You can do this

This video is getting towards the 2 million  in 4 years views on You Tube so it holds meaning for people. The Personal and Social Capability is about enabling or blocking yourself and enabling or blocking others. Could you do any of the things shown in this video? Would you want to? Would you want to encourage others to do any of the things in this video? Would you want to be the one who stops them? I don’t want to jump into the Grand Canyon or anything like it. I would not encourage anyone else to do it. This video has made me think about where my boundaries are and where they are for me as a teacher. There is no doubt when you watch the video that these people are truly amazing in what they can do and what they have achieved. It really is about how high we can fly as human beings. I was thinking about the risk assessment for some of the things. What would it be and how would you put it in place? This is why we need the Personal and Social Capability. We do need to enable ourselves and others. We shouldn’t block ourselves and certainly not others…but where would you put the boundaries?

Safer Internet Day

 

Safer Internet Day is a European initiative which has gone world wide. Next Year it will be February 10th. This year it was February 11th. Internet safety fits in perfectly with the social capability. In a connected world , students need to know how to become leaders on the internet and how to manage internet relationships positively.

For Social Awareness students at all the levels have to be able to :

appreciate diverse perspectives

contribute to civil society

understand relationships.

For Social Management students have to look at being able to:

communicate effectively

work collaboratively

make decisions

negotiate and resolve conflict

develop leadership skills.

Safe internet day is a good way to look at those indicators and certainly everyday should be safe internet day. We ought to be able to create a learning environment which enables good digital citizenship skills. The welcome page for the safer internet day is here where they will be compiling the results of this year’s safer internet day. iinet features safer internet day and gives a run down of the sorts of social sites and dangers students may or may not be involving themselves in. As teachers we need to be aware of the sorts of sites students access so we can offer independent advice about internet safety.

What great teachers do differently

In less than two minutes Todd Whitaker spells out some very effective ploys and characteristics of successful teachers. They care and they want to make a difference. This is where I have found the Personal and Social Capability in our new curriculum to be effective. I have unpacked and used the personal capability with my year 8 class and all I can say is it has made a real difference. My relationships with those students are easy and positive because of it and I have a positive framework to refer to. On Monday I am all set to unpack the social capability with them and my belief is it will be easier and more straight forward than the personal capability. I know next year I shall be using this with all my classes. It just makes the conversations easier , more direct and then very productive. You don’t get caught up in a game. You can see your way through the reactive responses and steer everything quickly onto firmer ground.

Personal and Social Capability meets ICT

Personal and Social Capability in a nutshell

We are rolling out the Australian National Curriculum. My interests are obviously languages, literacy and ICT but I am in the Personal and Social Capability teacher learning community at school for the general competencies. It builds on all the work I have done with regard to well-being being one of our core responsibilities as a teacher. I was wondering , though, since I do have a commitment to ICT in the classroom and well-being, how well the Personal and Social Capability would mesh with ICT and classroom use of technology. I put the four elements of the Personal and Social Capability into a grid and then the general descriptors for each element. You can download your own copy if you want to:PAS in a nutshell.

As I looked at it, I thought we could not be doing better at getting a good fit between ICT and the Personal and Social Capability and that, if we were to view it through the PASC lens, we would have a very good and solid structure for introducing, implementing and using ICT in our schools. PASC at its varying levels is about developing sound communication, encouraging leadership, creating a basis for understanding in relationships, developing confidence and resilience and recognising personal qualities and achievements. It is about enabling or blocking yourself as a person and about enabling or blocking others within a group.

Technology offers opportunities for all these things. You can publish to the web or present in class to create a sense of recognition and self worth. You can use safe online sites like Twiducate and create a sound, ongoing feedback loop which encourages reflective practice. If you engage with safe online communities or look at sites from around the work you help to build international and global connections and perspectives. To use technology really well you have to be able to communicate effectively. The audience can be an international audience or you could be being read/viewed by a whole class of students. If you have problems you have to engage with others to resolve them because no-one can know everything about technology. You can’t just throw your phone on the floor because it is not doing what you want. Technology offers so many opportunities for learning and teaching. Everyone can learn and everyone can teach. More importantly, that has to be conducted in a civilised way so looking at cyberbullying and cybercrime can be part and parcel of technology use in class and the social capability offers some good indicators for showing that is occurring and it can be logically managed in an education environment.

Personal and Social Capability

The Personal and Social Capability has four elements :

self-awareness
self-management
social awareness
social management

I put those into Flickr Poet and got this interesting montage. I had to go through a few montages before I settled on this one. The internet tag of capability seems to relate to military might. Not quite what I was looking for. The internet tag of social is almost exclusively understood as social media. The social awareness and social management then ought to include digital citizenship when we talk about the personal and social capabilities. A person in the real world and the virtual person. Either of them can build a powerful base for success in life so I wouldn’t be looking at military might but personal awesomeness! The power of one.