Blackbox Blues

Korea Council of Overseas Schools

East Asia Regional Council of Overseas Teachers

2006

Keynote Speakers

Libby Stevens – The Third Culture Kid – An emerging culture

Jerry L. Ross- Veteren of 7 space flights.

2007

Keynote Speakers

Dr Anne Backus Eureka Education Experiences

According to her notes she is passionate baout leaving no child bored, helping dyslexic children acheive literacy skills and motivating new teachers. Her keynote speech had al auditorium of teachers fidgety and bored and motivated to not attend her workshops. From her promo on paper I had penciled her in as of interest to attend her workshop bu afer listening to her keynote I swtiched to saving vocal chords workshops.

John Joseph – Focus Education Austrailia.

His workshops on the otherhand were a sell out as a result of his keynote.  A guy who left school young, was in his own words a most excellent brickie and who eventually went back to education and now presents workshops.

Rainy day exercises

After having worked through the most of the OL unit Play, Learning and the Brain, I was prepared to be given the hard sell and was ready to be sceptical.  Also after looking at the timetable for the day I thought that I may find it difficult to concetrate as I haven’t had to sit through academic talks for a while.  I was pleasantly surprised. The first day had me really interested all the way through and the day flew by.  The only presentations that were difficult was Dr Meng, I understood the general principles and finding of her study  but there was terminology related to the statistical finding and lots of abbreviations that were never explained and that were constantly referred to. The only presentation that brought to mind the critisicisms in John T Bruer in his article “In Search of Brain Based Education ” was that of Dr Jisoo Pae of the Medi Mind Clinic, on paper according to his resume he seems highly academically qualified but I felt that his presentation sounded quackish. 

It has certainly whetted my appetite to continue studying. If I do the OU course on Linguistics I am now interested in the applications of technology in developing language aquisition.

The talk about the brain activity when reading kana versus kanji also brought to mind some the Geography of Thought and in how East Asians have different ways of seeing things.

Ms Chia’s talk about Sensory Motor development and Learning English talked about how a series of physical exercises improved the childrens writing skills.  I have also been reading some information that handwriting practice can have a beneficial effect on ADHD children.

The brain studies show that those with dyslexia when hearing sounds had same reaction for the first part of a word butdidn’t pick up the second part of a word in the same way. It suggested that the auditory function is important in developing the language skills needed for reading and writing. 

After the lectures I looked up some of the exercises that can be may be used to help develop sensory motor skills.  It made me think that when we were kids we did many of these exercises as a matter of course in the playground.  Small bouncing ball against the school wall.  Passing the ball under the leg, behind the back, clapping before catching, passing to another person, in elastics there was jumping and crossing legs to hit the elastics, skipping games involved crossing arms as well. So many singing rhymes involved involved clapping patterns.  This was addition to organised sports such as netball, rounders, football.

After school we were constantly outside as there was limited amount of stuff on TV at that time black and white and only 3 channels. The alternative to being outside playing was to read a book.  One of the studies mentioned at the summit that if a child reads 15 minutes for enjoyment a day over a year they attain so many more words in a year. 

The DynEd talk suggested that audio visual and conceptual stimulation before introducing reading and writing reflects what we are doing at Franciscan school.  The kids sing songs, learn rhymes, play, do arty crafty projects.  We start handwriting in JK for some kids this is too early to my mind, one of the theories I’ve read about why Finland has such a good rate of literacy is that they son’t enter formal academic education until age 7.  They are stimulated and are hearing language and accumulating language patterns and grammer patterns, games and arts will be developing motor skills and coordination.  By the time they are given pencils and paper and told what to do with them they seem to develop writing skills in 6 months.

I think Technology can definately be an aid especially in countries where teachers have no confidence in teaching the language. I think the idea that teachers can be coaches and mentors when delivering technology based learning packages may well be the future. 

I often question how I am teaching as it can often seem as though the world is obsessed with academic success especially here in Asia.  School is for passing tests and even kinder kids have to pass a test to get into Elementary school.  I didn’t become a teacher to prepare children to pass tests although I do beleive my job is to help children to have success in life. I personally don’t beleive the two are related.  In Korea its a race to get into the best universities its partly a status symbol to be able to say that your child went to such and such a place. Anecdotal stories that I hear from teachers and students suggest that once the kids are actually in the universities they are not very interested in learning, probably cause they’re so exhausted after the effort to get their.

I know so many people who have made a success of their life who weren’t academically focussed in school.   I

Dr Steve Miller- Using Neuroscience & Advanced Technologoes to Accelerate Academic Success

Remapping the Brain: Stanford University study on Fast ForWord, Harvard-MIT study.

Dr Xiangzhi Meng- Peking University- ERP correlates ot the orthographic and phonological processing in Chinese speaking developmental dyslexia

Dr Maki Koyama- Oxford University- Behavioural and fMRI studies of Reading in Japanese: Implications for Dyslexia

Mr Lance P. Knowles- DynEd International – Improving CALL: Insights from Neuroscience.

Ms. Cheryl Chia- Brain Revolution,  Singapore- Sensory Motor Development & Learning English in Children.

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