A Cape Town computer teacher’s rumblings

Another wonderful visit to the Arts Festival in Grahamstown has just ended.  This was the 25th year that the Festival has taken place.  It began in 1974.  I have only missed three festivals since its inception as Grahamstown used to be my home for 15 years.

This year was different.  We had one car and I travelled down with Ryan, Tracey and Ozzy the boxer.  The young ones’ plan was to attend as many comedies and rock bands as possible.  They had little interest in classical music, art exhibitions but have a great deal of energy for late night parties, live South African bands, live comedy and pubs (mainly “The Rat & Parrot”).

We had pre-booked for only two shows – the Parlatones and visiting comedian Jimeoin.

My knowledge from previous festivals is to hang about and listen to other’s comments and to read the daily “Cue” newspaper for ideas on what to enjoy.  We had arrived on the first day so there were no queues.

The Village Green craft market caused a great deal of controversy this year as it had been shifted from the old Fiddler’s Green venue in the heart of town to the Great Field, next to the main Rhodes University rugby field.  This was controversial because they only allowed original crafters and exhibitors and some folk were unhappy about being segregated.  However all was resolved within two days.  The PX Village was also moved back into the High Street near St George’s Cathedral.

Highlights of our Festival were Richard Antrobus in “Stilted” – an unbelievably energetic post-graduate effort, produced by Andrew Buckland but devised by Richard.  The set included furniture seemingly designed for a baby giraffe and the show included hair-raising trampolining tricks and breathtaking physical feats.  Here are some more pics – thanks to Demelza Bush and Cue!  After this challenging physical theatre, most other shows we saw paled into insignificance.

I really enjoyed the comedians during this economically impoverished year and because of Tracey and Ryan, went to many more tan usual.  Matthew Ribbnick (of Chilli Boy fame) performed multi-characters in Monkey Nuts – including Edgar who had a compulsion for entering competitions.  Find out more here thanks to the Artsmart blog.

Another of our favourite comedians is new to the S African stage.  He is Sivuyile Ngesi and his show Dekaf was hilarious.  I honestly laughed more during his show than when seeing Jimeoin, the international artist – but that’s just a personal opinion. Siv was raised in Cape Town (and went to Pinelands High) and has a very modern view about his status in society.  A Siv quote: ” I swim, I played Western province water-polo, I date white girls, I’m against affirmative action….”

The Parlatones concert in the Guy Butler auditorium had me rocking like a teenager once more.  They are an amazing group and Kahn Morbee’s energy and incredible lively manner made their sold-out performances incredibly dynamic.  You can hear their music online. The pic above is my daughter Tracey and Kahn Morbee (without the painted eye lashes!).

So it was a Festival of dogs, daring, great laughs and supurb rock concerts.  I can’t wait for Arts Fest 2010!

While reading Ewan MacIntosh’s excellent blog this morning I was temped to flesh out how often I am able to say no in the computer lab to the many requests bombarded at me – especially during this busy assessment/report writing end-of-term crunch time in Cape Town.

Colleagues want me to fit in extra lessons so they can work on their report writing programme.  It is difficult to explain that I have reports to co-ordinate as well: 168 individual reports for 6 grade 1 – 3 classes and co-ordination of a number of assessed projects for final “tick boxes for the senior primary group.  I have teaching and invigilating duties as well of course.

How do you say “No” graciously?  I’d love to know!  Visit my questionnaire. Some staff visit me personally and I’m able to explain how I also need quiet creative time, even though I’m sitting in the lab where the girls love to be at this time of the term.  Some staff send polite girls with sweet cajoling ways.   Some staff send a note: “Just sending a few girls to complete their project on…….just send them back if inconvenient.”   Most of my staff are extremely thoughtful but it’s still difficult to say “No” to their urgent requests!

Some staff ask if they can work with me in the lab.  I know which ones are going to be needy and which ones will work quietly without interrupting my train of thought.  However, if I give them hands-on time, they will feel empowered and become less needy next time round.

Of course this means that those “free” periods are now gone.  That was when I planned to complete certain scheduled deadlines.   More to do at home again!

I’d love to know whether my PLN have similar problems!  Please complete this questionnaire (link below) and I will blog the results in a short while!

Questionnaire on how to say “No” in the lab!   Please complete!

Acknowledgements to Aswin’s “Thoughts Unlimited” blog for assistance with google docs questionaire!

Image acknowledgements:stock.xchng. – royalty free stock photography.

I had  the rare privilege last weekend of taking two days off school and attending  four days of the 13th annual Science Festival in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa. Rare because I’ve never been before.

Grahamstown was my home for 15 years but SciFest began in 1996 soon after we left for Cape Town.  The themes this year centred around Charles Darwin’s bi-centenial and the Year of Astronomy.

Husband Mike has attended most of them and his talks this year were on Charles Darwin (Travels with Charley),  Wierd Creatures, Brain Power (mostly comparing boys and girls).

Some of the highlights for me were the Science Workshops and Theatre productions.  Derek Fish and Graham Walker  gave an hilarious skit on “The Science of Sport” with Graham spending much of the play on roller blades.  Another excellent show was Stephen Ashworth from University of East Anglia (UK)’s who demonstrated  the “Science of Music” – creating very fine music from every day objects such as garden hoses and funnels.

There were many academic lectures by well known South African scientists.  George Branch spoke on the myths and magic of evolution, Chris Smith* (one of the BBC “Naked Scientists”) spoke about Bird flu. This is one of Chris’s podcasts on science edutainment.  Roger Smith and David Jacobs of Iziko Museum, Cape Town discussed aspects of the Karroo fossils and the end of the Permian Period (251.4 million years ago) when there was a mass extinction of over 90% of living beings on earth.  Tim Noakes of the Sports Science Institute of S Africa spoke on the international scam in the sports drink industry resulting in athletes becoming waterlogged through excessive drinking of water and sports drinks!  Nina Jablonski is an anthropologist from Pennsylvania State University, USA.  She studies skin pigmentation and how it evolved and she gave a fascinating lecture on human skin colour being the product of evolution.

Children from pre-school to Matric were entertained with science shows workshops, bird ringing, rocket making and flying, go-cart racing and of course the exciting laser shows. There were so many things to attend that I felt as hyper-active as I do when attending the Arts Festival every July. 

I would love to bring a school group next year and have submitted a report to my Heads at Springfield.

It was wonderful being back in Grahamstown again – this time with nearly all my family.  Anja (daughter-in-law) arrived on the Sunday (she was Manager of SciFest until 2007), Ryan was there with the MTN ScienCentre in charge of the interactive displays – and its seems, the Rat and Parrot most evenings!  Our friends Nicki and Irene entertained us and on Saturday evening we celebrated Earth Hour with a whole evening of fun-filled entertainment at Irene’s – no electricity, many candles.  The highlight of the evening was a wicked skit on Cererella, sing songs and poetry readings and a sad elegy to Nicky’s old Labrador, Odin who died a few days ago.

I can’t wait for SciFest 2010!

Today was the third and final day of the last cricket test between South Africa and Australia here in Cape Town.

I was fortunate enough to get tickets for myself and my family and found ourselves at 11am in the dazzling sun at Newlands cricket Stadium (Sahara Park), not only watching the game, but quite stunned by the beauty, the smells and the sensory overload of being in a capacity crowd, all determined to have a delightful day of fun.

As we live close by, Mike and I rode on bikes to the game and avoided the usual parking hassle and long walk associated with rugby, cricket and thousands of supporters.  

What a dazzling display of colour and excitement!  It was a sensory feast.  The economy of movement and careful planning on the pitch as opposed to the gay abandon of the crowd, adorned and festooned with flags, fancy hats and warpaint.  An occasional Mexican wave kept you alert and on your toes. Many beers were being consumed and the air was pungent with similar brewery aromas from across the railway line where the beer is made. 

The cricket, as with all test matches was a slow and precise plan.  The Auzzies, in order to stay alive in the game, had to make more than 651.  South Africa had a 442 lead at the start of play.  They had made a first innings total of 209 so it was a near-impossible task.

I focussed on the children around me, the guy with the bottletops squashed into his Auzzie-type Drizabone/Barmah-style leather hat, the girl playing cricket outside covered in Lucozade stickers and the myriad of salesmen – selling boerwors, droë wors, roomys, cooldrinks, chips and later, when the sun went behind the mountain – hot chocolate.

 I found a girl with a “veritas” tattoo sitting behind me and I shared with her the significance of it!  She didn’t seem to mind being featured on my blog!

We had beers at lunch with my son and daughter-in-law.  I’d managed to negotiate free tickets with them from a “black market” ticket salesmen earlier who was about to be arrested by the police!  They had tickets in A row and Anja was excited but sad about the fact that she was at the last test match of umpire The Honourable Steve Bucknor from Barbedos who has been umpiring test cricket for exactly 20 years.  

The geeky guy with the green hair was probably left over after the “dress up day” they had yesterday.  

 Oh, by the way, Australia were bowled out for 422 just before close of play this evening.  The final score in test matches – 3-3.  We still have the day-night series and the 20/20’s to look forward to!

Unknown, . “girl and computer.” Jpg. 19 Jan. 2007. Hillsborough Twp Public Schools.15 Mar. 2009 <http://extend.schoolwires.com/clipartgallery/images/19100652.jpg>.

Last year I experimented with various wiki interfaces.  This year I have found my favourite.

Wikispaces is my chosen interface and here are some of the reasons why I have enjoyed it so much this year.

When you are the Admin.  manager of the blog you can request a free private K12 wiki.

Once you have logged in to wikispaces.com and have decided on your blog title, selected  ”protected & free” as your permissions, you are then ready to create the wiki.

Once you have done this, you can select the “manage wiki” option near the bottom of the page. 

Select the “upgrade” option.  At the bottom of this new page is the option to Request a complimentary upgrade to Plus for K-12 education. You will be informed via e-mail as soon as that request is granted – once it took me 5 minutes!

You are then free to manage your users with a “User Creator” icon.

This will allow you to create a separate page for each of your students.  They will all need their own login name and password and I’ll be happy to share how I do this if you DM me on Twitter or e-mail me.  You upload their names using an Excel file so it’s not complicated.

There’s a technique I use to avoid the girls at my school from losing their user names and passwords (until they’ve memorised them), and to ensure that they have access to them at home and school.  They paste them into their school diaries.  This is sucessful for 98% of  the classes.

Other wikis that I have administered in 2009  are a Grade 5 one on archaeology (new this week), Grade 6’s on family history and a small afternoon “EcoClub” for Grade 2 and 3’s.

This term, the Springfield Grade 4’s have been involved in a wiki about school history where schools on four continents are writing about their school history.  The project is developing in an exciting way.   The girls are matched to a partner overseas.  I used my Twitter network to find these partners, and of course, my  PLN including Patti Weeg.

The boys and girls across the continents are enjoying having the freedom to write to one another through the “discussion” tabs on one anothers home pages – and I can monitor their discussions if  needed.   In fact, I receive an e-mail with every change that takes place and although that is a great deal of e-mail, it’s easy to multiple-delete before checking a few.  The children can create their own online history in real time – last week’s 138th anniversary of our school has become their own history and how they related to it! The girls are able to send their published wiki page URL  to friends and family locally and overseas and then add these comments to their wiki space. 

Other features in wikispaces allow them to add voice recordings, video and other media – but we are still experimenting with these options. There is a good introduction to this girl’s pages here:http://moourl.com/cf84k

A  wikispace that was useful in 2008 was “Designer Africa” – a wiki for Grade 6’s about physical Geography.  The girls presented their wiki on a white board and it was assessed by the class teacher as an oral as well as my own (IT teacher’s) assessment.

Something I am really enjoying is being able to view recent changes happening on the wiki pages.  I will regularly go onto the pages of the more enthusiastic wiki users who have accesss to the internet at home and will write encouraging comments or suggest ideas, hyperlinks, new page or language options.  It’s like being a teacher on call 24/7!  wikis are very suitable for ongoing assessment.  The girls enjoy the personal attention and we occasionally have a debate through the wiki in <almost> real time! Wikitwitter!!

Today was our school’s 138th birthday!  

In 1871, six Irish nuns braved the weather and environment from Dublin to establish a Dominican convent school, Springfield in Cape Town.  They bought a farm estate in Wynberg, Cape Town for  £800. 

Our school traditionally celebrates with an Open air Mass.  Archbishop Henry retires at the end of this year so this might be his last officiating Mass.  This year,  because of the heat, we allowed the Grade 1 and 2’s a chance to stay cool in their classes as temperatures were predicted to rise as high as 40°C.  The Mass was beautiful and our Grade 3 – 12 girls were able to huddle beneath the shade of the large trees and palms in the senior school gardens.  Symbolic items were blessed at the alter: bowls of fruit, books, soil, water, building materials, sports equipment amongst others.

Special hymns were sung by the Junior and senior choirs and Chamber choir and a small orchestra including drums played and sang stirring music.   The Archbishop’s homily was brief but as poignant as always.  We had tea, iced water, juices, cakes and sandwiches in the Arbor afterwards, and were able to congratulate theSpringfield family – nuns, past pupils and our senior school colleagues on the school’s birthday.

Teaching was easier for me than for most of my staff as I have a delightfully air conditioned lab.   Teachers were popping in for a “breather” just to cool down!  In a normal teaching day we might even have sent the girls home – but it was a short day!  My Grade 4’s whom I see on a Friday are writing, illustrating and recording on their wiki pages about their school history – so today was a useful day for them to add material to share with their colleagues in Australia, the UK and the USA!  Their ongoing wiki pages are here!

I decided that the coolest place in Cape Town would be our National Gardens.  Kirstenbosch is situated under Table Mountain.  I enjoyed watching the guinea-fowls pecking around me at eye level – until I felt that I might be completely devoured by ants.  I shared interesting observations with foreign visitors on the orange breasted sun birds which were feeding on nectar of fynbos near the art gallery.  I examined once more the art work of a friend, Joe Hurter, who had two oil paintings on display.

I then wandered slowly down through the indigenous and medicinal herbs exhibit to my favourite place at the moment in the gardens, Colonel Bird’s bath at the Dell.  It is an exquisite spring of fresh water created in the shape of a bird.  LHS Image from http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1213759307027240706pWkNDK

Colonel Bird’s Bath was build around 1811 by Colonel Christopher Bird, who was the Deputy Colonial Secretary of the Cape at the time.   It is bird-shaped (of course) and is fed by four crystal-clear, icy natural springs. The surrounds built in local stone and brick are a wonderful sanctuary for artists, lovers, loners (as I was this afternoon) and visiting tourists.  The shady habitat is filled with ferns, tree ferns, plectranthus, impatiens and Mackaya bella amongst others.  What cool delicious water!   I even found a secret hideaway under the fountain below the bath and had I been more suitably dressed, would gladly have wriggled into that unique spot. 

Cape Town and surrounds have been plagued by arsonists in the past few months and the raging fires in the Paarl area near Cape Town have added a pall of smoke to the air this week.  The heat wave will hopefully have cooled a little when two of my family members ride the Cape Argus Cycle tour on Sunday.  

Craig (son) and Mike (husband) will face a gruelling 109kms in this “hotazhell” heat with about 35,00 others! …. but that’s another blog entry!

Nellie Deutch has challenged me to blog the reasons why I am not finding time for myself and for my PLN*.  Nellie is one of the co-ordinators of Digifolios and Learning Spaces, which is a professional learning space NING where I have received a great deal of energising co-operative learning in the  past few months.

Nellie, I have made so many new and exciting friends through this wonderful learning environment and somehow feel that I might have let them down.  Our term begins in January, and as I am the IT co-ordinator at our school in Cape Town, I have been actively involved in term planning, co-ordination of the Junior computer room and many other activities associated with the beginning of a new year.

I am also trying to maintain fitness and like to attend my favourite gym at least four times a week.  This has been a goal I have achieved and feel so much better because of it!

My classes are involved in new projects – and setting them up has required a good deal of after-hour activity.  I am especially proud of how a Grade 4 school history wiki is progressing.  If you are a Junior primary teacher, I am VERY keen to find a Grade 4 group of boys and or girls to collaborate with one of these classes!  I teach all the grades from Grade 1 – 6 and take pride in not repeating lesson ideas wherever possible.

My home life is active and energetic and sometimes chaotic – maintainence of the pool, my friends, family and wonderful pets.  Without going into detail, I am the one to buy, cook and present most of the meals we eat at home with some assistance from my daughter when she is not tied up.  Husband Mike is often away as he is connected with a Dubai-based company which has tight deadlines.

Nellie, I find the late evening WiSiQ chats to be so exciting that I become wired up and often can’t sleep – to the detriment of the girls I teach.  I would love them to be at a time of day when I’m not ready for bed but understand why that’s impossible.  My colleagues in Israel, Portugal, Germany, Italy, USA and France may not be experiencing this problem too much.

My eyes have been opened to so many new thoughts and and ideas!  I have never before considered myself as having a predominantly “green” personality – and without examining the literature, wrote this! (scroll down a bit).  The  web sites and quizzes we were involved in during this debate has shown me a great deal about my personality and possibly how better to interact with my colleagues.  I am also able to better understand why I get frustrated at times.  

So Nellie, I’m still thinking in English, following my Twitterati, loving my teaching, and am promising to find quality time for my blogging, my digital identity and for this wonderful learning community.

* Personal Learning Network

Image from http://www.dreamstime.com/

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?”

This meme thing has been doing the blog rounds since the beginning of the new year.  It is well defined by Maggie Verster here.   She is now challenging me to delve into my past or into the horrorsome parts of me and make them public. Maggie has challenging me and six others to describe “7 things about yourself that people do not need to know about you”!

So Maggie: in random order – here goes:

1) I’m very selfish and prefer my own company (maybe with a few dogs underfoot) to almost anybody else.

2) When I was in Grade 11 and 12 I wore my hair teased and upside down in what was then called an “artichoke” style (see slideshare).  The background is the Cinderella Yacht Club near Benoni where I spent many hours skippering my Sprog called “Shadou”.

3) I unmercifully teased any teacher from the back row when I was in the senior grades (except my English and Phys. ed teachers whom I adored).  They made me a prefect in my final year so all that changed.

4) When I was a young girl I wanted at least six children.  I ended up having three – the youngest daughter is now 26 and the eldest son is 33.  Angelia Jolie was no match for the dreams I had for my family of the future.

5. I used to bite my nails – badly – for a very long time in my youth.  Oh – and for free, I wore braces from about Grade 4 to Grade 11!

6.  My brother and I used to disagree a great deal on most things but because I was “fleet-of-foot” I could always run away from any physical contest.  I wonder if her still remembers.  We’re still not that close!

7. My dream career for a while was to be a hairdresser.  Although I was a natural born teacher, the idea of going back to the teaching profession (see point 3) was unnerving.  Also, a boyfriend at the time told me that teachers never really grew up.  They just moved from one sheltered environment to another. Thank goodness my love of literature changed all that. 

There are many others now which I wont name – I suppose the worst being my total addiction to my computer – I sometimes spend more than 5 hours online in a day!

These are the rules for the meme:

The Rules

Each player starts with seven random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. You need to choose seven people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

Here are my tagees (and the reasons – thanks again Maggie):

•  Patti W (because I know she’s perfect and I cant believe she’d find anything to be ashamed of)
•  Brenda H  (because she’s always up to a challenge)
•  Kim C (because she lives in a special place Thailand)
•  Fiona B (because she writes so beautifully and is sure to find a spot to publish it)
•  Kelly B – my neice – (she needs the blogging experience in her Journalism and computer studies)
•  Joy R  (she’s up to any challenge even though she’s a very busy lady!)
•  Christina S (a very hard-working professional person whom I’d like to get to know better.)

It’s been eight days since I returned from two weeks in Thailand.  I enjoyed my visit in retrospect more than while I was there with some notable axceptions.

Cape Town has very little air and noise pollution at this time of the year balmy weather and we have no need for air conditioners at home.  Most roads and pathways are not as congested as in Bangkok.  My family are nearby and are an sms away. I will see them all tonight at a sunset concert in Kirstenbosch.  I missed them over Christmas and New year even though we had magnificent concerts and meals in Bangkok and Pattaya.  My dogs are breathing heavily at my feet.    My fridge is full of fresh food easily acquired and cheaper. Yes, travel does encourage you to appreciate your home comforts. 

Travelling in Thailand with husband Mike was always likely to be frenetic.  He is an intrepid traveller, always on the go, walking everywhere, haggling, unquiet.  It is stimulating travelling with him but I need times on my own and those times were rare in Thailand.

I recollect on landing the incredible air pollution, the pungent pavement food and drain smells that pervaded everything!  The haggling  tuck-tucks and motorbikes and bright pink taxis are part of Bangkok’s landscape.  Oh the beauty of the tallest  building in Thailand but we still couldn’t escape the pollution pall on the 49th floor of the Baiyoki Sky Hotel!

Pattaya was a bit of a “den of iniquity” but we learned to be amused by the strange, often old, often tatoo’d characters that found their match in beautiful young Thai girls on Walking Street.  We expected diving and snorkelling on the beach and found motor boats and jet ski’s.  We were impressed by the exquisite sea food meals, the delicious and unusual Thailand jewel fruits.

Crowning moments were cycling in the Bangkok “jungles” across the Chao Phraya River, visiting the Emerald Buddha and the Grand Palace and riding on an elephant while on an “elephant Safari” for an hour near Pattaya.  I enjoyed too the exquisitely laid out gardens of the Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Gardens though less so the performing elephants, tigers, leopards and orangatangs.  

I LOVED our hotel in Pattaya (Siam Bayshore) with its exquisite emerald pool.  We were pampered by beautiful people with wonderful manners.  It was rather cospopolitan and too cosy to be part of the real Thailand.  

To quote Mike: we travelled by airplane, luxury bus, minibus, saloon taxi, tuck tuck taxi, bakkie taxi, long tail boat, bicycle, mororbike, lift, escalator, elephant, and shanks pony.

…BUT OH it’s so good to be home!

Thanks to Kim Cofino’s recent blog, I made my own Wordle cloud.  The application was designed by Jonathan Feinberg.

It was quite fascinating to analyse my own wordle from the past few months’ blog entries.

Kim’s instructions and suggestions are to do this once a month and see whether your perspective changes over time.  I also like Silvia Tolisano’s idea of keeping copies of your Wordles in a Flikr folder for comparative purposes.

Hopefully with great Web 2.0 apps appearing every day, and teachers trying them out, the Wordle cloud should also change perspective. 

Here’s my Wordle for this Veritas Vibes blog site:

Class, grade and children jump up at me.  The “virtual classroom exchange”  was a big feature of our last term work and I blogged about it  in “Willards Writers.”

Also prominent are wikis and blogs.  Teacher features quite prominently but is not to central or to large in the picture!   I like that hope, able, new and girls are also an important facet of the tag cloud.  Kim has suggested that language students could “wordle” their own writing in order to ascertain what words they use extensively and to suggest new vocab. ideas when making comparisons with one another’s wordles. 

Following Kim’s suggestions,  I also made a Wordle cloud from my  661 Delicious bookmarks.

Here is the result:

There is a little more emphasis on Web 2.0 tools, education and resources.  I love that blogs, resources, technology and teaching are so prominent.  It’s a pity that games and online games are so low in the profile.  That’s probably because any URL with “games” in the heading  is blocked on our school server.  BTW I still can’t understand the logic of banning games on a school network – except of course because of the cost of the bandwidth.

If you’d like a political viewpoint – here is a  comparison between recent speeches from Obama and McCain (via Martijn Pannevi’s blog.)  I wonder what a wordle from a recent Robert Mugabe rant might look like?

Acknowledgements to Geeky Momma (Lee Colbert) and Silvia Tolisano for the original posts on the use of Wordle in the computer  and language lab.

I invite you to try out your own Wordle and send me the link to add to this post.