#fablearnsthings

This article makes me cringe. But cringy things are often things that we must overcome and I think on the whole we need to teach our students how to overcome this.

I often have conversations with my partner (who is a high school teacher) about this exact subject. Students can’t tell what news is real on social media. And we all know from experience that there is a LOT of fake news out there. And it isn’t just students, my parents often get fooled by these as well, it’s hard to tell whats real and whats not on the internet, but my argument isn’t that it should be easier to figure out what’s fake, but that people..EVERYONE... not just students should use critical thinking skills to evaluate for themselves what they should believe and what they shouldn’t. 

There are so many ‘real’ new stories from reputable stories that feature fake or misleading statistics and it seems more important than ever that we should all be sharpening our critical thinking skills. Maybe those 9 out of 10 people who eat Vegemite and also show signs of cancer also spent a lot of time in the sun (ahem, Australia) and maybe that 60% of people who have high IQ’s and are late all the time and actually just 6 people out of only 10 people that showed up to the interview for that research. 

We must always remember that 76% of statistics are made up. ;)

But seriously, this is a problem, and it’s something that we need to explicitly work on, which is where the general capabilities part of the curriculum become so useful, that's where our critical and creative thinking lies and when you look at it from the point of view of something so pervasive to our daily lives - the media - that’s when you really see it’s inherent usefulness. 

p.s. Whenever I think of critical thinking about statistics (or stupid statistics in general) I think of this (for those that don’t know you can click on a word that has a faint underline and it will open a link, I leave these little cookie crumbs everywhere in my posts) and of Freakonomics in general, which, if you haven’t seen it you should STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING RIGHT NOW AND GO AND SEE THE MOVIE OR READ THE BOOK or follow the podcasts or all of the above.

Alright so, this article might not seem entirely relevant to primary education when you read it, but trust me, it is. Mostly just because every single person should endeavour to become aware of how dominated our society is by racial bias and stereotyping. And this should start early. We should be choosing plays like Hamilton to show young students or exposing them to Indigenous Australian Contemporary Theatre or even just showing inclusive casting such as the latest casting of a black Hermione in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

So this article is more like a jumping off point for how we as teachers can practice inclusivity and break-down stereotypes whilst teaching the curriculum. As Leah mentions in the article, we are lucky to be in changing times right now but we should really make the most of it. Particularly since we have the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures and Asia and Australia’s Engagement with Asia as cross-curriculum priorities in the current curriculum, a great example of how we are moving toward inclusivity which will only be utilised fully if we as teachers make the effort to show this inclusivity to our students.

Wow! Jackpot!

This website is amazing! This would genuinely help me teach dance in the classroom. But more than that, it has a huge amount of relevance to the Australian Curriculum AND features Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture!!

When I began looking for a dance resource my criteria were: high quality, easily accessible, features dance elements and can be tied to one other part of the Australian Curriculum. But I genuinely thought I would have to search high and low and adapt something to the classroom. However, this resource is perfectly ready to be used in the classroom as is. It features high-quality images of beautifully produced dances, simple but detailed explanation of dance elements and stories, thorough background descriptions of the culture from which the stories portrayed through each dance come from and easily navigatable pages. There’s even activity pages and grade outlines! (Everyone praise the teaching gods).

It literally steps you through the process, so much so that you would be able to give this website to an older primary student and they could conduct their own researching process on this website.

The other thing that I am particularly impressed by is how accessible this resource makes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture to people who may have little or no experience with it. This makes the process of including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures (that’s a cross-curriculum priority for those of you playing at home) in the classroom much easier and waaayy less daunting (at least in my opinion).

What are they anyway??

We had an interesting chat in the workshop about what exactly technology and arts are and it seems that this conversation can and has gone on forever. 

I’m going to attempt to 5R this thang but I’m going to use the framework because I don’t trust myself not to get sidetracked.

1. Report: In the workshop a discussion was had about what the definition of technology and art respectively could be. There were a great many varied responses and some debate occurred.

2. Respond: I was surprised at how difficult it was to define these .. well what would you even call them? Subjects? Themes? Objects? I initially thought that technology in particular would be easier to pin down because it was relatively recent, but it’s not when you think about it, isn’t the wheel technology? Sun dials? Technology has most likely been around as long as art has at least or longer (seeing as art was created using tools)

3. Relate: Each person it seems had their own personal idea of what art or technology might be and had assumptions that were challenged, for example, we were asked if a Bauhaus chair was art or technology?? Is a quilt art or technology? Is architecture art or technology? Significant common factors for a definition of technology were: a man-made object, serving a purpose

4. Reason: A PCSC (Purpose, Context, Specifications, Constraints) framework was then applied to these factors to form three levels of technology (at this point I’m blatantly copying off the slides but they are so succinct that it seems counter-productive to re-word them)

Level 1: Technology that fulfils a human purpose (e.g. a guitar)

Level 2: Technology that is an assemblage of practices and components (e.g. a song)

Level 3: Technology that is a collection of device and practices (e.g. a band)

Note: I have changed the examples to help me #learnbydoing but if you think these are incorrect please tell me!

5. Reconstruct: The definition we ended on was “any artefact, system or environment manipulated or designed by humans that* serves a purpose or meets a need”

*’that’ was changed from ‘to’ to incorporate accidental inventions like the glue on post-it notes or velcro, which weren’t technically invented TO serve a purpose but ended up serving a purpose.

So, now that my reflecting framework is complete I have a few random questions to ponder:

Isn’t all art technology seeing as it serves a purpose by entertaining or pleasing us in some way and is manipulated or designed by humans to serve this need?

What about when animals use tools such as sticks or rocks, is this technology even though it is not manipulated by humans? 

i.e. what do you think is gonna happen?

In the first lecture we were given a set of questions which I thought may be pertinent to answer here and #reflect on later.

Q. What do you expect to learn in this course (EDUC7545 Teaching Technology and the Arts in the 21st Century)

A. I expect to learn practical skills to use in the classroom which will help with my teaching of technology and the arts. I also expect to navigate the current Australian Curriculum and acquire strategies and skills to enable me to teach technology and the arts.

Q. What do you believe, or assume and technology and the arts and education regarding these?

A. I assume through past experience that neither of these subjects is given enough time or importance within schools.

Q. How confident are you to teach these subjects?

A. I feel moderately confident in supervising these subjects and I feel that I can learn then easily enough but teaching them is an entirely different matter.

Q.What are you most/least confident teaching?

A. I am least confident teaching music, I an constantly tapping the wrong beat and always battled through my instrumental practice as a child. I am probably most confident in teaching some kind of sewing, photography or computer work, as I have personal experience in these and have attempted to teach people these skills a few times.