - Day 2 and 3 - Out and About in HCMC

Day 2

6:00 am - Morning Photo Walk - We started the day early with a walk through the morning market as the vendors set up for the day. It was led by Joseph Linaschke who gave a us a few tips before setting us loose to shoot in HCMC. Here are few of my shots. Hmmm ... a bit of a math and patterns theme? For the faint at heart, I kept it to pictures of fruit rather than raw meat and fish.

AM - We chose two of five sessions that were offered.

• Accessibility in the classroom for every learner
• Final Cut Pro
• Logic Studio
• Basic Aperture
• iOS Webapp development

I chose Final Cut Pro. Looks like a great piece of software, sometime in the future I could see creating some pretty cool videos with the layering features, but for now I still need to master iMovie! The second session for me was Accessibility. Lots of great tricks, tips and shortcuts to assist every learner in the classroom! Did you know in any Apple document, if you highlight a word and press "Control Command D" the dictionary definition pops up! And in System Preferences then Universal Access select "Voice Over", then highlight text, double click and select speech to have the text read to you while you read it. Fantastic and easy!

PM - The Saigon Race

We were to find a list of about 50 items and capture them on film (video or still) and create a 2 minute video in iMovie on an iPod Touch displaying them. We loved the challenge, but thought the tools selection was maybe a little restrictive. We were trying to decide if we would ask students to create a movie on an iPod Touch as opposed to gathering the footage and creating it on their laptops. After a little frustration (OK a lot for Jabiz Raisdana - @intrepidteacher) and 15 items, we decided to Think Different. We created a video that satisfied the least number of criteria ... and won the contest. Hmmm ... maybe it pays to be a risk taker?!?!

Great dinner, great conversation and lots of laughs to finish off a long day.

Day 3

Project Saigon 360

Today we self-organized into groups based on interests. We had all day (10am to 5pm) to explore HCMC and answer a question, solve a problem, investigate or explore an element that was of interest to us and present it back to the whole group in 5 minutes at the end of the day. My original thought was creating a Math Trail around HCMC (I first heard of this idea in 1990 from Ron Lancaster). But as we were deciding, Rebecca Stockley posed a question to us. "If you could do something that interested you, but would take you out of your comfort zone, what would it be?" A Math Trail was not the answer. I joined six others, with the general topic of prostitution in HCMC. We wanted to get to the bottom of why women in HCMC get in to it, how they get into it and can we assist in stopping the cycle. Hey, we were big dreamers at the beginning of the day. This was a draining day. Physically and emotionally. Thanks for the push Rebecca!

We watched about 12 fantastic presentations on all of the various projects and capped the evening off with a showing of the Bollywood movie, "The 3 Idiots". A hilarious movie about following your passions.

Yet another exhausting day, but worth every minute!

I'm looking forward to the grand finale day tomorrow Un-Conference and Spotlight sessions.

ADE Day 1 - The Brand of Me

My first day at the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) Workshop was a long one, not long in the sense of "drawn out and when is this going to end" long. But, "full of energy and man I'm beat, we talked about a lot and reflected a lot" long. It was a great start to the workshop and apparently things will ramp up tomorrow with the HCMC ADE Race.

Most of the morning was spent talking about "Personal Branding", both as an educator and as an ADE. It was uncomfortable. It was difficult. But that's what makes us grow. Educators aren't used to talking about themselves. We like to talk about the great things students (and in my case the staff as well) are doing, creating, publishing and achieving ... not ourselves. The sessions made us think about who we are and what roles we play in life, both educationally and personally. The idea being that we have to tell "our story". After paring down the brainstorming list of roles I play to three, here's how far I got using a Mind Mapping App called Total Recall.

The next steps are to refine, revise, reflect and create the presentation as a movie, photo, on the stage or written. I'm leaning towards a movie or a presentation. The afternoon focused on pointers to enhance each of the above modes of presentation.

Then, the day was capped off with a rousing and passionate keynote address by film maker and director, Chai Yee Wei. Here is a review of his first film Blood Ties. Probably not something you'll see in a classroom anytime soon ... at least I hope not.

I'd love your feedback on the Mind Map and if you feel there is anything I could add.

Thanks. Early start tomorrow with a Photo Walk of a HCMC wet market at 6:00 am.

Sleepy Teens and 21st Century Possibilities

On Friday, February 18, we had the pleasure of listening to John Joseph (www.focuseducation.com.au) for the second time in as many years. John’s specialty is “Learning with the Brain in Mind”. He also treated our parents to an evening of “Parenting with the Brain in Mind” on Thursday, February 17. He talked about the brain being a changeable system rather than a fixed one, where students can continue to grow their brain and it is not limited in what it can accomplish. He spoke about teachers being second only to the students in their “sphere of influence” in attempting to close the achievement gap (peers are third and family is fourth). And feedback for learning being one of the most important aspects teachers can provide based on John Hattie’s work from October 2003, Teachers make a difference - What is the Research Evidence.

photo © 2007 Yuvi Panda | more info (via: Wylio)

But the main message that came out of his presentation was related to the hours of sleep that current teenagers are getting and whether it is enough. Much research stipulated that teenagers should be getting 9 hours sleep a night. 9 hours! I’m not sure many of our students today adhere to that. He also went on to say that melatonin “kicks in” for teenagers around 2:00 pm, making them tired and ready for a nap. If you have ever taught Math last period of the day, you have first-hand experience with this phenomenon. So given all of this information about teenagers, we obviously need to educate our students about the importance of sleep and sleep patterns. So my questions to think about:

· Knowing this along with the opportunities that current technologies present, how long can we continue to offer a 20^th century structure to 21^st century students?

· What is the best educational model for teenagers today?

· How flexible can/should the schedule be?

· How much responsibility can we put on the students?

Thoughts?

To Learn, Take a Test ... Really?!?!

I was just sent a New York Times article from one of our teachers entitled, To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test. The article, in general, says that the results of their study indicate that students learn better by taking tests rather than repeatedly reading information or by drawing concept maps (also referred to as mind maps). I have skimmed through the full research article and have a few concerns about the research.

1. The students who did better on the test, already wrote a test on the same content, thus received an extra practice round. this also leads to my next point.
2. These students are university undergraduates, presumably trained to do well in testing or exam writing (since that is generally the main assessment tool used to determine grades for university admissions). I don't think I'm going too far out an a limb here to say that many high school classrooms train students to write exams, by practicing exams. In this experiment, the students are asked to "study" using a method (concept mapping) that is foreign to them.
3. Tests generally, evaluate one's ability to regurgitate information back. The questioning needs to be of a higher order to assess for understanding. Difficult to do on a test. And isn't understanding more important?

I'm not convinced, but I welcome any thoughts.