What's the plan... Len?

"Never thought about it before. Should have, didn't."

The words of Len Brown, Mayor of Auckland ,as he calls for a "preparedness day" in the light of the Christchurch quake.
Schools, colleges, and other institutuions could take a leaf from Len’s book and use the opportunity to educate students and parents. Everyone needs to get ready for a natural disaster in New Zealand and this is the opportunity that we can all take to put ‘the plan’ together. As the civil defence ad says ‘You could be anywhere.”
Including school so every family needs to know what to do.

• What do we take with us?
• Where to shelter in an earthquake, flood, volcanic eruption or storm?
• How to evacuate and where to meet?
• Who is responsible for getting the kids?
• Where survival items and first aid kits are located, and who is responsible for checking essential items.

Read more...

Educators also need to take a lead here. What’s the Plan Stan? is an initiative which aims to support teachers to develop their students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes to respond to and prepare for an emergency.


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Facebook and Twitter - FINALLY!!!

Educating the Dragon now has links on the sidebar for:
“Friending us on Facebook”
And
“Follow us on Twitter”
Admittedly, the twitter is just me, but people tell me that others would rather follow a real person rather than a company or brand.

We’ll see, I guess.
Anyway, go ahead and follow us... whichever you use for you’re PLN we’re here for you.
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Schools returning - is normality?

The Ministry has set up nine learning hubs around the city in school halls, managed by experienced principals and teachers. Year 1-8 students can attend, during normal school hours, and parents can also pick up learning resources for use at home.

After I documented Maths buddies offer of assistance in a previous post it seems that the idea of learning hubs has been established and the Correspondence School has also made all of its resources available online to Christchurch students, without the need to enrol.
It continues to surprise me as to how people have opened their hearts and their properties to supplying accommodation for our most vulnerable. 
With school now returning after so many weeks there is a sense of normality returning. ‘The School Run’ is the daily routine and often grind now comes as a welcome relief.
Normality is still far from the minds of many in Christchurch as the world’s attention shifts north to Japan. 


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Financial illiteracy

''The system is very devolved. It is up to teachers and principals in local schools to decide what is taught. We have very well written financial literacy materials but we don't know how much they are used,''

Financial literacy is perhaps one of the areas of a child’s education which really should be ‘out-sourced’. The last generation were not taught financial literacy well, for a variety of reasons, and to say that parents alone should be solely responsible would lead to a spiralling downwards of understanding of money.
As the article identifies there are many worthy programmes out there that schools and educators could, and should adopt.
That is not to say that parents should not take a lead in this area. It is just that there needs to be a more solid foundation to financial understanding than ‘treating your kid on every visit to the Warehouse’.
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Safety Online: Are we making a difference?

Brett Lee, Closing Keynote for Learning at Schools conference says “Yes, we are.”

No longer will you see children jumping around on the backseat of the car but sitting, buckled up. The reason being is that if ‘dad’ were to have an accident then you could be seriously injured or killed. The other reason being that it is the law that everyone wear their seatbelt and ‘dad’ could get into a lot of trouble if you’re caught by police without a seatbelt on.

Two very good reasons; and so it is with Internet safety. Brett believes that students simply need the reasons spelt out.

From Brett’s  keynote he identified that:

• we can never under estimate the power of the screen in young people’s lives
• the technology will change over time but our protective practises, responsibilities and beliefs should remain
• we as teachers and parents only line of defence for our kids against the World-Wild Web.
• we can instil quality online behaviours in our children
• we must always believe we are making a difference to how our students interact socially within the internet. 

 Brett also identified the need for students to aware of the issue of cyber-bullying he share the video below and talked about the reality of the screen for young people.Interacting in an online space and/or through text messaging allows our students to create in minds a construct of reality that is not accurate but merely a projection of what others desire us to perceive.

Upper Coomera State College

Caught In The Crowd | Myspace Video

Useful Links:

Brett’s keynote on Learning at School blog 

Netsafe’s myLGP 

Cyber-safety discussion 
Cyber-safety page on Educating the Dragon 

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