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!

:-)