Rainbow 1Rainbow 1 December 2012– Best practiceDecember 2012– Best practiceArticles:

“An Example of Solidarity “ by Shanker - Nepal

“The value of Practical Subjects” by Prince - Zambia

“The value of Practical Subjects“ by Rasmus - Denmark

“Mediator” by Oleflemming – Denmark

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An Example of SolidarityAn Example of Solidarity

From Shanker - Nepal

Good Practice Sharing

There has been few practices newly introduced during the academic year 2068. Out of them , kindergarten class has a unique and impressive practice this year. It can be regarded as an example of solidarity .

At the beginning of the academic year, all the parents were invited to the school which paved a way to be familiar to each other and also to know each others expectation over the year. Coincidentally, in a few months time, a lady (mother of a kindergarten child ) fell seriously ill as she got lever infection. The lady belonged to a marginalized community from financial and social point of view that's why she had really hard time . In one hand, she was not in position to afford for the treatment in the hospital and on the other, there was no any food left for her two children back at home. As mentioned earlier, one of the children is our student in the kindergarten. In such situation, our KG teachers called parents' meeting and briefed about the problem of the particular lady and her children. The parents , unanimously, decided to collect some money. In addition, other teachers also joined their hands to collect the fund. Eventually, there was a collection of Rs. 25,000. Which became so much contribution in the hospital and to purchase some food stuff for the children. Though, the amount as such is not huge but it is regarded as a token of solidarity among the guardians and the teachers.

An Example of SolidarityAn Example of Solidarity

In further elaboration, the same guardians and teachers along with the students went out for the joint picnic when they had an opportunity to be closer.

Finally, Graduation Day for the Kindergarten was another ample chance to appreciate each other. The guardians not only extended their gratefulness to the grade teachers and the school management but also offered Token of Love. It was something new and impressive practice of the year.

Finally, Graduation Day for the Kindergarten was another ample chance to appreciate each other. The guardians not only extended their gratefulness to the grade teachers and the school management but also offered Token of Love. It was something new and impressive practice of the year.

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTSTHE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTSAuthor Author Prince Chiwala - ZambiaPrince Chiwala - Zambia

Gone are the days when we had a lot of complaints against our system of education, when there had not been enough stress on entrepreneurship. Those were olden days when there was almost 85% negligence to practical subjects in schools as compared to book knowledge type of education.

Today the world has embraced technology to the fullest and we cannot afford to deprive our children of this high tech era. Our syllabus in Zambia has for the last four years introduced a combination of Art and Design, Physical education , introduction to commerce, Home economics and Music. This subject is known as Creative Technology Studies. This is supported by government in order to help the small and medium enterprise (SME’s)to develop themselves into self acclaimed business enterprises. This is to reduce the government’s pressure and burden of creating formal employment for every school leaver.

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTSTHE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

In this case, specialized teachers are employed to cater for the Creative Technology subjects. It is believed that while many gifted children in academic work are able to benefit, it also prudent that practical subjects in general would equally benefit our academically weak children from Creative Technology Studies-CTS . In High schools in Zambia, pupils are given an opportunity to add on to the list by offering wood work, metal work and Mechanical and engineering Drawing subjects. This is why the Ministry of Science and Vocational education is keen in seeing children excel in these areas. The emerging economies of the East began in the same way by emphasizing on SME’s. Countries like India, Malasia and Indonesia and China had a vigorous Small scale Trade Industry.

This component of practical subjects would give pupils a ray of hope especially to those who fail to proceed to the next level of education. The skills acquired from these practical subjects are lifelong skills meant to encourage self employment through SME’s. Among the practical subjects is another cardinal area of production unit where pupils are given startup capital and encouraged to grow flowers for sale and vegetables.

Our true prosperity as developing nations lies in improving Trade and Small Scale Industry by making knives, making schools items like dusters, board rulers, prepare food dishes and grow a variety of crops which would in turn add value to the existing financial status of individual schools. Knowledge of Photography, tailoring and hair dressing could be among many suitable SME’s to occupy our school leavers who normally do not have qualifications yet for formal employment.

Pupils should be reminded to appreciate their own talents and ability to rise to the occasion by embracing Creative Technology Subjects and ICT skills in order to contribute positively to the growth of our economies. It is high time we scratched our heads to give a second thought on Practical subjects.

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTS DENMARK

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

by Rasmus Ricki Christensen http://www.folkeskolen.dk/blogs/sloejd-stafetten/ The creative and low literacy pupils suffer because the woodwork as an elective course largely is abolished from the secondary classes. Should I make a personal vision of a combined craft-, design- and sience-subject in the secondary classes, it should be based on the woodwork and combine it with physics, Lego and IT. I will come up with some concrete suggestions as to what content such subjects could have.

Elective courses still are sharp in my mind, when I think back to my school in 1995. Here could each student based on interests and talents choose between different subjects. Electronics / Mechanics has given me some of the best skills later in life.

So it was with horror that I, when I started as a teacher in 2006, found out that electives in secondary had been abolished. French was now the only electives, and there was a secondary that was devoid of creativity. Students have up to 35 lessons a week, and only two hours of physical education breaks a week of academic subjects. You experience so much, how creative and academically weak students suffer from this.

Lucky for me, I have been employed at a school with a very visionary and competent leadership, which from the beginning has accepted the visions and ideas I had for a creative subjects in secondary. Therefore I have now for

two years been offering students a free space from the normal teaching and allow them to lead their creative ideas to life and cultivate innovation.

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

Studies have shown that Danish students are generally less creative when they leave school, than when they started. I do everything in my power to break this pattern. But it is hard work, especially when we live in a time, when we are trying to dilute the creative arts by combining two subjects like woodwork and handicrafts, which have very little in common. If you look at the lessons learned from other countries such as Holland, where they have a full merger of the creative subjects, then it's anything but impressive. The teaching and the products I have seen students make here is equivalent in level to what one can expect from a Danish kindergarten working with a glue-gun, popsicle and matches ". Therefore, I believe that the two subjects should continue as separate subjects, but each with their own individual development. My vision has always been that we had woodwork both in primary and secondary. The course in secondary I have called: Craft, design and technology.

I made me a lot of experience in the approx. two years, I have had elective woodwork, as well as the many creative workshops I've held over the years. My workshops have always had massive search among students, which shows that students are eager to work with innovation and creativity.

The students, who tend to seek my elective courses or workshops, is a mixture of academically weak boys, as well as the academically strongest boys in mathematics and physics-chemistry, thus potentially coming DTU students.

In elective woodwork I have not had a planned course, but made a workshop where students had to realize their dreams and ideas. They had ideas about making everything from go-karts, balista, lamps wood, skate rails, finger skateboard ramps, etc.

Especially shave been popular. I ended up being so inspired by my students' idea, that I even got to make one myselves.

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTS It has been important to me, that students have had the consciousness, that almost everything could be made, if only they had the will to do so, and the school had the funds.

Should I give you a personal vision of a craft, design and tech in secondary, I think it will have to be based on woodwork and combine it with physics, Lego and IT. I will come up with some concrete suggestions as to what content such disciplines could have.

Competition course

I have previously created a course called "In the Wright Brothers' footsteps". Here we have gone through all the challenges the Wright brothers had and all the factors, that come into play in relation to flight.

It could also easily be a cycle of both vehicles balista etc. So I put a lot of materials in front of the students, in this case in the form of engines, propellers, balsa wood, foam board, etc. and let the students design an aircraft that could fly. It wasn't so easy, and succeeded only in very few cases. It is natural to get a competitive element into the process as these, and generally all the courses, this helps to increase the motivation-factor.

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

Product Improvements and Development

Here you could give students a task, that they have to improve a product that already exist. One could for example. disclose a shoe, some fans, heat sinks, peltier elements, batteries, and then ask them to come up with a constructive solution on how to actively improve the temperature in a pair of shoes or a helmet or for that matter incorporate an airbag on a bicycle. Only the ingenuity limits.

Design

You can, as I have done, build your own wind tunnel. With a series of rules to ensure that it avoids easy or cheat solutions, the students were asked to design and construct the most aerodynamic vehicle, they could. Thereby we also got a green mindset in this process, since the fuel is linked to a vehicle's

aerodynamics. You could also choose the topic "Design a cool computer chair" or "build a futuristic living room lamp".

A good idea is to start with what interests boys.

Lego

It will be obvious to make progress with Lego Mindstorm and Power Function, as well as the Lego Education, available with solar and wind energy. One could for example. give students the challenge of designing and building the next version of Curiosity, which has just landed on Mars, which must have a specific function in relation to its task. All with a strong focus on the creative and innovative in terms of product development.

THE VALUE OF PRACTICAL SUBJECTS

Graphic design

I am currently very interested in how to make progress with virtual product design in Inventor or AutoCAD, which is then printed as new prototypes of the new 3D printers. Already at this stage, they can design and print everything from shoes to less spare parts for cars. These 3D printers are the future, and you can not find a course where it would be more obvious than a udskolingsfag like this.

So with a subject as Craft, design and technology are oceans of course, where you can focus on the development of the creative and innovative with students. Where they learn through practical work and the experience that gives. Students will surely come to love this course, which will help to provide successful experiences for students who might traditionally have had a hard time in school because we increasingly have turned to a more traditional academic education in order to cope us better in PISA surveys. We will have a whole new type of students from possessing some of the relevant skills, Danish businesses will demand in the future, and the skills you do not get by allowing students to have 29-33 hours of sedentary non-practical lessons a week .

Red.:Published with permission from the author:

Rasmus Ricki Christensen

Teacher at:

Vangeboskolen, Vangeboled 9, 2840 Holte, Denmark

Mediator Teach the children to end conflicts in a positive way.Use the mediator technique From Denmark - Oleflemming

We all know how conflict between pupils can lower the result of the education.

Here in Denmark we (the teachers) used a lot of time to solve these problems. We used the mediator-technique, it was fine, but it took a lot of time to use.

The idea is: If they find a solution themselves and agree on it, both parts will feel satisfied and do their best to make it stick.The children in conflict are asked, if they volunteer to participate and are willing to follow all instructions given by the mediator. The most important is how to talk to each other.

The mediator works then through 5 steadies in the process:

1) Both parts of the conflict use the time needed to tell everything about, why they have a conflict and what they feel.

2) The mediator then helps them to get focused on the most important part of their conflict

3) They are asked to give suggestions of how to solve the problem

4) All these are written down, and then they start a negotiation. The aim is to find a way to end the ongoing conflict and avoid further conflicts. They are asked to find more suggestions, if they can’t agree of any on the list. (This part can take a long time)

5) Finally when both agree to one or two of the suggestions, they are asked to promise each other to follow these for the future

You have to follow the situation for some days, but if it’s a success, the mediator stops monitoring and ask them to how they did manage to solve their conflict. Next time they might be able to stop before the conflict escalate.

Some years ago the teachers said: “This takes too much time for us” and we decided to let some of the children try to be mediators. I gave them a 12 hours mediator-course; this was finished by a pretty tough exam. Most of them managed to graduate.

I was sitting behind them the first times, they tried to act as mediators, but it was amazing how well they preformed their task. Sometimes the mediator was younger than the children in conflict. But they managed to tell the older ones how to behave, don’t use bad language, and wait until the other finished talking and so on.

After a period of three years this technique was well-known to all, and we stopped educating more pupils to be mediators. Why voluntarily go and be dictated how to do, when you know the process?

The educational material for this course is unfortunately in Danish, but you can write to me, and I can try to explain the details for you. or you can find more material at the internet searching for mediator technique

Mediator