languages? Is this once more a However I have had one fun activity this week - I've been reading my friend's report following her National Teaching Fellowship experience and what she had done with her money, what her research findings have been and all the serendipitous learning that has come out of the experience. To see one's friend blossom over a two year period is wonderful, and I hope her boss allows that blossom to contribute in appropriate ways to her workplace and beyond. But one of the things that I have read into her research is that it seems that in some contexts neither school teachers not university lecturers are stretching their students (in her research in the field of information literacy). The students at both levels seem to act very strategic, "yes they could do more, but there is no reward". How do we balance that with what many lecturers say about the quality of students today and their ability (or willingness) to work? Based on an exceedingly small sample, are we doing our students a disservice by not challenging them?Most people rise to a challenge, are students so different? Or is it a case of an easy life? I have no answers and wonder if the research that is being done by two of the other visitors to the University of Windsor Centre for Teaching and Learning might help up to address this issue in a roundabout way. Today Francois from Liege in Belgium, with his co-director Marianne, gave us a brief insight into the research they are doing into trying to understand how teachers address complex problems and do those methods lead to increased professionalism of teachers. I hope Francois and Marianne will forgive me if this is not a true representation of the topic as my French was not up to the quality of the presentation and trying to convert fundamental pedagogic terms in the French language into English was no easy feat. But it did lead to further discussion over a wine or two about how difficult it should be (or not) to translate those fundamental terms from one language to another? Are we studying different things because we are working in differentquestion of the lenses through which we look at the issue we are considering? I leave it to you to ponder and post some comments. The basic question is though - sd we challenge our students enough?
One of the other highlights were the fireworks on Wednesday evening. Nick and I shared a ringside seat at Pat's river front flat, toghether with a number of others from the Faculty of Edcuation. we had a lovely supper and a deadon view of the fireworks which lasted for around 30 minutes. A small sample of them below although there is a video on utube. They arise from 3 barges moored in the centre of the river. The polloution is extnesive. http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=sCs8beVZa1g
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