Virtual Teacher
Newsletter No. 77 August 29th 2003 SOCRATES
THE FREE ONLINE
FORTNIGHTLY IT TEACHERS' NEWSLETTER
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Newsletter
Archives can be found at:-
http://www.virtualteacher.com.au/archives.html
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CONTENTS
1.
Welcome
2.
Mind Candy
3.
SMART QUESTIONS
4.
New Printables - Generic Rubric
5.
Technical Stuff Blaster & G5
6.
Web Site Focus - Shedd Aquarium
7.
Socratic Teaching Method
8.
Great Sites
9. Readers' Requests/Comments
10
Next Issue
11.
Code of 'Netizens'
12.
Tips
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1.
WELCOME EVERYONE. What a week!!! I
had the good
fortune
to give a seminar at Merici College Braddon ACT., as part
of
the 'Twilight PD Session' held
there on Monday. The school
is a
pleasure to walk through with some interesting innovative
spaces.
The ICT backbone is well supported with creative staff
who
are interested in new ideas and are very much hands on
with
students. The general atmosphere
is one of enthusiasm
and
energy, which is generated from the Principal down, there
is a
feeling in this school that exciting things are, and will happen.
My
seminar topic was similar to the IES Conference Seminar http://www.virtualteacher.com.au/ies.html
With
more time we were able to cover some areas in greater depth.
I was
particularly pleased with the examples of SMART questions
each
of the groups developed. In
refining and developing
questions
that they felt would stimulate interest, that they were
interested
in, the teachers themselves found they were keen,
motivated,
excited to find answers immediately.
With the right
questions
even after a full day teaching, learning, was stimulated
by
great questions.
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2.
MIND CANDY
FOR
ALL YOU LEXOPHILES ( LOVERS OF WORDS )
1. A
bicycle can't stand alone because it is two-tired.
2.
What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway).
3.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
4. A
backward poet writes inverse.
5. In
democracy it's your vote that counts; in feudalism it's
your
count that votes.
6.
She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
7. A
chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
8. If
you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed.
9.
With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
10.
Show me a piano falling down a mineshaft and I'll show
you
A-flat minor.
11.
When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
12.
The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
13. A
grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result
in
Linoleum Blownapart.
14.
You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
15.
Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
16.
He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
17.
Every calendar's days are numbered.
18. A
lot of money is tainted. 'Taint yours and 'taint mine.
19. A
boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
20.
He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
21. A
plateau is a high form of flattery.
22.
The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was a
small
medium at large.
23.
Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed
in
the end.
24.
When you've seen one shopping centre you've seen a mall.
25.
Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
26.
When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she
thought
she'd dye.
27.
Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
28.
Santa's helpers are subordinate Clauses.
29.
Acupuncture is a jab well done.
30.
Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.
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3.
WWWinfo Becomes SMART QUESTIONS
This
section will hence forth deal with GREAT QUESTIONS -
questions
that excite, challenge, and demand to be answered.
Questions
that have no right answers, that require, thought original
thinking,
and higher order thinking skills to tackle. So send them in,
write
some great questions, experiment with them, and share
them
with VT. The first great questions come from Merici College
Canberra,
they went something like this:-
ARE
WE ENDANGER OF MAKING TEH FRANKENSTEIN BANANA?
SHOULD
CHILDREN AS YOUNG AS 8 BE PHOTOGRAPHED AS ADULT MODELS?
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4.
NEW PRINTABLES
Evaluation
Rubric for Generic Skills
Content
is no longer paramount; the intellectual development
of
the student is now the goal. Knowledge is no longer an end
in
itself but the means.
http://www.virtualteacher.com.au/Rubric.pdf
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5.
TECHNICAL STUFF
W32
Blaster Worm Virus
Well
wasn't this a joy. 80% of
computers infected were home
computers
and 100% of NSW Education Department Computers
running
Windows XP or 2000 were infected.
Each computer
needed to be individually de-wormed as
it were, and the departments
in
instructions were at the very least woolly.
For
the full info see
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.html
This
worm infects Windows XP and 2000 only. '98 and earlier are fine,
Unix
and Mac are fine.
Download
fixes from
http://www.bondid.det.nsw.edu.au/worm.htm
Best
to download them on a computer running Windows '98 to avoid contamination. Or
from a Mac.
Don't
follow the directions on this site.
To eradicate the worm:-
1.
After downloading patches- better on 2 separate disks, right
protect
the disks by moving the disk tab to right protected position.
(this
will be from closed to open)
2.
Reboot your computer and hold down F8, this will allow you to
start
in safe mode - preventing the computer fom closing down,
and
the worm from cloning.
3.
Insert disk 1 with WindowsXP-KB823980-x86-ENU.exe,
open
program and let it run.
4.
Reboot the computer hold down F8 to run in safe mode,
insert
disk 2 and open 'fixblast.exe'.
5.
System may ask you to download additional patch - don't
you
have already done it. Remove disk and reboot computer.
Servers
will not be infected unless they are running XP or 2000.
UNIX
and other systems should be free from infection.
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The Power Mac G5 is the world¹s fastest personal
computer and
the first with a 64-bit processor ‹ which means it
breaks the 4
gigabyte barrier and can use up to 8 gigabytes of
main memory.
The new G5 processor ‹ available at speeds up to dual
2GHz
with a new ultrahigh-bandwidth system architecture
featuring
AGP 8X and PCI-X ‹ makes the Power Mac G5 a
breakthrough
in desktop processing power. This machine is now
available.
Love the ads. Educational Price for Teachers start at
$3,239.50.
Read about it at: http://www.apple.com/powermac/
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6.
WEBSITE FOCUS Shedd Aquarium Site is K-12
http://www.sheddaquarium.org/sea/
This
is a fantastic site and would suit anyone working on the
ocean/sea
life. Opened in 1929, Shedd Aquarium is one of the
oldest
public aquariums in the world. Shedd Educational
Adventures
(SEA) contains a treasure trove of aquatic science
resources
for K-12 teachers and students. SEA brings
the
Philippines to life for your students.
Includes searchable lesson
plans,
fact sheets, and interactive activities such as Build-a-Fish
based
on the Wild Reef exhibit at Shedd Aquarium.
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7.
SOCRATIC TEACHING METHOD
I found myself in discussions with a
senior executive about
teaching methods. All manner of clichés were bandied
about.
Basically antiquated DULL teaching
methods called Œteaching styles¹
were being used at the school and there
were many unmotivated
students. He mentioned the ŒSocratic¹
Teaching style as one they
were trying to steer away from, I thought
this pretty odd. In fact it
is not the style of teaching, or the age
of the teaching method that
counts, it all boils down to one thing, being able to
motivate and
excite students, using any or all methods that are
available to you
at any given time. In fact at Merici, one of the teachers mentioned
that the idea of using QUESTIONS to stimulate
learning had been
around IN the 70¹s. This is true.
Questions are back again, but with
a whole new spin. Now we are asking students to prepare them,
to make them matter, to ask questions that matter to
them, and we
have the resources to satisfy their answers on the
WWW.
The truth is that the Socratic teaching style was
based on questions.
Socrates was asking questions way back in 480BC. He not only
used questions, but motivated his students, they
attended his
discourses
by choice. Can you actually teach a lesson based on
asking questions rather than providing answers? The
simple answer
YES, a more complex answer is, YES, YES, YES.
Try itŠ..
http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html
How do you do it?
http://lonestar.texas.net/~mseifert/crit3.html
The oldest, and still the most powerful, teaching
tactic for fostering
critical thinking is Socratic teaching.
There is one
final rule of thumb with the Socratic method it is:
ŒWhen free minds
seek together for greater understanding, they
tend as did
Socrates to move with lightheartedness and a sense
of the comic. The
relevant jest is never out of order, for good
conversation
always combines high seriousness with pertinent
playfulness.¹
http://www.cutsinger.net/socratic.html
Is this having
fun while your learning from 480BC or what?
Educational
studies worldwide have show that interested
motivated engaged
students learn best, it is utterly amazing that
even in some of
the best schools teachers loose sight of this simple
fact, and believe
it is the student¹s responsibility to suffer boring
lessons and
handle it.
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8.
GREAT SITES
HOT
SITES
Fats
Waller Forever (Dana Library)
http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/ijs/fw/fatsmain.htm
From
the Institute of Jazz Studies, Dana Library, Rutgers University,
this
digital exhibit provides a basic overview of Fats Waller and his
music.
Divided into sections that cover Life and Times, Ed Kirkeby
Collection,
the music, recordings, European and US tours, notes, and
more.
Each section has a short clip which plays automatically. Scroll
sideways
and downwards as the pages are somewhat oddly sized.
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Intuitor
Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics
http://intuitor.com/moviephysics/
According
to the site: Technonerds go to movies strictly for
entertainment,
and of course, the most entertaining part comes after the
movie
when they can dissect, criticize, and argue the merits of every
detail.
However, when supposedly serious scenes totally disregard the
laws
of physics in blatantly obvious ways it's enough to make us retch.
The
motion picture industry has failed to police itself against the
evils
of bad physics... There's a list of movie physics blunders that
are
so common, they are referred to as Generic Movie Blunders. The site
also
offers reading recommendations, a rating system, movie reviews, and
How
to Use Movie Physics in the Classroom. What better way to rally
students'
interest in physics?
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Test
Your Lego Building Skills
https://club.lego.com/build/junkbot.asp
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Fantastic
Protractor Site - What's My Angle
http://ambleweb.digitalbrain.com/ambleweb/ambleweb/ambleweb/mentalmaths/protractor.html
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9.
READERS COMMENTS/REQUESTS
Hello
Cathy,
Well
done on getting excellent results for your students.
Cheers,
Boyd
Munro
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey,
Cathy... great news on the UNSW Computer Test! You all
deserve
the accolades, and it's great hearing of the rewards
everyone
is reaping. Keep up the great
work. ... Nancy
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Hi
Cathy
Many
thanks for the constant stream of useful ideas in your newsletter.
I am
looking for Australian schools who might like to try a bit of cross
Tasman
collaboration (during the World cup I think!) in taking part in a
Circle
story project. The details are included below.
The
2003 WERC Circle Story is planned for the weeks 13 - 31 of October. I
hope
to have some international teams and have my fingers crossed that these
dates
suit.
Briefly
a circle story is a collaborative writing exercise within a group of
four
teams (can be small groups or a class) where, within a clear timeline,
four
stories are developed consecutively and then passed on by email to have
the
next section added. In this way each circle ends up with four stories
where
each team has contributed a section to each one.
When
they work well, and they usually do, then they are a lot of fun as the
children
develop a range of ideas and then get to see what others have added
to
'their' stories. In management terms it requires at a minimum four
writing
sessions ( you can decide how you will do this) spread over three
weeks.
All of the stories are then shared on the Internet.
If
you would like to enter a team/s please send the following information to
me by
email at innesk@werc.ac.nz
School
Teacher
Email
Class
level
I am
happy to have multi level class teams and will try and match the
members
of each team to accommodate this.
I
look forward to hearing from you all. I am happy to answer any
queries
youmay have. I will forward greater detail to those teams that
enroll
in the
project.
Regards
Innes
Kennard
Is
anyone interested in this love to hear from you sounds like
a great
idea.
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10. NEXT ISSUE - Will be full of
surprises I hope to get back
to
some great printing ideas as promised.
And also some more
Maths. The protractor in this newsletter is
fantastic. Ciao Cathy
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11. Code of the
'Netizens'
This Newsletter
is not free, despite the misleading advertising
above. The Fee is
now due. Each week you must help one
colleague on the
Internet who has less knowledge than you.
Help that person
even if you have to visit their classroom or
do a little
research and get back to them. Trust me, this will
help a lot of
people get their computer classrooms running better.
OK I'm trusting
you!!!
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12. TIPS
1. Double click
on highlighted URLS to open in browser.
2. Send in your
Questions, Questions will be published with
Answers, send in
your Answers, if you have expertise to share.
3. Nominate a
brilliant site for review and inclusion in this
newsletter.
4. Nominate a
fantastic school site for review and inclusion in
this newsletter.
5. Make contact
with other schools using fantastic programs.
6. Prepare and
innovative article for this newsletter.
7. Tell 2 colleagues
about this newsletter.
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The opinions
expressed here are purely those of the editor,
Cathy Brown. All
other small print clauses apply. Such as:
Use at your own risk. Nothing in life is
guaranteed. If it doesn't
work for you send
me an email.
Editor: cathy
brown mailto:cathy@virtualteacher.com.au
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