We had a baby!

Hooray! After years of waiting Sasha and I have finally had a wee baby boy. He was born Christmas eve, 9:25pm, and is absolutely perfect :-)
He is Charlie Robert Claude and I couldn't be more pleased.

chicken coup designs

i HAVE AN AWESOME CHOOK HOUSE AT HOME. But there's no need for me to shout about it.

Leave links here to online plans for chicken houses or sites that have info about raising free range, organic chickens or sustainable backyard setups.

Did you think the greenhouse area was a good site for us to start our venture?

Have fun!

I took these photos at the public Permaculture Garden at Hamilton Gardens. Here is a link to their website so you can contact them for more information about permaculture:

http://www.permaham.boo.co.nz/3103/html/prepage.html

Cool Experiments with your Food!

Try this out - you need to watch a Youtube video to see how to make your milk come alive....

Go All Blacks!

I hope the All Blacks can sort their form out and take out those Wallabies this weekend. We must crush them mercilessly at Fortress Eden!

Pirongia and Peachgrove rule

Today's computer tech classes were all good, but Pirongia Yr 8s were the best behaved, quietly settling and getting on with their work.

At lunchtime I was on the field with Mr Cocks dishing out gold cards for good behaviour when I noticed how lovely the native gardens were looking around the perimeter of the field. Well done Peachgrove for looking after your amazing native garden! I bet there are lots of native birds visiting to eat berries and nectar from flowers.

[This photo was taken by J. Carter at the Waikato University in Hamilton and shared on Flickr]

My own local waxeyes are in a short video I took. Click on the red words above for the link - [it may not work as it's on FaceBook]

The Good Guys did it again!

Hooray for the mighty All Blacks who once again retained the Bledisloe cup with a great victory over the sniveling Aussies at Eden Park last night.
Well done lads!

Ritchie McCaw and Brad Thorn are two absolute legends of All Blacks rugby.

Quelle Disaster!

What a disaster!
So many places seem to be afflicted by natural disasters at the moment. Leave your comments here to direct me to your own research about natural disasters, such as the quakes in Christchurch or the tornadoes and floods in America.

My own interest at present is more to do with the human caused disasters, like oil spills, environmental devastation and mass extinctions. Right now people are hacking down the Amazon Rain forest like there's no tomorrow! America is currently poisoning it's own underground water supplies in an effort to extract natural gas for energy use.
The really sick thing is that Dick Cheney, whilst Vice President of the USA, changed environmental laws so his own company [Halliburton] could pollute the environment to make profits.
How evil.
Find out all about it by watching the movie Gasland.

Teaching Dispositions for Learning with I.T.

This may be of interest to those utlising ICT in the classroom:

Ngutunui Enviro School is super digital!

Wow - this is a beautiful country school on the way to Kawhia where my wife and I love to holiday. We always pass it and I think... what a wonderful place that woudl be to work. As it turns out, there is a job going there and I've had a snoop online.
The junior class's wiki is amazing! The flashest wiki I've ever seen - I am so impressed.
The senior class have been thinking of others and doing work on their wiki and their excellent class blog to help the Christchurch quake victims. They also share their work online for others to enjoy and give feedback on.
Ka pai!
I think what I love best is the commitment to Enviroschool values. 
That sure is an 'onto it' school :-)

Fun with woodwork and taniwha

When I was 13 I go to do woodwork at HBHS. It was the only time I got to do practical tech subjects, apart from tech drawing in the same year. I enjoyed both but was guided away to other stuff. That year, I made a taniwha carving which I was really proud of. My grandad hung it on his shed wall and my whole life I got to see it there and feel special. Now I have it back.
On Friday at Peachygrove, I got to be MrWebster the Hard Material Teacher for a day. I was supposed to make the poor children do worksheets but I couldn't stomach that and we made some stuff instead. The kids from the bi-lingual class liked my stories about taniwha in the Waikato river near where I live so we made some taniwha out of wood. 
It is great to work with kids who are into learning, creating, sharing and celebrating - kia kaha!

:-)

The Montessori Way

I am interested in Montessori education in NZ.
A Montessori classroom sounds like a blissfully calm, creative, safe learning place where children can learn at their own pace and discover things naturally with guidance and whilst being skillfully observed. Children can work together, collaboratively, with cleverly designed learning materials suitable to their stage of development. 
Check out these links to discover more of the world of child-centred, caring, observational, educational guidance that is the Montessori way:

Eight Stages of Observation

Four stages of Classroom Management

Montessori in NZ

A Kiwi Montessori Classroom

What kind of skills do you think you need?

Students... What do YOU think you need to learn about relating to ICT?
List the skills here.

Bear and Edwin

Two friends waiting for baby Blast to arrive :-)

Tricks to make your blog successful

Number 1 - You MUST set up email verification so that you know where, when and from whom comments arrive on your posts.
You can find this in your settings. Add your own email address that you check most regularly, then you will be alerted whenever a comment arrives. You only have to click on the link in the email and you will be taken directly to your new comment.
This feature is crucial when you have used your blog for a while and have gazillions of posts. Without it you would never know if someone had commented on one of your old posts.

Trirama magnificence

This terrific trirama was made by the Great Erlando!
Well done for managing your time and taking pride in your finished product.

From someone special

I was very lucky to receive this lovely, thoughtful card today from The Kostonator! B-)

My cute pet elephant

Let me know if you have a picture of your cute pet on your blog B-)

Room 14

Hi Room 14 - I hope your own blogs are gogin well. IF you leave me comments here I will respond on your blog.
I have a prize for the best blogber of the week.

Are you good at putting pictures on your blog posts?
Maybe we could have a cute pet photo competition...

Let's Go Giants supporters video

These kids learned to FEAR THE BEARD!

[ahem - sideways...]

Giants supporter mobile blogging pic

This Giants fan was caught on my mobile phone and sent from there directly to this blog it is called mobile blogging :-)

Go Giants!

When i was in San Francisco last year i met a remarkably generous man who introduced me to the world of The Giants and the thrills of World Series baseball. I was previously dismissive of baseball as a boring sport, but, like so many things, once you get to know what's going on it becomes fascinating!
The regular season is about to begin so ...Let's go Giants! Let's go Giants!

FEAR THE BEARD!

Sir Ken does it again

More brilliance from Sir Ken Robinson regarding the education system

action kids, mountainbikers and movie makers

If you are one of the above, follow the link and watch on...

http://www.zefrank.com/zesblog/archives/2011/03/chilean_bike_ra.html

Enjoy! Take [calculated] risks - be alive!
I was thrilled to hear from one of my students from 2006 who is pursuing a career in film making after being inspired by one of our class projects way back then - Go Ernesto!!!

First day back teaching in 2011 is at ...

St Andrews! Yay! I was hoping to get back at the end of last year to see all the cool kids I got to know over 2010. I hope you are all still there to say hi.
:-)

Thomas Edison

If you're interested in incredible people who achieved amazing things through perseverance and intelligence, check out Thomas Edison. It's his birthday today :-) [although he has long since passed away]
Who knows what he invented?

Best Wishes for 2011

I send out my best wishes to all the former Room5ians and their whanau.
Best wishes too, to the teachers who help school be a decent place for so many kids.
Here's hoping everyone has a fantastic, creative, successful year in 2011... especially the All Blacks!