What does an elephant and a teenager have in common? Alex and Brett Harris tries to answer this question in their book “Do Hard Things”. According to the Harris brothers, domesticated elephants are taken away from their mothers at a very young age and shackled to a tree by their handlers. The baby elephant learns very quickly that it is pointless to struggle because ultimately, the elephant is going to hurt itself when it tried to free itself from the iron shackles - the baby elephant is broken. The handlers then use a piece of twine to tie the elephant down subsequently. Feeling something attached to its leg, the elephant is resigned to the fact that it is bound and no longer struggles to free itself.

This is where elephants and teenagers collide. The Harris brothers propose that teenagers are stuck in that same rut as the elephants - they believe that they are powerless. All the elephant needs to do is move forward and the twine is going to break. Our teenagers are as such. They see themselves as a generation that is powerless to make a change.

Why this attitude? Partly because of the low expectations that today’s society has placed on them. They are deemed as the “irresponsible” group of people. Interestingly, the word ‘teenager’ is a newly coined term that did not exist a hundred years ago. This means that there wasn’t a ‘period’ of time where children were allowed to be young adults and yet at the same time to behave like children. Children a hundred years ago were not allowed to act irresponsibly, they had to grow into adulthood.

Imagine a ten year old in the past, waking up early to do his household chores before he goes off to work. Or a fifteen year old officer serving on board a warship, tasked to pilot the newly captured brigantine back to England. Was it because that that generation was better of in terms of capability or was it because they were allowed to grow into adulthood.

As educators, we believe in spiral education. We start from a young age and we progressively increased the intensity and rigor. Yet somehow, we seem to have forgotten to empower our children in the other areas. We are quick to conclude that they ‘cannot’ and we take the opportunity away from them.

I recently celebrated my birthday with a surprise party and it was orchestrated by one of my pupils. Yes, a mere eleven year old made the necessary arrangements, spoke to the necessary people and rallied the class. I was definitely pleasantly surprised. After mouthing my thanks to the class, I turned to the mastermind and inquired how he managed to get the cake to school - it was raining hard that morning. He shrugged and replied, “I carried it in the rain and placed it in the staffroom refrigerator. After all, the most dangerous place is the safest place.” At the moment, my eyes were opened wide and I chuckled.

I ask myself today, how have I empowered this generation. Have I “spiralled” for them what it means to grow into adulthood in their day to day activities. Have I started them with the small things in life, that will prepare them to meet the challenges of adulthood?

The recent learning symposium that was organised was a very good experience. It challenged me in many aspects of my lesson design. One area I was exposed to was the design and re-design of the lesson. I feel that this is an important cycle to go through as it helped me to refine my lesson. This made me think and rethink the learning outcomes of the lesson first, followed by the vehicle in which in was used to deliver the lesson (the ICT component). I had to ask myself how is ICT enhancing the students learning instead of merely using technology for the sake of technology. In addition, it also made me evaluate how the c2015 student outcomes are to be integrated. The outcomes play a very important role in developing the whole child.

In my lesson, I designed a web-quest to allow the students to learn independently. The product they had to produce was a piece of writing on crime. The children were able to learn independently and then shared what they had learnt via a forum. They collaborated with each other and shared what they had learnt. This platform facilitated the children’s learning as they go about sharing with each other what knowledge they had acquired. It was very encouraging to see how some children were able to reconstruct their knowledge as they assimilate information from their friends. The children were then able to transfer what they had learnt into their writing assignment – this was an indicator that the children had achieved the learning outcomes.

It is important not to stop here at this point but to share these findings with my peers and colleagues. This was achieved through the learning symposium that was organized by the school. The symposium served as another level of refinement. I had the privilege to my more experienced teachers (including STs) and through the Q&As, I was further able to refine my lesson as questions were asked. This allowed me to consolidate my thoughts and also to accept any constructive criticisms that were presented. It was truly a learning experience for me. This experience encapsulates what it means to have a professional learning community.

I recently acquired a new toy -an iPhone. During my free time, I like to browse for apps to download. There are a lot of free apps out there. They include utilities, games and also educational software. I came across this application called “Free Grammar Up” (FGU). It’s your basic MCQ kind of quiz. The nice thing about this application is that there are various Grammar items that the user can quiz themselves with. However, does not help in learning. Why do I say this?

One feature that I look out for is the scaffolding that the program provides. A scaffold is a temporary structure on the outside of a building, made usually of wooden planks and metal poles. It is usually used by workers while building, repairing, or cleaning the building. Similarly, scaffolding is an approach where help is given to a student while he/she is learning. Answers are given but not directly. This approach allows the student to attempt a question and if a wrong answer is chosen, a prompt will help the student rethink his/her answer and try again. Scaffolding is very powerful as it ‘forces’ the student to rethink until the correct answer is achieved. Unfortunately, FGU falls short here.

On the other hand, “Math Drill” (MD) shows promise in this area. Compared to FGU, which has no scaffolding, MD has three levels of scaffold. What I like about the app is that it takes into consideration the different learning styles of the students and provides a combination of different types of scaffold.

I am looking to see if the iPod touch platform is a viable learning tool that can be implemented in teaching and learning. Go try the two apps.  Both apps offer free editions for test driving.

The advent of the microchip has revolutionized the type of devices that can be made. Sifting through gadget magazines and you will find a plethora of such newly added devices. The size range - mini to micro. It would not be surprising if a “nano” category is created. They were not kidding when they said, “Size matters”.

While size does improve the portability of things, the kind of portability that I was thinking did not have much to do with size. Bookmarks are part and parcel of everyday life on the Internet. Come across a good website, click ‘bookmarks’ and then add it to your Favourite tab. The problem arises when, you log on to multiple terminals. Usually, I use a Macintosh to do my daily work. However, I am sometimes forced to use a PC. This can sometime be frustrating because of the inability to access my bookmarks.

The solution - delicious. It is a website that allows you to store your personal bookmarks online. Furthermore, it allows you to share your bookmarks with other ‘delicious’ users. This allows not only portability but also collaboration with your social networks.

To make this application more user friendly, you can download a plugin and it works seamlessly with the Firefox browsers. Hit the bookmark button and your library of bookmarks is immediately accessible.

On another level, the delicious plugin allows the assessment of baseline ICT skills. One of the requirements for students is that they have to be proficient with searches. Students can be tasked to use any search engine to look for information and then store the website onto delicious. The teacher can then later check the relevance of the site to see if the student was on task. The students can also make comments on the respective websites. A freeware that is definitely worth getting.

I had an epiphany. One of the things that matters to me is convenience. I am a creature of convenience. There is nothing like entering your room, reaching for the remote and then your TV comes on, followed by the computer etc. Minimal fuss and everything is up and working just like you want it to - bliss.

Now imagine having the ability to run your school  computer laboratories in a similar way. You enter the lab or you send your ICT monitor to get the computer lab ready for the class. All the students needs to do is just to switch on the teachers’ terminal and with one click, the other 40 computers come to life. You might think that that is really not a lot of time saved. But really, every extra minute counts especially when you have only 1 hour to work with to complete your task. Not to mention that it probably takes you at least 5-10 minutes to get the class organized and on the way to the computer lab.

Specops seems to have the solution for this problem. Its a Wake on LAN (WOL) that allows for remote restart/ remote shutdown. The icing on the cake - its free. I need to try this out.

The first nightmarish obstacle I had to cope while introducing technology into my teaching was how to get the students to really pay attention to what I was saying instead of being distracted by the computer screen in front of them. I promise you, 9 out of 10 students will most probably be focusing on their computers rather than on you.

I think what is key is that every teacher should be able to manage the class. On many levels this is important. The first of course being the need to instill some discipline. Without discipline, the students are not ready to learn. On another hand, it also serves as a tool that will encourage teachers to embrace technology.

HeuCampus by Heulab is one of the classroom management tools that I found very interesting. On the surface, it features a few familiar functions- mainly the IM platform that allows instant messaging via the different users. However, the following features excited me even more.

The system allows the teacher to lock out all the connected students so that they cannot fiddle with their computers while the teacher is teaching. This already prevents the frustrating scenario of the students not paying attention to the teacher. Furthermore, HeuCampus also allows the teacher to monitor what the student is doing (ie. the teacher can literally see the individual student’s desktop on his/her terminal).

There are other collaborative tools that HeuCampus is able to offer. I’ll talk about those later when I have the opportunity. Personally, I feel that the classroom management system is a must to create the environment for learning.