Posts by Ian MacKay
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As a father of 4, grandfather of 7, and one great grandson, I love 'em all BUT
WHY do we have children???? -
Emma Hart: Wot an interesting post and susequent commentary.
Some have written here that they just write the words. I disagree in that you must have an audience in mind. The audience here are entertaining and responsive in probably a rare manner. Imagine your words appearing on say the Auckland Herald???
eg: Jesus replies from Glenfield: "If God wanted Emma Hart to swan round in her underwear all day, He would have said so in His Bible. It is people like her who are bringing our society to ruination and she is beyond..........." -
Have printed the Otter triumph and will give it to teacher friends to trial. If it is a success I will only extract 50% in royalties. Spike would be very impressed with the story but he is dead so its up to us to soldier on and chuckle. (If you know how.)
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Sorry. Found Time Machine on-line.
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And meanwhile, I still don't know whether Time Machine really works
I back up my I-mac on an extrnal hard drive, but where can I find out what Time Machine is and what it does?
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Bennet: Thanks, but scary stuff ! I wonder if Tolley is related to Duncan, Probably Blood Sister, or bloody sister?
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AS: You have quoted before, there are the 20% who are under-achieving. (The other 80% are among the best in the world.) How do we know that? Because of a whole range of testing being done now. We already know who and where! Every year each school tells the the Ministry the number of children below at and above average.
What is missing is the money to pay for people and resources to fix it. Please don't let them waste precious resources on more testing. -
The sad thing about testing is in the way that it teaches the kids to measure their success against the test, as Max was saying. It becomes the reason for being there. Sad.
I came a cross a lecturer in Massey who said ignore the idea of testing, though he had to put a result in for admin purposes. He then spent his energies in developing the student question setting, research skills, cross-student sharing of content achieved, and thus each learned to assess greater or lesser quality. Freed from accenting assessment, the students became totally involved and continued long after the paper was "finished." His name was John Kirkland -
81st column: Your part 2 hits on the learner believing in the need for literacy numeracy.
More than that though is learning to love reading and enjoying the art of number patterns. (That after all is what maths is:patterns.)
I know of a Principal who set out to lift the reading age levels in the Infant School. Easy enough. Focus on Word recognition and phonics. Result excellent. Average age lifted by 1.8 in a year which is a big jump for beginners.
The Principal was horrified however to find that kids had become reluctant to pick up a book let alone read it. The pressure cooking had destryed the potential to love to read. Pace. Pace. Pace. -
Todays editorial seems to be the most measured and most factual. Imagine getting off-side with the Herald! I guess each editorial may be written by a different person, hence the change of tone. (Like when the by-line was published in the Listener and you got to identify the tone depending on whether it was 2+2=7 of Joanne Black or the scathing negativity of Pamela Sterling. Now I can only guess.)
I have no idea what Shep is saying. Secret code?