There has been a shift in recent years away from administrative, or information-disseminating, meetings due to the meme-worthy “that meeting could have been an email” mentality. I am now so completely drowned in ‘informative’ emails that I am actually missing many important details that are lost within my deficient email filtering system. My system involves scanning the dozen emails sitting in my inbox, flagging the ones that look important to ‘read later’, then failing to ‘read later’. Personally, I feel the need for meetings, or at least in-person and verbal interactions sometimes, to effectively convey important information. In the absolute busy-ness of my work life this is far from feasible. There are certainly alternative ways of communicating that we use such as Microsoft Teams, Learner Management Systems, social media, even texting and, (I know it’s old-fashioned) calling someone on the telephone. But the reality is that when there are so many different forms of communicatio
Unit pricing, best buys, call it what you will, this topic is great because it is relatable, practical and prompts rich conversation. This week I started a lesson with a lower ability Year 10 class with this image: After some hesitations one student piped up: "Do 80 divided by $5.39!" I wrote on the whiteboard 80/5.39 and the students told me confidently the answer was 14 cents. Me: "How do we know this is correct? Is there a way we can check?" After some discussion we figured out we could multiply 80 by 14 cents which they told me was $11.20. Me: "Are we happy with this?" Students: "I guess." Me: "So if you take this packet of lollies to the checkout and they charge you $11.20 you are ok with that?" One Student: "You're gettting scammed!" I was amazed. The students took quite some time thinking through how the shop keeper were cheating the customer. Eventually they were convinced that maybe the maths was wrong. It was d