Marco Koene

Feel free to try it out!

I will, thanks.

pinnacle software has proven its use to me, perhaps it can be of help to you.

Great site! Something I have been looking or for quite some time now!

Great idea!

Happened to me a couple of times, so i can relate

Fascinating. Could you provide a list of the type of assignments that they do? Are there any attempts to give them a "balanced" education

If you go to www.veursstip.nl, then click FAQ and then Stipinfo, you will find a short English introduction. I am working translating the whole site, but this could be a start.

Your system sounds fascinating. What happens to the students who don't want to do any of the assignments? Here, we would have at least a third who would simply never attend school if they were given the choice. I understand the argument given above about the education versus social role of school, but in practical terms right now, do most of your students attend and do most actually complete the assignments? Is this for all years or just in secondary? What sort of ässignments" are set?

First of all our system is not the standard way of teaching in the Netherlands.

If a students does not do an assigment he/she will have a talk with one of the teachers responsible. If that does not help, we talk some more But in general we do not have to. If the student doesn't complete any assigments he/she will not advance and in the end will not graduate.

The assignments are 'real'. E.g. An assignment could be arrange a stafflunch. The students who choose this assignment will have to do the shopping cooking etc. etc. and face the staff who will have to eat it! Assignments can be anything as long as it is meaningful for the student to complete. The student has to learn by doing.

Andy and John,

As I wrote before I work in the kind of educational system you describe. Perhaps you can come and visit us someday?

This is a big subject and this is just a brief summary of my initial thoughts.

(1) My ideal school would be voluntary. I have always thought that compulsion damages children’s attitude towards education. I think if the child was in the classroom because they had decided for themselves they wanted to be there, it would dramatically change their attitude towards learning.

(2) If attending school was up to the individual, it would mean that teachers would have to work hard at making it a useful experience. It would also expose those teachers who can only get people in the classroom because the law tells them they have to be there. Therefore, market forces, would either force the teacher to change or they would have to leave the profession.

(3) All lessons would be based on what the teacher thought it was necessary for the students to learn. In other words, this power would be taken from the government and exam boards and handed over to the teacher. It is then up to them to prove that they have got it right.

We are now working in such a system. The students choose assignments and by doing these assignements they learn necessary skills and acquire knowledge. There are no lessons, but students can go to teachers to help them with completing their assignements.. if enough students want the same explenation a kind of lesson is organised. The students themselves decide when to attend and what to learn.

My sentiments too. Most days when I log in and search for new posts there is nothing new apart from contributions to the JFK discussion, so I log straight out again. Maybe it's time to bring the JFK discussion to an end.

I tend to agree with Graham, however bringing the Jfk discussion to an end is not solving anything. As John pointed out it is not the jfk forum who is doing this 'wrong" ,it are all the others!

All the reasons for not posting are tried by me. Marking, just plain old busy and so on and so on. But to make this forum a success we need to be posting. I agree with John and Andy that they cannot do it alone. But we also need a practical use. What i mean by that is that contributing to this forum must serve some practical need, otherwise why post at all?

I am busy trying to come up with a free solution for creating my own flash games. I have one week left... I hope someone is able to help me.

Why only witness? What historical event would want to stop from happening, or change in any way?

An old , very old, joke is of course; "who invented the steam engine? Watt. I asked who invented the steam engine! " In real life that could never happen, or could it..Last weekend some asked me the question and i replied; Watt. Surprisingly the question was asked again...

What about John Lennon? He sure made his mark in the world of music and politics.

Oh I wish!!

I hope not! Koene means bold in english. Well I am a very careful person...

Well , they are indeed funny. Most of them, however, I already knew. From a Dutch newspaper article a while ago. So perhaps these could be classified as urban legends? I mean, the same jokes in two languages... well perhaps a busy translator somewhere in the world.

I have designed various websites over the years, some bad some slightly better, but I keep on trying

But what I feel the most important question you have to ask yourself is, do I like the website myself. If you like it, changes are others will do to. As John already pointed out, your audience is also very important. Mine is mostly students, so I let them have a look at the site and wait for their review. Trust me they like the oppertunity to evaluate their teacher!!!!!

Thank you for all your replies! Tomorrow I will put a text on my website stating that we do place pictures on the site, however, if someone objects to their picture being on it, it will be removed immediately. I hope that will keep me ,and the students of course out of harms way.

In some of the threads I read a short of does and dont's when it comes to publicising content on a website. I for one have a question.

Can/should we publicise pictures of our students on the schoolwebsite?

Natuurlijk komt het vakoverstijgende onderwijs de leerlingen ten goede. De maatschappij is toch ook niet ingedeeld in vakjes? Waarom zou een leerling kennis en vaardigheden van het ene vak opeens niet meer kunnen gebruiken bij het andere vak?

I don't think this is off-topic.

I am merely statng that maybe we are underestimating the value of committing facts to memory.

As a history teacher I firmly believe in the value of committing facts to memory. However i also feel that a lot of the facts we want our students to commit to memory are excess baggage. When we teach them sound ways of finding information this good proof more valuable to them. Especially in this information era, a lot of rubbish is out there! So finding and interpreting information are skills students must acquire. Facts or knowledge only proofs meaningful if the students can actually use it. They must have a need to know. E.g the cab driver, he needs the information for his chosen proffession. Graham needs the cdroms because he wants to know the vocab etc. etc.

Be careful, remember the topic being the future of ict. Not the way people learn languages.

I do not use Frontpage that often anymore, our technicians designed a very easy to use php-based content managment system. That truly is very easy and I feel the way of the future. I used to use Outlook but not anymore, our technicians came up with an webbased alternative...

But when I used Frontpage and Outlook on a regular basis I expierenced all the problems mentioned above. All I can say is, praise to our technicians for circumventing outlook and frontpage!

I visited Montreal a few years ago, and I always addressed waiters/waitresses and shop assistants in French, only to be told immediately how wonderful my French was - and then they switched to English

When I visited Montreal two years ago using French got me very quickly through customs. I also had a nice conversation with our bus driver in French, only to discover that a. I do not speak French well and b. there are differences between 'European' French and Quebec French.

At my school Moodle is still in the test stage, but so far it is looking good!