…just a little something I wanted to share with you all, courtesy of the ever hilarous News Biscuit.

The accompanying news story reads: “Yoda has overcome his demons and passed an exam in GCSE English. The pint-sized Jedi had long struggled to formulate sentences properly, meaning that he had failed the test aimed at 16 year olds no less than 728 times. Yoda received his GCSE result last week but wanted to keep the achievement quiet in order to avoid a fuss. ‘I just want to carry on like normal,” said Yoda today, “I really don’t want to draw any attention to this, I am like, ok, I’ve done this, I’ve passed, let’s move on. There are far more important things to be dealing with, such as the rebel alliance and that troublesome Darth Vader.’”

There’s nothing like the smell of bad taste humour on a Friday morning.

Genius.

I’m not sure what to think anymore – when pupils are supported by crazy parents, how are they ever supposed to learn?

We encouraged all our children to give something up during Lent. Either a food they liked, or television (yeah, funnily no one took up that option); computer games etc. The idea was to teach them about religous fasting, and also to get some discussions going about doing without, poverty, the concept of not having something you loved.

 Most of them went for a food. Chocolate, sweets, biscuits, meat etc. And it was going well, the children were keeping diaries about their experiences and what they missed. We had some good assemblies on fasting, and also on poverty in Africa and parts of Asia.

And then I was on lunch duty. One of the boys – we’ll call him Horrible Harry (it’s quite appropriate I assure you) – was screaming at the dinner lady. I intervened and it transpired that Harry was giving up vegetables for Lent – so couldn’t, not wouldn’t eat broccoli, spinach or carrots that day. Clever kid I thought, but called his parents anyway to explain how the ‘giving up’ scenario worked. 

“Oh we understand,” his mum assured me. “But he wanted to give up vegetables. And he doesn’t like them anyway so we thought it would be a good solution. And he wouldn’t find it too difficult.”

“Yes, but he’s supposed to give up something he likes. So he understands about not having things; it’s meant to be a learning experience for him. It’s not meant to be easy.”

“Oh.” She paused. “Well actually, he really loves vegetables. Yeah, loves ‘em. Tomatoes and carrots and all that. So, yeah. It’s hard for ‘im.” And she hung up on me.

Now I have to explain to a hundred other children who have given up things they love, why this child gets to give up something he hates. And you what they’ll say? And they’re right. It’s not fair.

Thanks Flickr

Ah, another day, another ridiculous idea from the silly men in nice suits. New teachers are to be tested on their desk side manner, apparently.

 According to the BBC tests will be done to ascertain whether teachers have the “empathy, understanding and passion to ensure they have the qualities to be a good teacher.”

 Every new teacher is positively brimming with empathy, understanding and passion – at least for the first week or so, until the great machine of educational doom sucks the lifeblood from them and leaves them the same as their more experienced colleagues. Brow beaten, defeated and really pissed off. These traits do not a good bedside manner make.

 The test will be done not with actual children of course, but with a range of ‘on-screen questions’; a foolproof plan surely?

 When confronted with a screaming child, do you:
a) run away

b) try to calm the child down

c) quit your job.

 You answered b? Well done, you may now progress to a real classroom for you are ready to inspire young learners.

 This is classic, classic ignorant crap. You are testing a teacher’s ability to empathise with, understand and show compassion to children – without actually exposing them to any children. Genius, pure unbridled genius that is.

On the technogrouch / compukeenie scale, I’d say I rate at about eight. I’m not fully iTeacher-tronic yet, but I’m well on the way. That’s why Apple’s iPad caught my eye (save the fanboy-bashing comments until the end, please).

Despite also being the name for a kind of incontinence pad in Japan (possibly aimed at long-suffering kancho victims), I think the iPad could have some fantastic applications in the MFL classroom.

Once people start developing integrated learning applications for it, I’m sure the iPad will be a step ahead of the computers we currently use in language labs for a number of reasons.

Firstly, they’re portable. As long as the students don’t nick them, this would solve loads of problems with assigning classrooms. Rather than fighting over who gets to use the language lab, then having to shuffle our classrooms around accordingly, we can just fight over who gets to use the iPads.

Secondly, they’re locked and can only use one application at a time. Students can’t quickly flip back from Facebook to vocabulary matching when you look over their shoulders so they’re less likely to get distracted.

Thirdly, students like cool gadgets. Whether we like them or not, I don’t know many teenagers who would prefer to work on a clunky desktop than an iPad.

What about the price, though? They’re listed as retailing at $499 (about £320). Now, when you factor in an educational discount of £70 or so (depending on what kind of potential Apple sees in educational sales) it starts to look like a more attractive option when compared to even the most basic language lab computers.

Now, all of these ideas are based on having a wireless network that actually works. if you have a reasonable signal, though, the easy set up (if it’s anything like the iPod touch) of wireless from the user standpoint could help classes run more smoothly and mean fewer callouts for ‘Tony the tecchie’ or whoever else runs the IT in your school.