This is a second collection of wonderful Epic Wallpapers produced by my year 7 students. The design were chosen for the strength of their designs, attention to detail, Creative Commons licensing and overall appeal. Well done to the students for creating such lovely work. Feel free to download the designs, which are all at 1680 x1050 pixels, and should fill most screens.
The following tweet landed on my feed this morning, and it really got me thinking. I so often try to tackle printing as an environmental issue, that I forget the fact that it is, in many ways, simply an inferior way to work.
Don’t tell me a policy is a “living document” that is being constantly reviewed if you then go and print it on paper. Sigh.
— Chris Betcher (@betchaboy) January 28, 2013
This led me to compose the following email to my colleagues, as an opening salvo in a new offensive against the poor practice of printing:
Colleagues, you all know that I am opposed to printing. But there is more to it than just environmentalism.
If you want to think of your work as “living” (eg actively used, collaborative, flexible, responsive, meaningful) then why consign it to static paper? Why not share your work online, build an audience and set your work free. Put it in a blog, or an online document, invite commentary, make everyone an owner.
This is the future of knowledge for our students. Lead by example. Paper is a dead end. Isn’t it time to upgrade?
Fortunately Chris Betcher put his thoughts down in a shared, digital environment, and so we are all able to make use of them. Imagine if he just printing them out, and filed them away.
Service learning is one of the best elements in education, providing students with so many opportunities to learn, grow, see, do, give and connect. However, it is my experience that most students who undertake service learning do not have the skills required to really help those they are interacting with. The upshot of this is that whilst service is great for students, it is often a drain on the limited resources of the very organisations we are trying to help. This seems to be particularly true when students are asked to undertake tasks involving practical, physical skills. I have seen older students, up to 16 years of age, who struggle to handle tools in the pursuit of an outcome.
Over the last term, I have been trying to overcome this problem, through the introduction of an activity I call The Art of Physical Labour. Meeting once a week, students undertake a series of different tasks which aim to equip them with not only skills, but also a mindset of getting work done in an efficient, sensible and positive manner. My first group of 10 students recently completed a term of labouring, and all individuals I could see improvements in both ability and attitude as they moved through the following tasks:
In general students were most engaged in those activities set up as a game or challenge (for example digging and carrying were combined into a two-team race, in which the winning team was the one to move all their soil first).
This activity will continue to run, and will be shared by myself and another teacher over the coming year. It is something I would really like to expand on, so that all students get at least one year of it. These skills are so useful in terms of being a well rounded, robust, resilient individual, that I think no student should leave school without them.
Note: thumbnail by Chiot’s Run on Flickr, shared under CC BY-NC