Archive for Uncategorized

Poverty Simulation Game

// August 16th, 2010 // No Comments » // Classroom Activities, Education, Uncategorized

After playing this online simulation game http://ayiti.newzcrew.org/globalkids/ with my Chaplaincy elective class I got them to make some comments on a discussion forum I set up on the Chaplaincy website.

cost-of-life

These were the questions:

After playing this online simulation game write down some response you had whilst playing the simulator eg what feelings did you experience or things did you find yourself saying .

Did playing this game change your thinking about what life is like for people who live in these circumstances?

Here are some comments from the children:

“I observed how hard it is to survive off little money, the problem is if you don’t have money you cant get educated to get money. its a sad fact but the jobs that you can get without money are very hard and you can easily get sick. everything costs lots of money so no matter how hard i tried, i just couldn’t afford any of the expenses. this game opened my eyes as to how hard it is to survive in places like Cambodia and I’m glad that our school could help out. After playing this game i realize how just a simple bag of rice can make a big difference in the community.”

“I felt like whenever I made them work and they lost money, it was just a waste of time. When I saw how well my friends were doing in making them live decently it made me question what I was doing wrong. I kept asking myself “Why are they not gaining money when they are working?!” and “They just keep getting sicker and sicker!” It made me realise that life is so much harder for people living in Haiti in that they are always concerned about the amount of money they have and that sickness is a major problem. In Australia, we rarely worry about not being able to afford food or being able to pay for hospital care. They have a hard life so it is important for us to donate money to help them.”

“Well… After playing that game, I am VERY motivated to do the very best I can to help those less fortunate than myself! I feel very blessed to have what I have. I think that I should use what God has given me to help others!”

New 3D Studies of Religion Course

// August 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Education, Technology, Uncategorized, second life

My colleague Steve Collis just blogged about some exciting things on the horizon for my year 11  Studies of Religion course next year. I will post some of the blog I got from his site www.happysteve.com. Its all pretty exciting and ground breaking stuff.

What if a School Subject was 3D?

Read on to see how Tim Barrett is creating a school subject in 3D virtual form, so that students literally walk through the course in a virtual world.

You may be aware we established a new 3D virtual island using free software called “Open Sim”. This is open source software, meaning it was created by volunteers who allow anyone to use it without paying. Admittedly, we do then have to pay a company, “Reaction Grid”, to run the software for us. This is as cheap s $75 a month, and they take much of the hassle out of actually getting your virtual world to work. This is much less expensive than Linden Lab’s Second Life, where we run our original island.

This new Open Sim island is 8 times as large as our original, and we have a great deal more control over it, including the ability to allow our young primary students to access the world.

I’ve been spending some time preparing the island for a huge influx of students. I’ve already granted some students access, and also created an account for every member of staff at our school (they’ve been wandering in out of curiosity and having a walk around!)

The next step is for me to recruit student leaders from every grade and train them up rigorously to be ‘moderators’ of the new virtual world. They will protect the space against misbehaviour, cyber-bullying, or vandalism. They will set the tone and culture of the virtual world.

I’ve been busy ‘terra-forming’ our virtual world, adding trees, streams, and a huge mountain, so students have something to explore when they first log in. I’ve disabled flying so they have to walk around, unless they program for themselves a car or plane.

When they first log in, this is what they will see:

They have an invitation to follow a forest path through to a ’sandbox’, which is an area of the virtual world where any student can start building.

They also see another arrow:

You see, I don’t want students to feel forced into doing the training immediately. They can walk through the forest for a bit, if they want, but they’ll be told they have to do the training before they wander far!

So, the student follows the arrow towards training, and sees:

There are some simple posters telling the student to approach the booth and click on it. What happens next is quite magical: the Open Sim software sends a signal to our ‘Moodle’ course management software and links the students virtual world account to their general school learning account. Many thanks to my colleague Grant Harbor for his input and assistance in getting this to work!

From this point onwards, a whole variety of 3D objects will recognise them. These 3D objects are virtual manifestations of learning materials that would have otherwise just been listed on a Moodle subject web page in our school poral.

……Our first steps into true virtual 3D courses are beginning immediately with my dear colleague Mr Tim Barrett: http://twitter.com/tim__barrett

http://www.chaplaincymatters.org/

Tim is our school chaplain and has been teaching ‘Studies of Religion’ for a few years now in an entirely online mode, and in a face to face mode.

He will be our pioneer at taking everything we’ve learnt about student learning in Moodle, and recreating the learning in a 3D space.

It might blow up in his face! Maybe it won’t work! This is an experiment – our first steps!

But imagine, students walking through mosques, cathedrals, churches, temples, monasteries, or recreating scenes or situations at Medina, Galilee, Bodh Gaya. Consider: the imagination gives us the power to connect with ‘otherness’, putting ourselves in others’ shoes and gaining insight into the universal human condition. In Tim’s course, students will literally walk in the shoes of others. Not a bad thing, since many of our students are from the culturally monolithic northern beaches of Sydney.

I’ll keep you posted and I am sure Tim will too…

I’ll finish with some more images of our work-in-progress virtual island:

MasterChef

// July 29th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

With the popularity of MasterChef around the world this video is great to show when promoting social justice issues.

Facebook’s 10 commandments

// June 7th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

Facebook’s 10 commandments
Graham Stanton
May 31st, 2010

It’s been a difficult few weeks for facebook.

The news story of 18 year old Nona Belomesoff who was found dead after going to meet two men she ‘met’ online was every parents’ nightmare for children obsessed by social networking.  Close on the heels of this tragedy, facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has faced a series of complaints about changes to the privacy settings on members’ accounts.  Thankfully the pressure has led to changes at facebook with new simplified privacy settings to be rolled out in the next couple of weeks.

Welcome though those changes are, I’ve spoken with a number of parents who have either decided to not let their children have a social networking presence or who are considering whether they need to turn off their childrens’ existing accounts.  As an avid facebook user myself I’m not one to suggest pulling the pin.  However I do think there’s a crying need for some teaching in social networking wisdom.

The difference between skill and wisdom is important:  most young people have lots of skill when it comes to finding their way around facebook or the various other vehicles of social networking.  But knowing how to do it isn’t the same as knowing the wisest way to do it.

Remember that in the end things like facebook, myspace, twitter are just different technologies of communication in essence no different to letter writing or the telephone.  Letters can be used for the most wonderful exchanges of human life and can also be used to leave a ransom note for a kidnapped child.  You can use a telephone to share good news or to make prank calls to random numbers at midnight.  Similarly a teenager could become so obsessed with writing letters or making phone-calls that they never emerge from the confines of their bedroom, or they can use these technologies to fill in the gaps between being face-to-face.

As with any communication technology learning how to use it has to be accompanied with learning how to use it wisely.

In the hope of drawing on the collective wisdom of those who frequent this particular communication technology which is the sydneyanglicans blog forums, here’s 10 commandments for social networking wisdom for teenagers (written by me with input from various facebook friends!):

1.  Don’t ‘friend’ anyone who you don’t already know face-to-face.  You might possibly want to expand this to people that your friends know face-to-face, afterall, social networking is about growing your networks.  But just because someone is asking to become your friend doesn’t mean you have to say yes to them.

2.  If someone is making comments that you find offensive or upsetting then either hide them from your newsfeed or ‘de-friend’ them.

3.  Don’t arrange to meet anyone you’ve contacted only through social networking in any non-public location without anyone else with you.  Ever.

4.  Don’t put personal contact information such as your address or mobile phone number online.  If your ‘real friends’ need to contact your or visit you then give them your details in person.  Don’t put your full date of birth on your profile – your dob is often used for proof of identity over the phone, perfect for identity thieves (thanks Su)

5.  Keep your privacy settings up to date.  Unfortunately, at least in the case of facebook in the past, this hasn’t been a ‘set and forget’ type of task.  Regularly check your privacy settings. http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/ has a useful facebook privacy scanning utility.

6.  Don’t write anything online that you wouldn’t want the world to read – so think about whether you’d be happy for whatever you’re about to post to be broadcast to everyone in the world, or think about whether you’d be happy for your grandmother to see what you’ve just posted (because she’s probably one of your friends anyway.)

7.  Don’t imagine that the ‘online you’ is different to the ‘real you’.  You can’t write, photograph or video something for all to see and expect that it won’t be viewed as a representation of the ‘real you.’ (thanks Graham B)

8.  Don’t let anyone else know your username and password, and make sure you log-off before quitting your browser.  And don’t hack someone else’s account even if they’ve forgotten to log-off.  (mea culpa - I know it’s been fun to change my niece’s status update to say, “Just sitting here thinking how wonderful my uncle is”; but now I think of it, there’s enormous potential for relationship stress from this sort of thing on those days when it all goes wrong.  So my resolve from now on is to just quietly log off for them; and encourage others to do the same.)

9.  Don’t attempt to resolve conflicts online.  Don’t break up with someone in a status update. Don’t propose by email.  I.e. don’t forget that life is best lived face-to-face and some interactions are too important to not do in person.

10.  Don’t forget that there are other forms of communication technology available to use - go old-school one day and write a letter; if your instant chat conversation has gone beyond three lines pick up the phone and speak to them in person (and if you can’t do this because you’re in class or church then log off and speak to them later!); and if your friend does make you ROTFL then why not arrange to meet them face-to-face and LOL together.

http://www.sydneyanglicans.net/ministry/modernministry/facebooks_10_commandments/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+sa_allnews+Sydneyanglicans.net+all+news&utm_content=Google+Reader

The First Chaplain

// June 2nd, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized

Join me on a tour of the rocks in Sydney where we follow the footsteps of Australia’s first Chaplain, Richard Johnson. This was shown at our staff seminar night at school.

Research findings

// June 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

In 2009, a national study of the effectiveness of chaplaincy in government schools was undertaken for the National School Chaplaincy Association by Dr Philip Hughes of Edith Cowan University and Prof Margaret Sims of the University of New England. The study was of the Christian chaplains in approximately 1626 schools for whom the members of the National School Chaplaincy Association were responsible, representing 85 per cent of government schools with chaplains. National surveys of principals and chaplains were undertaken, along with case studies of chaplaincy in 21 schools, selected to represent a wide range of urban and rural, primary and secondary schools across Australia.

have a look at the findings here…

http://www.suqld.org.au/_sys/_data/downloads/chaplaincyeffectiveness.pdf

niche_marketing_research

My Office - CHILL

// May 28th, 2010 // No Comments » // Uncategorized

CHILL is my office. CHILL stands for Chaplaincy Internet Learning Lounge. As the name implies it is a large lounge area with an outdoor courtyard that is equipped with a kitchenette, fridge, wireless internet, mini laptops, (and soon a new class set of ipads which can be used!!), desktop computer and a sound system. The CHILL Zone is open to senior students and staff alike.

CHILL Mission

CHILL Mission

The aim of CHILL is to give members of our school community a relaxed place to come and hang out within the school grounds during breaks and free periods. It is also a room that can be used for reading, reflection or prayer, meetings and celebrations. The room (and courtyard) has wireless internet which means that students can book out a mini notebook or ipad and bring them down to CHILL to work on. It is our aim that CHILL becomes a social hub within the school, in a similar way to an internet coffee lounge at a university.

It makes a whole heap of sense for myself, as school Chaplain, to be situated in this central location rather than hidden away in a staffroom somewhere. By being in close proximity to the students I can naturally build relationships with them and be accessible for a chat. CHILL  is an easy way for me to be incarnational in my approach to reaching students by immersing myself in the daily rhythm of their school life rather than sitting back and hoping that they come to me.

I have been visited by a number of School Chaplains over the past few weeks and the concept of a CHILL area is one thing they are definitely going to try and replicate at their school. If you want to come and visit me at NBCS please ring the school and we can chat, I’d love to show you around!!

Here are some photos of CHILL.

CHILL from outside (note wireless internet)

CHILL from outside (note wireless internet)

CHILL Entrance
CHILL Entrance
CHILL Wall (edited by students)

CHILL Wall (edited by students)

Student Computer

Student Computer

Interactive Screen

Interactive Screen

If you want to see some other phots of areas around my school then go here - http://www.scil.nsw.edu.au/scil-building/ here is a sample photo from inside our SCIL building.

Inside the SCIL building

Inside the SCIL building

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