The count down to the last day of work at our current school is on. (75 days as of this blog posting) We are excited to close this chapter in our lives and to move on to greener pastures. I have been thinking a lot about the transition to our new school. This year alone, I have observed several new staff members begin at our current school. Their success at the school depended on how they transitioned into the school and the city.
Here are some good transitional behaviors-in my opinion:
1. Get to know the local staff-they have been here the longest
2. Learn and say everyone's name correctly-practice it until you get it right
3. Ask questions- what is already working well-no need to reinvent the wheel
4. Look at the big picture-myopic viewpoints are problematic
5. Ask what makes a good leader/teacher/person according to the local staff-Here in Hanoi, a smile makes you an effective leader regardless of what you actually do. Even if you don't understand it, you need to respect the local customs.
6. Get out into the city you now live in. Explore!
7. Respect the experience and insights of staff members who have been in the city longer than you, but also take their advice with several grains of salt.
8. Be honest about your work history and your reasons for teaching overseas
9. Know that you do not speak for your entire country, you only speak for yourself but people will judge your country by what you say and do
10. Shake off any negative things you may have gone through at your last school-new country, new school, new outlook
Alright, now all I need to do is get through the next 75 working days and then I can use my own advice.
~Deep breaths~
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Teaching. Show all posts
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Monday, May 6, 2013
Scratch
Computer programming-something we all benefit from, but don't understand. I'm slowly learning Python and have my eyes set on Google Scripts in the future. Now how do I introduce this kids so that they have a better understanding of the computers that are all around them? Scratch.
This is old news to most people who are on the tech side of a school, but I wanted to share my approach this year in teaching Scratch. I have only had the opportunity to teach Scratch as an after-school activity. I will be introducing it to my 5th grade class during our teacher-run ICT time. This will be interesting as 1/3rd of the class is in my after-school activity and will be far ahead of everyone else. I've given myself a differentiation challenge.
Lesson 1: I introduced the program. A few kids had seen it the year before but had no real grasp of anything beyond simple animation that relied solely on costume changes. So, we played games and kids explored the interface.
Lessons 2-4: I introduced a few of the basic commands at the start of each lesson and then let the kids experiment. They were running into a lot of problems and not knowing where to look for solutions. On top of this, everyone was working on their own project.
Lesson 5: I changed direction and we worked as a group. First, I wrote this tag game. I left a few simple bugs in it, ones that dealt with the order of commands or a few small missing blocks. I gave the class 3 things to fix and sent them off to work together. With some guidance, all the bugs were solved and this is the improved version that two of the girls came up with.
Here are the bugs I left in a very basic tag game:
1. The sprites could move during the introduction countdown.
2. If the second sprite did not move, it could not be tagged.
3. When the game was over, it did not reset automatically.
As you can see, these were fixed. The students gained a better understanding of both the details that are needed for a good project and how to read through their code and find issues.
This post by@jeffreywrensen
This is old news to most people who are on the tech side of a school, but I wanted to share my approach this year in teaching Scratch. I have only had the opportunity to teach Scratch as an after-school activity. I will be introducing it to my 5th grade class during our teacher-run ICT time. This will be interesting as 1/3rd of the class is in my after-school activity and will be far ahead of everyone else. I've given myself a differentiation challenge.
Lesson 1: I introduced the program. A few kids had seen it the year before but had no real grasp of anything beyond simple animation that relied solely on costume changes. So, we played games and kids explored the interface.
Lessons 2-4: I introduced a few of the basic commands at the start of each lesson and then let the kids experiment. They were running into a lot of problems and not knowing where to look for solutions. On top of this, everyone was working on their own project.
Lesson 5: I changed direction and we worked as a group. First, I wrote this tag game. I left a few simple bugs in it, ones that dealt with the order of commands or a few small missing blocks. I gave the class 3 things to fix and sent them off to work together. With some guidance, all the bugs were solved and this is the improved version that two of the girls came up with.
Here are the bugs I left in a very basic tag game:
1. The sprites could move during the introduction countdown.
2. If the second sprite did not move, it could not be tagged.
3. When the game was over, it did not reset automatically.
As you can see, these were fixed. The students gained a better understanding of both the details that are needed for a good project and how to read through their code and find issues.
This post by
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Student Driven Whiteboard Activities
I'll be the first to admit, usually I write about traveling, but forget about the teaching side of this blog's title. So, teaching...
A few months/posts ago I wrote about our trip to the Vietnam Tech Conference. I wrote a little about what I did. First of all, my part was about .03% of the whole thing. The folks who put it on did an incredible job. Some parts were quite innovative: a cheap conference, teacher run, unconferencing and speed geeking. I'd loved every part.
I was surprised at the positive responses I got for my part. I had a 2 part speed geeking presentation. Of the two things I presented on, I'll write about one. I'm sectioning out the Green Screen part for the sake of space and limited interest. I talked about 2 websites I use a lot. First, let me explain my schedule.
The bell *Ding a ring a ring a brrrsss* at 8:15. Kids make their way up the stairs and come into class. BUT! School doesn't start until 8:30. Busses and cars are still arriving until 8:30. What do I do with an uneven drifting in of 10-11 year old students over 15 minutes?
Simple, I hand the first one (or if it is the same student for a few days, the 2nd or 3rd) through the door an IWB pen. I have a Mimio bar and a website setup. I use two websites for 99% of things; funtrivia and wishball. These are great activities for kids to join into, and they are not just time fillers.
It took about 20 minutes to introduce the IWB to them. A little longer for them to learn to type - with a pen, on a board, on an on screen keyboard (In Windows it is Start-Accessories-Ease of Access- On Screen Keyboard). Now, they launch the keyboard from a start-menu pinned location.
Wishball is a great game to teach place value. The one linked is for the ultimate challenge. Simpler versions are available for use with younger kids.
The funtrivia link I gave is to the word play for kids section. It has been helpful to my 15 ELL students and my 1 English speaker. It bridges the link between a game and some basic warm-up activities. I also believe that my students need a bit of transition time from the native/home language to the mix of languages they speak on the bus and playground into the full English classroom that they go to school in. I'd rather ease them in through a shared activity than just throw them into the academic world of learning in English. Although the link points in the language area, there are many other kid friendly topics. I've used quizzes on Greek mythology and science, of course not as quizzes, but as a "remember that guy in that story we read yesterday about those old Greek people?"
I hope to keep up post like these in between pictures of our trips.
A few months/posts ago I wrote about our trip to the Vietnam Tech Conference. I wrote a little about what I did. First of all, my part was about .03% of the whole thing. The folks who put it on did an incredible job. Some parts were quite innovative: a cheap conference, teacher run, unconferencing and speed geeking. I'd loved every part.
I was surprised at the positive responses I got for my part. I had a 2 part speed geeking presentation. Of the two things I presented on, I'll write about one. I'm sectioning out the Green Screen part for the sake of space and limited interest. I talked about 2 websites I use a lot. First, let me explain my schedule.
The bell *Ding a ring a ring a brrrsss* at 8:15. Kids make their way up the stairs and come into class. BUT! School doesn't start until 8:30. Busses and cars are still arriving until 8:30. What do I do with an uneven drifting in of 10-11 year old students over 15 minutes?
Simple, I hand the first one (or if it is the same student for a few days, the 2nd or 3rd) through the door an IWB pen. I have a Mimio bar and a website setup. I use two websites for 99% of things; funtrivia and wishball. These are great activities for kids to join into, and they are not just time fillers.
It took about 20 minutes to introduce the IWB to them. A little longer for them to learn to type - with a pen, on a board, on an on screen keyboard (In Windows it is Start-Accessories-Ease of Access- On Screen Keyboard). Now, they launch the keyboard from a start-menu pinned location.
Wishball is a great game to teach place value. The one linked is for the ultimate challenge. Simpler versions are available for use with younger kids.
The funtrivia link I gave is to the word play for kids section. It has been helpful to my 15 ELL students and my 1 English speaker. It bridges the link between a game and some basic warm-up activities. I also believe that my students need a bit of transition time from the native/home language to the mix of languages they speak on the bus and playground into the full English classroom that they go to school in. I'd rather ease them in through a shared activity than just throw them into the academic world of learning in English. Although the link points in the language area, there are many other kid friendly topics. I've used quizzes on Greek mythology and science, of course not as quizzes, but as a "remember that guy in that story we read yesterday about those old Greek people?"
I hope to keep up post like these in between pictures of our trips.
Monday, March 4, 2013
Vietnam Technology Conference in Ho Chi Minh Last Weekend
Hue and Hoi An posts will have to wait.
VinTech was great. SSIS in Ho Chi Minh and UNIS Hanoi set it all up. One day of sessions, and a day of un-conferencing and speed-geeking. I presented a speed-geeking talk on IWBs in the morning routine and how to do a cheap green screen.
We got a lot of great ideas. One or so that we can use currently. If we can get tablets or computers in the room, we'll have a ton of ideas to apply. Presenters were other teachers from Vietnam rather than hired speakers. It was a great way to get ideas from people who used them that week.
I've also decided to jump into Linux - Unbuntu. The open source stuff that I learned about this weekend has hooked me. Free, open source powerful video editors and word-like suite.
At the end of the conference they gave away prizes: 5, 16gb thumb drives, 500g external drive, blue tooth keyboard, 2 ipods and 1 ipad mini. As people drew names out, the smaller gifts were given away. The basket came to our table just in time for the last prize. I reached up over my head and pulled a piece of paper out. I handed it to the organizers and they read it.....Jeffrey Wrensen!!!!! I won the iPad! So now I've got every OS there is currently in my living room. To be fair, it isn't a normal MacOS, but I'm on my way to being current with all of this technology.
One place you wouldn't expect to see frozen fish.....the airport. Enjoy this little gem as we took no other pictures this weekend.
This picture was taken in the Domestic area, after check-in. The only way to get this fish home is to store it in the overhead compartment. Now it is vietjet so every flight is 20mins to 3hrs late. For an 8:30 flight, needless to say, we boarded at 10pm. Is this a situation where you want to have 2 kilos of fish thawing, then 2 hours on the plane, then deal with baggage claim? NO! Especially when they let you bring knives on board... But that is a different true story of our time in Hanoi.
Overall. We are glad to be home here in Hanoi. Or as Evan calls it, HHaaannnOiii.
VinTech was great. SSIS in Ho Chi Minh and UNIS Hanoi set it all up. One day of sessions, and a day of un-conferencing and speed-geeking. I presented a speed-geeking talk on IWBs in the morning routine and how to do a cheap green screen.
We got a lot of great ideas. One or so that we can use currently. If we can get tablets or computers in the room, we'll have a ton of ideas to apply. Presenters were other teachers from Vietnam rather than hired speakers. It was a great way to get ideas from people who used them that week.
I've also decided to jump into Linux - Unbuntu. The open source stuff that I learned about this weekend has hooked me. Free, open source powerful video editors and word-like suite.
At the end of the conference they gave away prizes: 5, 16gb thumb drives, 500g external drive, blue tooth keyboard, 2 ipods and 1 ipad mini. As people drew names out, the smaller gifts were given away. The basket came to our table just in time for the last prize. I reached up over my head and pulled a piece of paper out. I handed it to the organizers and they read it.....Jeffrey Wrensen!!!!! I won the iPad! So now I've got every OS there is currently in my living room. To be fair, it isn't a normal MacOS, but I'm on my way to being current with all of this technology.
One place you wouldn't expect to see frozen fish.....the airport. Enjoy this little gem as we took no other pictures this weekend.
This picture was taken in the Domestic area, after check-in. The only way to get this fish home is to store it in the overhead compartment. Now it is vietjet so every flight is 20mins to 3hrs late. For an 8:30 flight, needless to say, we boarded at 10pm. Is this a situation where you want to have 2 kilos of fish thawing, then 2 hours on the plane, then deal with baggage claim? NO! Especially when they let you bring knives on board... But that is a different true story of our time in Hanoi.
Overall. We are glad to be home here in Hanoi. Or as Evan calls it, HHaaannnOiii.
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