Rambling Teacher's Blog

Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window Author: Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Translator: Dorothy Britton. Publisher: Kodansha International, 1996. ISBN: 4-7700-2067-8 This book was given me as a gift by my sister-in-law, an educator and avid reader. It is the autobiography of a famous actress and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador. The book concentrates on a short period of time when the author attended Tomoe primary school in Tokyo. In fact, the book is more a description of the school founder's practice than it is a life story. Expelled from first grade! The book starts by telling of Totto-chan's expelling from her previous school, when she was only in grade one. You see, "the little girl at the window" would wait all morning for street bands to walk by the school and call them over to play their music. This was seen as highly disruptive behaviour and, exasperated, her teacher decided the girl did not become at the school. Eventually, her mother found a school th...

Today was the first day of the VITTA (Victorian IT Teachers' Association) conference. It is the only day I am attending and, as always, I have learned a lot! Here is my summary of the first session of today: Keynote 1: Roger Larsen, Pearson Platforms Roger's speech was very engaging. In it, he emphasised 21st Century skills. In particular, he noted critical thinking and entrepreneurship as key among those skills. Roger emphasised that digital content must not be a mere digitisation of paper. He wanted digital content to be changeable and interactive.