I’ve always shunned the assumption that people who grew up with something that was introduced before they were born and is in widespread circulation when they grow up are inherently inclined to have superior knowledge about it. Like, you know, these “digital natives”.

From personal experience I can say that lots of my students are web-savvy. They have accounts at Facebook, SchülerVZ, MeinVZ, you name it. At the same time they have problems judging the validity of their Google search results. Additionally, they have trouble finding the correct expressions to feed into Google to actually get meaningful results.

But this is not all. A lot of their peers have trouble using a computer, connecting to and/or using the web with a web browser. Can we call these students “digital natives”? I think not. What is most interesting to me is that research has apparently come to the same conclusion by now.

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Sollte jemand noch mehr Ideen oder Unterrichtsmaterialien für so ziemlich alle Fächer suchen, wird er/sie/es hier sicherlich fündig werden.

Wolfgang Autenrieth hat dort mehr als 2010 Links zu Arbeitsblättern, Tipps usw zusammengetragen und nach Fächergruppen sortiert! Vielen Dank für diese Wahnsinnsarbeit!

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In the two years that German trainee teachers go through they learn to put the interests of their pupils above everything else. While this is certainly a valid point, I–and many others, too, it seems–think that doing this is like offering yourself to the burnout gods.
Let me explain.

In German teacher-trainings the changed and changing youth is one of the first topics to learn about/cope/deal with in the first month of training. One would expect the trainers to tell the future teachers the important things about basic mental health (and keeping it for the next thirty years).
But, alas, they normally don’t. They show you that children and teenagers have of course changed from the teenagers trainee teachers remember from their youth. At the same time, however, they force you to accept that your pupils’ interests are still paramount to any interests of your own (like being able to teach till your reach the regular pensioning age in good health).

I think this should change and I’m not alone with it. Marie Delaney seems to support me in this. She wrote the book Teaching the Unteachable and right in the first chapter states that being a good teacher (and that includes being a good teacher for pupils that others believe to be unteachable) strongly relates to your feelings as well as emotional and physical state.

Now, can we develop a balanced emotional and physical state while we  are neglecting ourselves? I don’t think so!
But this is exactly how our fresh teachers are prepared in the teacher-trainings. They produce burnout candidates and not teachers.

This has to change on both levels. If we as individual teachers are able to keep our emnotinal and physical state in a balance, we will be able to focus our attention on our students’ needs and making them top priority without burning out.

In teacher-trainings the ways to do this should be taught to give trainee teachers the chance to enter the job and flourish in it. Far too many colleagues  have entered and withered on the job.

Disclaimer:
Of course I do not think that German teachers aren’t well prepared for their job. They are! At the same time I firmly hold the belief that teacher-trainings do their best to prepare trainee teachers.
However, I strongly believe that a session on finding your balance should be mandatory. In the long run all we educators will benefit from this.

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Have you ever wished you and your students could collaborate online by …

• … sticking notes to fridges?
• … rearranging those notes?
• … commenting on these notes?

I know I have. So I was very excited when Opera Software introduced Unite into their browser.  Unite offers several applications running in your browser. One of them is the Fridge, which let’s you collect notes from other surfers. (These surfers don’t need to surf with Opera, BTW.)

The only remaining problem was that I really don’t like to let my computer running when I’m not at home, so the Fridge would not be available for several hours per day. Add to that the different surfing habits of my students and you realise the problem: When the Fridge was available, no one but me was surfing. When the students were connected to the net, the Fridge was unavailable.

Luckily, there is Wallwisher. Accessible 24/7 and no need to keep my computer turned on. Just how I like it!

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If you (like me) have no idea of what to do with Inkscape, hop over to Inkscape Class Day 1 « Máirín Duffy for an eight session course by Máirín Duffy.
Originally held for 7th grades in the Boston area, all of us can enjoy the course via blog and PDF.

Impressive!

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