A Sensitive Issue

During one of our recent My Place episodes one of the child characters passed away. This gave us a perfect opportunity to discuss the sensitive issue of what we believe happens to us when we die. Strangely, though, whilst I thought it may be too sensitive the students were more than happy to discuss the whole issue. With their usual level of enthusiasm and openness the students plunged headlong into the discussion and produced a series of fascinating podcasts. While some of our previous podcasts have been very formal (such as the “Stolen Generation”) and some have been fun and informal (mainly our “free topic” chatty ones) this one sort of fell somewhere in the middle.

Prior to doing the podcasts a set of guidelines were issued regarding respecting the beliefs and cultures of each other. However, whilst this was a sensible precaution it proved totally unnecessary as there wasn’t a single instance of such negative behaviours all day. I’ve included three podcasts here and I hope you find them as interesting as I do.

     

Khan Academy

LA19 are in the process of trying to create Khan Academy accounts for the students. To do this I’m including this video for parents to watch so they can follow the process and enroll the students in a safe and monitored manner.

Holiday Podcast

After a well deserved and much needed holiday the students made a very relaxed and casual podcast about some of the things they got up to on their break. This friendly, relaxed conversation comes to you courtesy of Monika, Eesha and Oriyah.

 

Blogging Task #11

Recently, a young girl called Malala Yousufzai just missed out on winning one of the greatest prizes in the world – the Nobel Peace Prize. Each year the person or organisation who has contributed to the achievement of peace throughout the world is nominated for the Nobel prize. Unfortunately, Malala didn’t win, but the fact that such a young person was nominated was amazing.

Malala came to the attention of the world after being shot in the head by the Taliban. In the area of Pakistan where she lived the Taliban doesn’t believe girls should receive an education. However, Malala strongly believed in the rights of everyone to have access to an education and began a blog calling for equal rights. This was how the Taliban found her. They followed her as she went home from school and shot her in the head. The two videos below tell an amazing story of just what an individual, no matter how young, can achieve. What do you think? What problems in the world would you use your blog to fight for? What issues are important to young people today that you could use your blog to support?

 

New Term

Well, we’re into the final weekend of the holidays and next week will see us back at school for the final ten weeks of the year. I must say that it seems to have absolutely flown by, but that could be because I’ve got such a great bunch of students! The final term should see us finish our My Place programmes and create our timeline of Australian history through the 20th century. I also have a few new IT things to try out that I’m hoping will grow to be a major direction for 2014 (I’ll write it up here). The last term will also be a reporting term, so the students really need to step up and show what they can do. Along with some new art and even some music the next ten weeks should be pretty interesting.

New Art

When we return to school next week we’ll carry on creating our newest works of art. They’re pretty big and are created in several stages. We first take a photo of ourselves, then we use Gimp to make a few changes in order to emphasise the light and dark side of the face. Following that we use the projector and whiteboard to trace around the image with a pencil. Before we paint in the black areas we choose some descriptive words to reflect our personality, then we paint in the necessary areas. To finish the art we contrast the background by using bright colours and patterns. The final effect is pretty impressive. Below is an example we created of our fabulous Art teacher.

Liney

Holidays – The End of Term 3

It’s always difficult to keep a blog going during the holidays; the absence of anything school related and the obvious necessity to allow ourselves to wind down for a short while makes finding topics to blog about that much harder. However, as all teachers, I don’t have it all my own way this holiday. I have books to mark, new topics to research and programmes to prepare for what will be mine and this group of students’ last 10 weeks together. I have managed to look into some of the Apps that can be accessed from Edmodo (which we use in the classroom) and am looking forward to discussing these with the admin.

Some of the students have managed to keep posting, though. Georgia has told us all about her One Direction concert and her (and Tiana’s) amazing idea for a new app. Tiana (with Pharyn) managed to post on her way to see One Direction. She also told us a little more about her (and Georgia’s) ideas for a new app. Holly had a great camping holiday and a special birthday out shopping. Eesha had a fun sleepover building a cubby (haven’t we all done that!) and can tell you all about her amazing Indian dress. Michael has reviewed the new PS4 console.

It’s great to see students continuing with their posts whilst on holiday. They’re a great example to everyone, not least to me!