Criticism

As the legendary creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi, Paul Arden, once said, "Do not seek praise, seek criticism." It is relatively easy to get approval if you ask enough people, and generally people want to be nice and will want to say things which you want to hear. But these pleasantries do not help very much in improving oneself.

It is natural to be uncomfortable with criticism, but being too defensive in trying to explain everything defeats the whole intent of dispensing constructive feedback. We must have the basic faith that feedback is given with the singular intent of helping each other to get better. That the small, specific steps if taken, may lead to a more positive end point. We may not be right everytime in the feedback that is dispensed, but there must be an open mind in the receiving end to fairly gauge an different perspective other than their own.

Having a closed door only detaches one from reality.

Classroom videos

Completed 5 lesson observations this week with video recordings. It was a good experience and I learnt about quite a lot of things about how I should do this effectively. What is most important to me is that teachers getting a copy of the video footage will find it to be of value to them in analysing what exactly happened during their class time, so that they will be able to make use of this information to improve.

It took a while to export a typically 20 min footage to a DVD playable on both computers and home DVD players but everything was managed without much hassle really. This is possible today more so than a couple of years back mainly because high-def videos can be captured and processed very easily and very inexpensively through technology. The Flip Mino HD was used with iMovie in this case to quickly put the video clips together. All DVDs were passed to the teachers involved either on the same day or the following day they were recorded so that impressions are still fresh.

Teachers will bring the DVD back to reflect on what they saw on the video clip by isolating 3 strengths and 3 weaknesses they perceived of themselves in the video. We will then make use of those impressions and have a discussion over our perceptions during the post-observation meeting a week later.

I suppose the key to this is what value it brings to our teachers in improving what they do. Good practices can be shared collectively as a team and individuals can analyse in detail their methodology in class with the perspective of a pupil. I am glad that a couple of teachers who had watched their own videos told me that it is worth doing. I will need to collect more feedback from the team on how this can be done better.

Etiquette

A disappointing piece of news broke after a long weekend. Some pupils were apparently making a nuisance of themselves at a performance outside school and had brought embarrassment to the school.

How do one learn such things as social responsibility? Apart from the socio-economic conditions and the family upbringing of the child which we have no control over, how successful has our school been in grooming socially responsible and respectful citizens?

A day-course on etiquette can make clear about certain contextual information necessary for those wanting to carry themselves better in a social setting, it does not however, create the necessary habits for respectful living.

Good habits require repetition to be nurtured. Change of habits involves intervention, monitoring, and perseverance to press on doing the right things until a desirable state is achieved and maintained. This is certainly one of the most challenging tasks.

Lunchtime 2009

Last Tuesday, the first round of Lunchtime (used to be called Lunchtime Concert) this year was successfully performed to a large crowd of pupils. It is very gratifying to see so many pupils (most in groups) signing up for the short, informal performance which was unfolded in front of their fellow schoolmates. The diversity of the performances, ranging from guitar playing, singing, dancing, to yo-yo stunts are inspiring and our VH pupils are very game too, as they actively participated with a song and dance item.

Pupils gather to support their friends who took the courage to perform.

This is an excellent avenue for pupils to creatively express themselves and gain confidence in performing in front of a crowd. We should continue doing this and strengthen this mode of informal performance to be part of the aesthetics culture in the school.

The importance of play and expression in education cannot be undermined.

Photo management

On Achievement Day last Friday, the inadequate state of our school's photo management system arose. It is cumbersome in quickly finding school-based images using our existing archival method. This is not a new problem, and it is my area of responsibility.

Do I know how to go about solving this? Yes.

Have I done anything about it? Nope.

We need a solution which is based on the cloud for easy access, where images are tagged by descriptions such as events, time or other specifics, where the focus is easy retrival of intended images by the users. A good reference point where there is success in such modes are the online photo stock libraries, examples such as Corbis, iStockPhoto and Getty Images.

I need to come up with something quickly before the season of image gathering for the school magazine begins. The first to come to mind would be some subscription based services where there is a larger file size limit to the photos we can put up (so that pupils and staff can download the files and get them decently printed to at least 4R size). Something like the online galleries integrated in MobileMe would be a good place to start.