Another fun thing

Click here to get your own Protopuppy

Buy this single!

It comes out today and all proceeds go to Age Concern. It was even on the Aussie news :)



The guy behind it has his own blog! Which he has been keeping for a while.. He decided to make some money for charity.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Zimmers are a British band, noted for the age of their members: lead singer Alf is aged 90, and the oldest member, Buster, is 100.

The Zimmers were created as a feature from a BBC TV documentary, due to be aired in May 2007[1]. Documentary-maker Tim Samuels travelled all over Britain recruiting isolated and lonely old people. The finale of the show is this group of lonely old people coming together to form a rock troupe and trying to get into the pop charts.

The Zimmers are due to release this single, a cover of The Who's "My Generation" on 28 May 2007. The song is produced by Mike Hedges, the video shot by Geoff Wonfor (Band Aid, Beatles Anthology), and it was recorded in the legendary Beatles Studio 2 at Abbey Road[2].

Another reason to love WOW

Mr Wiggles!


At the end of a very long quest I got the choice of 5 gold or a pig!!! He's completley useless, he doesn't do anything but follow me around but he's a pig and he's ace and he makes me smile!!

Woo HOO!

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

Just been to see it. It was good and was washed down nicely with a frozen coca cola. It looks a little gross but is surprisingly tasty.

I won't say much but I will say that Mrs Depp (Span) this film will be your heaven. She already loves it purely because Mr Depp is a big star of it. Did you realise that in most scenes with the aforementioned, perfect cheek boned, actor there are at least 3 of him? Confused? You won't be... there's one scene with over 10 if him - perfect cheek bones and those eyes looking at YOU from all over the huge screen... you won't know where to look and LOM is going to have to carry you out of the cinema. I bet you're annoyed that the next couple of weekends are so busy! You'll have to see it in Germany with subtitles or pause the wedding for a viewing ;)

My Mother went to see the first one and was sea sick and had to leave.... This one would definitely make her more sea sick... a lot of swaying around on the sea you see!

Go see it.. as usual it's great fun.

Moodling

It's a great name isn't it? MOODLE.
It stands for:

Modular
Object
Orientated
Distributed
Learning
Environment

It's a web 2.0 thing. And this is where Austrlia seems to have focused their response to ICT In education. I love it!

I tried, unsuccessfully, to understand Moodle when I was working at Tommy's but now? I have just started a course in them! How to create them, run them, have students use them etc. They truly are ACE and I can't wait to know enough to set one up for Shenley students.

My homework on the course was to play with it. To create a new blog which would document my learning journey and to contribute to one of the forums on the Thebarton Moodle.
Well... You know me....
I couldn't resist.
Click here

Instead. I created my very own instance. I set up the open source stuff on the webserver and have created a place for teachers to share their IWB resources, talk to each other, support each other, share ideas etc. I'm going to be placing resources up there and I am very curious to see what happens. A little more than the "baby step" that I was advised to take at my last session.! lol
Not content with playing with the class that was already set up I installed a completely new "instance" created some classes, organised a database and several forums and have told a whole heap of teachers about it tonight at the intermediate IWB training session I ran. So... I wonder what will happen next!

of course, If you're from Shenley, then you'll want to join, take a look and get used to the way it looks and feels! You may even want to share a few resources and talk to a few Australia teachers.... I have a feeling you might be seeing a few more of these when I return in January lol. ;)
I know that PB is desperate to tell someone that she can't attend a meeting because she's busy Moodling! ;)

Such a nerd but what can I do?
I'm not sure Bogus, Dunk and Noj's bro knew quite what they were letting themselves in for when they said I could share their domain....:)

27 today!

Happy Birthday LOF!

Can you spot your card?
PS. Bogus... He keeps snogging the monkey but nothing's happened! ???? Was it all a Lie!!!! :o
and the thought of Dunk stood in Birthday's giggling uncontrollably about a cat and scaring the other customers amused me much more than the card!! lol


Made us laugh this morning! lol

They'd clearly drank all the English beer Matt was missing! LOL

it's got me curious

The secret


I've bought the book so we'll soon see....

Introduction to teaching in Australia

I got a phonecall on Thursday asking me if I was available for some temporary, relief teacher work in a local school on Friday. I said yes, then spent most of the night worrying - Which i actually (even at the time) thought was hilarious. I have no idea why the butterflies set in. The panic of making sure that yes I had set the alarm clock. Checking it twice, Once to make sure I hadn't accidentally switched it off and once to make sure I'd set it to go off at 7am not 7pm. I didn't even really sleep; I kept waking up for no reason!

I was absolutely fine though of course.

I was relieving a teacher who had gone home sick the previous day in a Greek Orthodox Junior school. It was a lovely old building and the staff were really friendly. It was very interesting to see some of the differences though.

Firstly., this teacher was a Year 7 teacher. Year 7 are taught as primary students are taught. They have the same teacher all day, for all subjects. This in turn meant that I taught English, P.E., SOSE and Maths.
Each lesson was 40 mins long. There were 8 of them. We had double English. P.E. which involved me taking them outside and giving them a ball to play "soccor" which I kept calling football which confused them. Then SOSE, which I naturally assumed would be something like PSHE but turned out to be more like Geography. It stands for something about society and the environment and the pupils were learning about land forms. Maths involved a mental math test.

All fairly straight forward. There were some notable differences though to what we are use to in the U.K.

At lunch time I tried to find the dining hall. I discovered there isn't one. There was a hatch that served food, which had a cue system and then once you had your food you went outside to eat it (if you were a student). No dining hall and no lunch duty as it were.
The school bell wasn't the usual metal ringy thingy. Instead, Grease style, it was "Bing Bong"ing from a tannoy - supermarket like. I could hardly hear it!
The conversations in the staff room were also interesting. For example I over heard one debate where teachers were arguing that Year 6 were far too young to learn long division and that one of their colleagues was being ridiculous to even try!!! Don't they learn that in the U.K. far earlier? I was also surprised to discover that the Year7 class I was taking were learning to read the clock - that was one of their mental maths questions.... mmm I also had a wander around in a free they gave me and was surprised that I couldn't find a single IWB anywhere!!! LOL How do the teachers cope? :) I had to use a whiteboard pen all lesson!!!!

I was also expecting some comment from the pupils about my accent and the fact that I was from the U.K. I was expecting to be picked on a bit. I wasn't. Infact they were more interested in whether I'd been to Old Trafford or Enfield. Whether I knew who the Artic Monkey's were and of course whether I knew Kiera Knightly personally (that surprised me! Kiera Knightly???) I explained that although England was a small island... much much smaller that Australia... that didn't mean that I knew everyone and that I had not had the pleasure of Miss Knightly's company.

Although the school and staff were lovely. Being there made me feel very proud to work at Shenley Court. When I asked the pupils what they had been learning they couldn't tell me. I had to teach them about the difference between argue and persuade before they could begin to explain what an exposition on European Brown Bears was. The cover work that was set didn't mention objectives once and I have got the impression from teachers that I have spoken to that they don't plan lessons in the way we do in the U.K. and although I can see the benefits of a more relaxed approach it made me feel very proud to be apart of a department and a school that had students who were much more focused on their learning who knew where they were at and how they had gotten there and could answer the question "What have you been learning" with no problems what so ever.

I was however very impressed when, at the end of the day, I asked the pupils if they would like to lead a prayer. Unlike at a certain school of a relgious nature where I used to work, all of thgem wanted to lead the prayer. Then they started to recite the lords prayer in Greek and then in English. AH would have loved it!! I was just stood there amazed. I'm not sure what I was expecting but it was lovely to hear. I loved the way they did the sign of the cross 3 times too. Very nice. They were all very respectful and calm about it. Very impressive!t

Cat rock

No they don't have glowing eyes and are not evil

I went out for a walk at lunchtime to see what I could see. I decided that I would attempt to coax one of the feral cats from "Cat Rock" into being my new best friend. He/She (I wasn't fussy) would then spend hours on the beach reading and chasing bits of seaweed. Alas, it wasn't to be. I saw 5 who ran off as I approached. One who just looked at me funny as I made the usual sucking through teeth noises, I even removed my sun glasses so that it could see my eyes and then squinted merrily to encourage it to move into my space. It just squinted back and wiggled it's ears. Obviously, not being a cat, I have no idea what this meant and I certainly couldn't recipricate with ear wigglage!

Then I spotted a small, hand sized, black kitten. He must have been about 8 weeks old. He had a weepy eye - which reminded me of Stoof when he was a weeny. I thought " a ha! young and impressionable and not yet too feral!" and duely grabbed a stick to wiggle near it, to see if, like all Kittens, it couldn't resist and pounce. It did. It resisted. In fact it just looked at me out of one eye as if to say " Who are you? Who are you?"

I gave up.

At 5:30 I decided to go back to cat rock for pictures of afformentioned. Earlier, when the sun was out, they were to be seen lying, with little care for the world, across the rocks sunning themselves and enjoying the view (which was of course being somewhat obsucured by the mad human who didn't even bring food! - how rude of me!)

The sun was setting so i thought I'd get some nice "sunset at cat rock" shots but BOY can those cats move when you try to take their picture! Unfortunately the little kitten was staying well out of my way. I did see a Stan-a-like but when I politely enquired as to his name, he ran off to. Leaving blurry shots everywhere. So, appologies for the quality of these shots. I will try again tommorrow when the cats are enjoying the sun sooo much they can't be bothered to move!

I did get some cool sunset pics though :)

I went here to day. It's where a contact from CEGSA works. I went to his College to play with a new toy - The Onfinity. I wanted to see how it worked so I took along my laptop - Now loaded with 4 different Interactive Whiteboard software packages - to see how it worked.

Whilst I was in the room playing with it and answering passing curious teacher's questions the Head walked in (didn't know he was the head at the time) As we're talking and I was demonstrating he interrupts, explaining that a lot of the high schools in the area have been buying interactive whiteboards and so he wants to invest in certain areas of the college. I carry on showing them things and getting used to the Onfinity - which is very good-.

Then the conversation turned to which hardware they should by. At this point my colleague at the college has explained who the Head is! The head then says:
"I don't care which Hardware we buy. We need a Selena! You teach English? Brilliant. I think it's clear we need Selena to help train us and work with teachers. I think we could offer her at least a day a week. Make it happen!"
Then he left the room.

The result? I have a job!!!! WOO HOO. I am now going to be an TRT (Teacher relief Teacher) for them and they are working on giving me at least one permanent day where I can work with staff members on how to use an interactive white board. :) At last... something to do! I have a feeling I'll be there a little more than one day a week too. - Well fingers crossed. The pay is better than the agency were offering as well so that will be nice - plus I get to work in the same place with the same people!

I'll be teaching the New Arrivals I think. Which means helping people who don't speak English to speak and write it! I'm also hoping for a little Year 12 English ;) It's a Senior College so it's older kids and some adults from other countries who I'll be working with.

It'll be nice to go to work again! ;)

meet Bob

It's been a little wet and windy today so he took refuge between the fly screen and the glass. He's a huntsman spider - he's not venomous or aggressive and he eats red backs too so he's allowed to live on the balcony. He's NOT coming in though!