Some Extras

So in class today I got to look at some tools that are available to teachers/people out there today. There are some amazing things!

One website, http://www.gliffy.com/ allows you to make flow charts, and even floor plans! My teacher pointed out that this would be a great tool for me as a missionary. I could give a visual of my home overseas and then use flow charts to explain how I hope my ministry will progress over the years.

There's another tool called Microsoft Lesson plans that gives you ideas for lessons and how to get the students to interact with the lesson. This is very helpful, especially to brand new teachers or teachers who have taught for decades. I name these two types of teachers because new teachers are usually nervous and don't know how to get the children to interact and older teachers will get stuck in doing something voer and over again, even if the technique is outdated.

These tools were fun to play with, and I didn't want to stop (especially gliffy). so if you're a new teacher or a missionary looking for a way to "spice up" your report home, you should check out these tools.

Assignment #4

An important lesson I would like to teach the children in the Philippines would be the importance of washing their hands before they eat or touch their hands to their mouths, especially after touching an animal or trash.

I would want to present 3 main points:

i. dirty hands make dirty insides
ii. dirty insides can make you very sick
iii. washing hands keeps everything clean

To use a new technology, to be interactive I would have each child color five "germs" on paper that could eventually be stuck to a felt board (or even a chalk board). Then I would pick a child in the class and label the board after them (the board would represent them). I would talk about how clean the board is, the person must have just bathed. Then I would say, "Mikey just played with a dog, and now he's giving Timmy a hug because he's excited to see him." Timmy would go up to the board and put a "germ" on "Mikey." Then so on and so forth with a day in the life of Mikey. By the end of the day he'll have had many germs on him, even ingesting a good amount because he never washed his hands. He'll get sick.

Then I would run through the story again (a little faster) and have Mikey wash his hands, keeping him a fair bit cleaner. And then even again with ALL the children washing their hands, showing how clean Mikey is at the end of the day.

I think a felt board would be a new technology for the kids, but the lesson is nice because it can go with any type of board.

The main drawback would be that the kids get too distracted decorating their germs and by the newness of the felt board that they would lose sight of the object of the lesson: washing their hands.

from experience I've noticed that interactive learning seems to excite the kids in the Philippines. I think that's because they mostly rely on a lecture system, so having the opportunity to participate is nice for them.

A nice technological improvement to a felt board would be an overhead projector with overheads. They are easy to clean and maintain and would be a bit better than a felt board.

Missionary Blogs

Hey all!

I was really excited to find this amazing site with tons of missionary blogs. They provide access to blogs of missionaries around the world, divided by region, country, and whether the missionaries have children or not. It was very cool.

I ended up on the page of the Pape family who are currently serving as missionaries in Manila, Philippines. They are a family of five (husband, wife, and three children).

I read their blog "Should I stay or should I go now...?" and I was blessed by it. I appreciated seeing missionaries who are "on the field" who are honest and actually talking about the struggles that they are going through in trying to seek Gad's will. I love that! I constantly struggle with God's will of where I am supposed to be, but then I know that I just need to trust God. It's actually been the "theme" of my summer plans.

The few sentences that I enjoyed the most were: "It is tempting to seek a more permanent position and the security of a salary, real insurance, and a retirement plan rather than trusting that God will lead the right people at the right time to provide what we need. But as we pursued this option, it was made pretty clear that this is not what we are supposed to do." I like this because this is how I feel. I don't need to be on a salary, I don't even want a salary! Will the poor people I'm helping have a salary? Will they be able to understand why I have one? I'd rather go and teach or have a job wherever I go so that I can help without alienating people.

You should go check out that blog website, see what's going on in the world.

Kenyan Education

I just read an article from an organization that I go on missions trips with about education in Kenya. The article talks about the poverty of Sub-Saharan Africa and the costs of schooling. They make the connection that poverty is having a direct effect on the education of Africans. They expand on the idea of education, pushing it beyond the idea of reading, writing, and arithmetic. They expand the definition to include bible teaching and healthcare; both of which are important in the third world setting. The organization, Global Outreach Developments International (G.O.D.), drew a statistic from a study done by Purdue University that says by 2015 African nations will make up 75% of all un-schooled children in the world. That's so intense! I don't want the people of Africa to go without schooling. They need an education so that they can have power and no longer be oppressed.

Here's the link for the article: http://godinternational.org/godintl/?p=244

It's great.