Monday, November 30, 2009

The Singapore Zoo

We have just enjoyed a long weekend so decided to head to the zoo. Rach was keen to see the animals and I was keen to try out my new birthday present camera.

The Zoo is a very polished tourist experience and rather humane for a Zoo. Lots of the animals are wandering or climbing around without fences. The monkeys were all free to roam around, with I guess some well thought out strategies to keep them from straying too far. The orang-utans where handing out on this island where you could walk through on board walk.

Its taken us nearly a year and think we have finally done most of the local attractions. We need some more long weekends to explore a little further towards Indonesia or Malaysia. Lots of friends headed off to resorts over the weekend, and to nice beaches a couple of hours north in Malaysia.

It is now exactly a year since we moved out of our place in Claremont Grove and began our shift. How a year flies by.

Teaching with laptops

Since moving to Singapore, Rach and I have both been teaching in a full laptop environment. Each kid in our Grade 9 and Grade 11 classes have laptops which are linked to the wireless network. The laptops have sure altered the way we both teach. Rachel is now a convert to you tube and enjoys finding geeky videos for Geography. I now use a variety of blogs and school ICT stuff to make the learning a bit more interesting.

For both of us it has been an excellent opportunity for developing our craft as teachers and will be a nice string to our CV's when we eventually move on. I have recently presented a bit of research on the effectiveness of laptops. The conference was for all of the Singapore schools and it was a great chance to network, and to also begin the path towards maybe beginning my masters.