I love the month of December, I love Advent and I love Christmas! There is a special excitement in my house, my church and our classrooms. The month of December also provides me an opportunity to wear my Christmas ties! Yes, the picture below is my Christmas tie collection. I have accumulated this collection over the years. Some ties are from my father-in-law, my wife, Value Village, and garage sales. Strangely, I have never received a Christmas tie as a "teacher present" - I guess my students think that I have enough. I actually have more than enough ties, 20 to be exact, to be able to wear a different one each teaching day of December. In fact, I may start wearing them in November next year! This tradition that I have, appears to be appreciated by the students, as many make an extra effort to talk to me so they can check out the tie or compliment the tie. November and December are busy months and I enjoy how my ties lift my spirit and hopefully those of others.
I say that these are busy months, yet, I must confess that this year these months have probably been the easiest in all of my teaching career. This is due totally to the great work that Mr. Wensink did in our classes. Mr. Wensink has now finished his teaching placement here at HD and is able to enjoy a well deserved break. Mr. Wensink is a natural in a classroom. His gentleness, respect, presence, patience, professionalism and commitment to the Lord and his students will serve him well.
He did such a good job that, at times, the students were wondering who I am and why was I there. God bless you Mr. Wensink!!!
A topic in education that is dear to me lately is "the flip." The flip involves flipping the classroom so that lessons are completed as homework, usually via video on YouTube, and class time is used for students to do their work, experiment, ask questions, complete assignments etc. I have just started using the flip and providing online tutorials for my grade 11 computer students.
I will be curious to see how well accepted the tutorials and lessons are by the students. This format of instruction makes sense as it allows me to be more available when students will likely have questions and/or need assistance. I will keep you informed about the progress being made!
Grade 9 Computers - BTT 1O
We have recently begun our graphic design unit. We use an Open Source, and free, program called Paint.net to manipulate and create images. Our first task was to create Ipod advertisements. The first picture was taken in front of a green screen that we then removed and replaced to get the new image. It was quite exciting and, in a short time, students produced a rather polished advertisement. We will continue to work with graphic design until the Christmas break. If there are any graphic designers or graphic artists out there, I would enjoy talking to you about possibly being a guest in our class!
Grade 11 - Computer Programming - ICS 3U
We have just finished our presentations about computer issues and have had a chance to watch some of them. It was interesting how we learned from the videos about how to present and also how to take better videos. This week we are starting a new unit on methods in Java programming. This is the chapter that I will be making video tutorials for so keep checking out http://www.youtube.com/user/HDCHtube to see the updates!
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