Rearranging the deckchairs and reinventing the wheel

I made two new folders on the communal drive. I call it a communal drive, but it's not that communal as most people don't seem to know how to use it. There's something about organisations that means that ten percent of the people do ninety percent of the work. This is reflected in computer systems where most people do nothing, a lot of people just use what information is there, a small number add stuff to the system, and a tiny proportion create and configure the system. The reality then is that the communal drive is an extension of my own computer and is basically a glorified back-up system. Most of the other teachers either can't, won't or don't use it.

The main problem with any kind of online system is to organise it so that people can easily find the information that they want. This needs simplicity and logic, which are scarce and precious commodities. It needs heavy use of Occam's razor, which is a handy philosophical tool that tells us to cut away any details or information that make anything more complicated than it should be. If there are two possible explanations, use the more simple one. It also needs objectivity.

The problem with teaching is that there are just too many different variables. I used to teach in a school that had a resource drawer. This was mostly full of photographs picked from magazines that had been categorised and those categories alphabetised. There they were in a wonderful order. I'm sure it worked very well for the person who had made it, and knew what was in there. That person had left, and the problem for the rest of us was not knowing what was in there or where it was. For example, there may be a picture of a man in khakis and a pith helmet, going through the jungle with a machete in his hand. Would that be filed under geography and environments, clothes and hats, or kitchenware and cutlery? The answer, of course, is all three, and possible colours as well. But there was only one picture. With the latest tagging, it would now be possible to store the photo online and put all those tags into it, and be able to search for it with any of those names. At the time it was not possible.

So we're faced with multi-layered, multi-faceted texts and activities that can be used for different specific purposes and will allow our various students with their multiple intelligences to pick up a wide range of language features and life lessons.

But I've got it down now to just two categories. Two folders that should cover just about everything we do as teachers. The two folders I've added are "reinventing the wheel" and "rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic".

Most of what we do as teachers is one of these. A lot of the time we are wasting. Most of the students are not going to get it. They aren't interested and don't need to know what we're telling them, and perhaps never will need to know.

Most of what we're doing has been done before and we're putting in a lot of time creating something that's already out there. Not that that's necessarily a problem. There's something about teaching that requires learning, and internalising material before bringing our students along.

Anyway, I can't stay blogging all day. I've got to get back to work. I had this really good idea for making a round thing to move things without having to carry them. It would certainly make it easier to get all these deckchairs into the right place...