Need to inspire

Nichole Pinkard from New Learning Institute on http://vimeo.com">Vimeo.

A friend recently asked me if I would hold a series of mini-workshops for youths and their parents concerning media literacy. I don't know what it is like where you live, but in Germany, there tends to be an enormous amount of discussion about the dangers of media and very little celebration of its potetial to influence our children's ability to develop their communication and problem-solving skills.

Nichole Pinkard speaks persuasively about how imperative it is for us to inspire our children toward learning a complex set of learning skills they will undoubtedly need in the future. Can you imagine what it would be like to have access to the Digital Youth Network program (especially library part) she discribes?

Mimi Ito from New Learning Institute on Vimeo.

Equally, Mimi Ito looks at the questions of "Why do we assume that kids socialising and playing is not a side of learning?" and "Why do we assume that schools can't have a spirit of entertainment and play as a part of what they are doing?". Her group has done extensive research about "friendship driven participation" and what short of beaviour and learning processes the children are involved in. They have also looked at all the things kids do beyond just chatting with each other after school.

She summarises succinctly the gap that exits between the generations. How the older generation places very little value on the time their children spend before the screen. How they even believe the internet is hostile to learning. What she says is must do is  to differentiate between friendship-driven activities and interest-driven activities. If we lump them all together we miss the opportunity to enter into a conversation with our children about something that has a huge potential to teach them important skills.

Dusty Memories

Years and years ago, I was a boarder in an old girls boarding house. Those years inspired the collage above. It is hard to explain, but I felt all disjointed and out of place in the establishment. Others I knew, adapted well or even quite liked it.

Catching My Breath

It’s been ten days since we returned from NYC, and, as silly as it may sound, I’m just catching my breath again. There were physical symptoms to overcome, but even more, there were intellectual and emotional ones. I was revisiting, or was stuck, in certain conversations and experiences; spending time reflecting on the sense of things.

The trip was so rich in experience; I gave into the temptation to linger. Family and friends here encouraged me to do so. “How was your trip?” “Tell me all that happened?” “What was your impression about…?” Part of me wanted to recount every little detail of the journey. The other part of me wanted me to jump right back into our fine, but humble, existence.

Today, the later part won out. My responses have become more and more truncated and so, it’s time to return both inwardly and outwardly to Luebeck. I’m sure stories of NY will find their way into blog postings in the future months, just not now.

There is much for me to do over the next weeks. In the foreground of my concerns is preparation for some lectures I’m holding at the University of Kiel, and, seeing through an ESL course for occupational therapy (OT) students. The ESL course starts tomorrow and continues the next three months.

I’m going out on a limb on this course. The previous ESL instructors used traditional teaching methods (frontal instruction form, worksheets, vocabulary lists, and blocks of scientific texts with fill-in-the-blank questions) to try and motivate the students to learn English OT terminology and understand English scientific literature.

This the goal of the course, since there is very little German OT literature available. The students, as professional occupational therapists will, in the future, have to rely on English literature to inform them about new developments in their work field. My method, if successful, will be to connect the students with the English-speaking OT community on the web. The students will use blogs, wikis, OT forums, online language training tools to negotiate some sort of position in the wide world out there.

I do not know if it is going to work. The method I’d like to follow requires that the students do all the work and I just offer guidance and structure. It also means they have to ask questions, make comments, seek advice in a language they are not necessarily proficient in. All in all, I am planing on putting them in a rather uncomfortable position.

What I am asking of the soon-to-be (occupational) therapists is that they become (language) patients over the next months. They have to learn to take baby-steps, work consistently on stretching their skills, and not lose their sense of humour along the way.

Wish me luck.

The Shawn Of My Childhood (Part One)

My new school is connected to a church by a cracked-asphalt playground. There are faded court game markings criss-crossing the playground. Since there are no nets or goalposts anywhere, we do not know what games were meant to be played when the lines were first painted on the ground.

Instead, the faded lines are used to mark off territories: girls from boys, tough guys from the wimps, older kids from younger kids.

Occasionally, but only occasionally, some students play dodge ball. Only the most rambunctious kids ever get the nerve to play. If they play dodge ball they have to squeeze everyone else to the playground’s periphery. It means they have a guaranteed audience. Mind you, a disgruntled audience.

If students play well, meaning some of the players get properly whacked and fall down, then we, those standing on the side, start to cheer. This is what the players wait for, the moment their audience starts cheering instead of jeering. All of that effort just to overcome their boredom, and see whether they can make us temporarily overcomes ours.

We go to the church for catechism classes. In my last school the priest came to our class to tell us about purgatory and heavenandhell. Now we march across our school playground and through the church to the back, where there are various rooms.

One room is equipped with folding chairs and tables. The Ladies’ Auxiliary usually uses it. We each pull out a folding chair. We are here to learn about the Baby Jesus from Father Eugene.

I have to go to the bathroom and Father Eugene allows me to leave the catechism class. I walk down the corridor looking for a bathroom. There is a room with a vault used to store the Eucharist and the priest’s robes. Another room is a changing room for the alter boys.

There is a boys’ bathroom, but no girls’ bathroom. After a little procrastination, I enter the boys’ bathroom.

The bathroom is surprisingly large. Sunlight streams in through three large windows. Sunbeams dance across the floor and over the largest sink I’ve ever seen in my life. A fantastic round communal sink with a fountain sprouting out of the middle. A sink of biblical proportions.

Shawn, a boy in my class, comes into the bathroom while I am running around the sink in circles, swishing my hand through the water spraying out from the centre of the sink. I’m making rainbows in the sunbeams.

Shawn asks me what I am doing. “Making rainbows in this neat sink”, is my clever answer. “It’s not a sink”, he says, “It’s a urinal”.

To be continued…