Learning Never Stops

Many educators around the world have said this before. Learning should have a purpose. This young boy from Malawi was facing starvation. People around him were dying. He had many siblings and they ate one meal a day. He had stopped going to school. He learned because he had to find a solution to a problem. And so this young man visits the library (his teacher) and learns how to build a windmill from scrap (creativity)! As i watched this video, I saw a confident, young black man facing a sea of white people, or 'wazungus', as he calls them. That confidence came from the fact that he took charge of his learning and scoffed at all the criticism that came his way while he set about making his dream come true.

Students need mentors. So do teachers. And Ms Shukla Bose is one of my mentors. As I watched this video, I could only feel an intense admiration for this soft spoken lady who achieved what we  all dream of : to make a difference in the lives of the less fortunate. That is why we human beings are here on Earth. And teacher have the best opportunity to change the lives of children who are the victims of poverty and abuse. When we do something with love and passion time and money don't make much of a difference. No wonder those teacher who started a school on the roof top are still together. And that very passion is drawing renowned professors from Stanford, etc to teach in Ms Bose's schools! Compare this scenario with our schools where the teacher turnover is very high. Teachers leave because of better opportunities and better pay. Perfectly understandable and yet what if we started putting those kids we teach as our first priority? What if we took time out and taught the...

By nainisingh | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon

Schools have to move along with the times! Watch this inspiring video from New Brunswick, Canada. But how can we change minds?. How can we go about exciting people who are set in their ways or who have gone through an educational system that relies mainly on rote learning, grading system, etc. Upon reflection, I too have gone through the same systems and yet I am willing to change and move forward. So what is it in me  that wanted to do this in spite of my background? My curious nature, wanting to make connections with the  world, a willingness to change and make a difference, empathy for the kids... I've made a small difference in my community of learners/teachers. I've taught my kids how to blog and use the classroom wiki. I've encouraged a colleague to create her own blog. I will make a small presentation in school using this video to excite others. Small steps at a time will harness change and I know I will be part of it!

By nainisingh | View this Toon at ToonDoo | Create your own Toon   For the past two days, I've been pouring over blogs and tweets in order to get a better idea about formative and summative assessments in the classroom. I feel teachers rely too much on the summative assessment in order to gauge student achievement against the school's standards.Formative assessments tend to be teacher driven and the information collected from these activities are often filed and forgotten; they are probably pulled out during PTCs! Formative assessments should be seen as information gathering activities .Students should be involved in planning them as much as the teacher. What should formative assessments look like? 1.Students should be setting goals with the help of their work, test scores, and benchmarks. These goals should be practical and achievable and must make sense to the student. 2.The teacher should be walking around the classroom, taking anecdotal notes. Is a child...

A video I enjoyed watching. :)

Being a member of the Twitter community, and having participated in the reform symposium, I got a better picture of where I stand as a technology teacher....somewhere in between everybody! I have heard many teachers ask how they could use the blog in the classroom. I managed to introduce blogging to my 9 years olds and the resullt, I consider, was quite successful. Here's how one goes about it . 1. Sign up to Kidblogs  . Here's the link http://kidblog.org/home.php 2. Write down the names of each of your students and assigned them a password. The blog will then automatically create a page for each child. http://kidblog.org/signup.php 3.Ask the students to go home and play around with it. My idea was to see whether it works at all! Most came back saying that they could log in. I helped those who couldn't. They had either forgotten their password or typed it incorrectly. 4.Give them a small assignment on the blog. Most of the students responded positively. I did not p...

Do you feel as though you are the one struggling to make sense of the digital world ?Are you trying to do  as many things as you can at the same time? Have you seen colleagues, unconcerned about the digital revolution,  walking nonchalantly past you? If they are stuck, you'll help them anyways! I see and acknowledge the potential around me. Twitter, for instance, is alive and buzziiing. But sometimes I sense a certain frenzy among teachers and I feel we could be headed for a burn out. Don't get me wrong here. When I am excited about something, I hate it when my cautious peers advise me about what could go wrong. But I truly feel that we need to take a deep breath. I draw a lot of inspiration from my mother. She has a passion for learning. This passion is transmitted to the students and they simply love her. And yet she has no idea of technology! A bus load of high school biology students descended at our doorstep to tell Ma, when she left school, that she was one of the mos...

This post was initiated by a friend who sent me a cryptic message, informing me that he was allergic to penicillin. During my walks along the sea side, I asked my mum, who is a fantastic biology teacher,(she is still so curious about things!!), all about this drug and here is what she told me... Did you know that penicillin was discovered by mistake? In 1928, Sir Alexander Fleming, an absent minded professor, left his culture in the open, and upon his return, found a certain kind of mould  growing along side his culture. This mould was inhibiting the growth of the bacteria. This made me think about my experience as a teacher. If Sir Fleming had carefully controlled the culture, this discovery would not have been made. Nature was accidentally allowed to take its course. Who would have guessed that a fungus could counter attack bacteria. Needless to say, many lives were saved because of this discovery. As teachers, we need to let go of control. There are times when we l...

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: From 2010 Reform Symposium Engagement View more documents from joan badger .