The other day one of my colleagues shared a video on my facebook wall. It cracked me up for two reasons. One, because it told me how well my colleague knows me and two, because the video is so accurate (and really funny!). I’ll let you watch the video before I continue with trying to make some kind of point about ‘ego’.

Watching that video a few days before you have to run a 75 minute workshop is both good and bad. Good for the attendees, bad for the speaker. Everyone has been to a session like this – most likely multiple times. You might have even given a session like this. Actually, many teachers probably give presentations like this multiple times in one day. You know what I mean – this is your class, or has been your class, right? It’s probably ironic (and not even intended hipster ironic) that I am going to show this video at the very beginning of my PBL workshop. There are two reasons for it. One, it is a humorous representation of why teacher-centred learning is an unhealthy addiction. And two, I want to use it to say that this is NOT how I will be running my workshop.

But here is the really irony … I stayed up until 4am this morning so I could finish a video that I was making for my presentation. You see, I have all of this great information on PBL that I wrote-up as part of my literature review for my draft research proposal and I really want to share it with the teachers attending my workshop. I know as a teacher that I feel more secure about giving a new teaching method a go if there is some kind of research to back it up. It’s old skool to think that way, but so be it – lots of people think that way too. My problem was how to share this information (mostly quotes from researchers) without reading it from a PowerPoint slide. I asked my husband, Lee, what he likes in a presentation and he said ‘less talking, more visuals’. That’s probably a typical response to that question. So I thought making a video in iMovie would work and I stayed up until 4am making that video.

I know I’m tired cos I haven’t got to my point yet, have I? Basically what I want to say is this: preparing for this 75 minute workshop gave me a deeper understanding of what’s so good about PBL. It’s immersion. It’s ego. There is a reason why that guy in the video is so proud of the video he made – because he made it. Project-learning is ego-driven. The beginning stage of the project is the investigation – this requires the individual to become immersed in the questions and content related to the project. For me, I was thinking ‘How am I going to get all of my knowledge and experience of PBL across to these teachers in an engaging and effective manner?’ and ‘How can I generate the same level of passion for project-learning that I have?’ I looked through all of my previous presentation materials, I read my blog posts about my class projects, I read my draft research proposal. I wrote lots of lists and notes about what to include and when.

Then I moved on to the product stage – making a video. This video isn’t meant to last the whole workshop, it’s just another mode of communicating important ideas with the teachers. During the making of the video I had to ask technical questions on twitter and search them on google. Communicating. I had to think about copyright, so I used FlickrCC to get images and Jamendo for the music. Problem-solving. I had to think carefully about the types of images and music to include, as well as the coloured backgrounds and style of font. Creative thinking. During this process I was so driven to complete the project. It was 10.30pm when I decided to make the film and 4am when I finished. What forced me to keep working long into the night? I want to say passion. I know that’s part of the answer. But the real driver was ego. Even though my eyelids were scratching my eyeballs and my back was bent like a crowbar, I kept working. I would not sleep until the video was uploaded to YouTube. Why? Because I was desperate to share it with my twitter colleagues. Sheer ego. This, for Orwell, was the key driver for most writers: Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. (Why I Write, 1946)

Ego is at the guts of PBL. And that’s a great thing. Just like sheer egoism is a key motive for teachers to share their ideas and experiences with teaching via a blog or twitter or a conference presentation, so too is the product/presentation element of PBL a key motive for students to keep working tirelessly on their projects. Ego, I believe, isn’t a dirty word. I do hope my fellow PBL educators aren’t offended by this brazen reflection on PBL. I think we should embrace this appeal to ego as an important element of PBL’s success with students.

I finally finished my video, and I really am proud of it. Of course I am well aware of the intense irony of the situation – I will most likely end up looking just like the guy in the video about failing to communicate. I will stand there with a goofy, proud look on my face as my audience watches the video I created. They will be bored … after all, it’s just words on a screen coupled with some pictures and music. It’s not effective learning. Oh well, it made me feel good completing it and it now feels awesome sharing it with you on my blog.

NOTE: Even though I don’t necessarily agree with teaching writing in a piecemeal fashion, I do feel that helping students to improve their vocabulary and expression is essential … why? No, not for their exams (although that is going to help them for sure) but simply because being able to articulate your thoughts into a coherent argument is a life skill absolutely essential for young people heading into the fray with ultra conservatives hell-bent on killing the planet, or at least the human race. (Oh, and yeah – I know there’s wanky literary-type stuff in there that probably ain’t saving any tree or fish anytime soon. Bite me.)

laments
absolve
catharsis
precipitates
moral order
divine retribution
righteous
repercussions
demonstrative
ambition/inhibition
sensibility
preoccupation with …
new world thinker
a complete cessation of existence
immanence of death
manifests in …
ratifies
moral integrity
mediatation on …
inner argument
crystalises
religious reform
insinuating
antithetical
‘the apparel oft proclaims the man’ – Hamlet (re: Dickinson’s attire, all white)
pejorative
betrays
‘Don’t you think, my lord, that Beauty accounts for more than Truth?’ (Ophelia to Hamlet)
alerting audiences to …
cultural uncertainty
traditiinal set of values
conflict with society’s expectations
disillusioned with society
shared connection with ‘universal’ (significant) concepts and experiences
importance of family in framing an individual’s well-being and idenitity
enveloped
self-castigation
internal debates of the mind
religious tension and political turmoil
echoes the cultural anixeties of the time
rational thinking and self-exploration
…. speaks of …
embodiment of the sturggle between old and new values/ideals
imbued with
intrinisc moral code
a modern individual constrained by the views and expectations of a traditional society
eloquent
archetypal metanarrative of humanity
intellectual obstacles
propounds
propogated
superlative adjective
moral imperatives
linguistic hinge
postulates
torrid
reiterated
tragic consequences of freewill
selects reason over passion
places trust in the divine being
contemplative tone
tragic decision from which she cannot return
intimate poems
the audience is positioned to …
humanistic issues: love, revenge, rivalry, loyalty, politics, society
diction
deals with basic human emotions
flourishing
importance of morality in guiding one’s life
Aristotelian values
resolution
philosophical and moral questioning
antithesis
equivocation
analogous
ideological
clash between traditional Christianity and rising humanism
resonates
accentuates
eloquent and articulate language
inner turmoil
commentator on the social, religious and philosophical inconsistencies of the era
philosophical deliberation
own moral guidelines
moral ambiguity
musings
transcends time
monosyllabic
sympathy for
empathy for
aligned
inversion of speech
balanced sentencing
moral superiority
human desire for forgiveness

elucidates

initiates

POSSIBLE STRUCTURE FOR YOUR SPEECH (FOR THOSE WHO ARE STRUGGLING)

INTRODUCTION: directly address the key words/ideas in the essay question. Identify which essays you will be speaking about in the speech (all or a couple). Outline your thesis – this will just be what you think Orwell attempts to do with his essays (so to make it easy, just select on or two key ideas). Remember that what we want to see is that you have developed a personal, critical response to the essays … this is your ‘thesis’.

WHAT WAS YOUR INITIAL RESPONSE TO THE ESSAYS? be specific and honest – did you like the essays? did you like Orwell’s style? His content? WHY DID YOU HAVE THIS RESPONSE? give a couple of examples from the essays to support this. THEN TELL US THAT THIS HAS EVOLVED … WHAT DO YOU THINK NOW? (this is your thesis)

(there are two ways to go about this, one where you focus
on a couple of essays, one where you focus on all the essays – for those doing TWO essays, you might want to treat each essay separately like I have with Yeats and threading the following points together as you discuss each essay.)

WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT HIS CONTEXT? only talk about that which is relevant to your thesis!! Consider where he published these essays – who was his audience? WHY DID THIS HELP YOU TO UNDERSTAND HIS IDEAS/PURPOSE BETTER? make sure you link this to the essays … give evidence from the essay.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN ABOUT THE ESSAY FORM? You might want to show off a little and say something about Michel de Monaigne and the French definition of the word ‘essai’ … tell us something briefly about the essay form – is it what you are familiar with? Why do people write essays? HOW DOES ORWELL USE THE STRUCTURE AND FEATURES OF THE ESSAY FORM TO EXPRESS HIS IDEAS? Think about why he chose to write essays and not ‘articles’ per se … why didn’t he just write poems, or plays, or novels? This must link directly to the essays you are discussing.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM READING CRITICAL RESPONSES TO THE ESSAYS OF ORWELL (OR JUST ABOUT ORWELL AS A WRITER)? You should refer to one or two critics – you really need to get to HOW this response altered your original thoughts on Orwell as a writer and thinker (as an ‘artist’) … did it make you change your way of thinking, did it challenge you to defend your original position, did it reinforce what you were already thinking about Orwell? Give examples from the critics (just a half a sentence or a sentence quote – we want YOUR ideas about Orwell, not the critic’s) and also examples from the essays to support your evolving appreciation of them.

NOW WHAT DO YOU THINK OF ORWELL AS A WRITER/THINKER/ARTIST? This is a return to the subjective frame and acknowledging the evolution of your response to his essays – might be a good idea to refer to his essays as being ‘significant’ and ‘valuable’.
REMEMBER … AT ALL OF THESE POINTS YOU NEED TO BE RETURNING IMPLICITLY TO THE ESSAY QUESTION … FOCUSING ON THAT IDEA THAT THE ESSAYS ARE SIGNIFICANT AND VALUABLE … THEREFORE THEY ENDURE. REMEMBER WHAT WE DISCUSSED IN CLASS YESTERDAY ABOUT ORWELL TAPPING INTO THE THREE KEY COMPONENTS OF THE ARTIST: THE AESTHETIC, RHETORICAL AND ETHICAL.

NOTE: Please don’t forget that this is a SPEECH! Use your rhetorical devices – repetition, rhetorical questions, dramatic pause, strong statement, anecdotes, humour, accumulation.
Good luck! Send me your speeches for proof-reading/editing no later than 48 hours BEFORE you have chosen to present.

Heading West …

A description …

Nudging the Nullabor: Port Augusta to Ceduna

The Nullabor Plain: from Ceduna, SA to Esperance, WA

Heading north-west: Esperance to Brookton

Mayhem on the west-coast: Perth to Walpole

The first leg home: Esperance to Streaky Bay

No more petrol: the long drive home

We discovered that we were (seriously) running low on cash as we drove along the Eyre Peninsula. The plan had always been to round off the trip with a couple of days on the south coast of South Australia at the beautiful Robe and Kingston SE. But the reality of very pricey fuel, no free camping and only enough food to last us another day, we had to make the sensible decision and head back to Sydney via the most direct route.

Thanks to Maps on our iPhone, we were treated with a route that took us to places we had never seen – a poultice for our broken gypsy hearts. The squiggly blue line directed us from the Eyre Peninsula to Sydney via the smallish in-land ‘highway’ B64 and the 20. But before we would get there we were treated to the secret beauties of the Eyre Peninsula, SA.

I must confess that we took the Eyre Peninsula kinda lightly – thinking it’d be a fairly easy side-trip on our journey. The truth is that it requires quite a bit of driving … dull driving … before you are granted permission to visit its secret beaches and coastline. BUT when you do get to them …. fffwaaah!! I think my favourite was Venus Bay. If we ever go back to this part of Australia (which knowing us, we will) I would like to spend a few days here. This little Winton-esque town is the complete Romantic adventurer’s dream. It is simply a clutter of shacks and boats and 4WDs. Fishermen and fisherwomen mix with caravan families and retirees. The sand is yellow, the sea is blue and the cliffs are jagged and steep. It is small but not creepy-small. It even has a Romantic name … Venus Bay. Maybe I just liked it because we could bring the Kombi onto the sand, right at the edge of the water. You can’t do that on any beaches where we live.

From Venus Bay we visited Tahlia Caves … oh the story I can tell! It certainly could have been a Romantic narrative – full of tragedy and melodrama, remote locations and attempts to push personal physical boundaries. But really it’d be more apt for me to tell you that the cave we walked to was stunning to look at but smelled like bat shit. Lee (with the healing broken knee) decided to make it to the back of the cave, despite having to walk along a narrow ledge covered in a shifting sand/bat shit mix that plunged into a crevice of sucking sea water … OK it wasn’t that far to fall, only 5 or 6 metres, but enough to break his other knee if not his neck! I guess he got tired of my objections to his adventure, and he returned – albeit on his bum because his weaker knee couldn’t lead him back. Oh dear.

Another notable place along the Eyre Peninsula is the Sheringa Roadhouse. Lee loves these types of places … let’s put it in the category with the Olary Pub. It is a hodge-podge shack turned roadhouse with two petrol pumps outside and inside a mess of fishing gear, camping supplies and fast food. Oh, and it has a make-shift bar that sells bottled beverages. On one of the walls outside is a collection of newspaper clippings about the town – I think there’s maybe 3 houses in total in this ‘town’ – and the roadhouse. It’s been in a film too – an Aussie thriller called Nowhere Else, based on a sign at the roadhouse. The owners and the guy who works behind the counter are nice … but you can easily see why the film-makers chose their location and cast the owner as a bad guy. You can read about it here.

We passed through Port Lincoln quickly and saw nothing but the petrol station, the same can be said for Whyalla. I’m sure these places have lots going for them, but we simply had no time and less money. As the sun was beginning to slip from the sky again, Lee did well to avoid anymore roos (we’d hit a joey early in the morning, killing it instantly – it was horrible and Lee picked it up from the road and laid it in the bushes … saving it from further human disgrace) and we eventually made our ‘camp’ at the back of the Tinman Roadhouse outside of Port Pirie.

The second last day of our adventure was surprisingly pleasant despite the hundreds of kilometres we covered. After an early morning departure, we stopped at a too cute town called Burra. I’ve never heard of it before but I think it’s somewhere people should know about. It’s one of those places that has invested a bunch of money into restoring or protecting its history. We were stoked to see so many heritage buildings from the early to mid 1800s. My favourite places were Burra Gaol and the Police Lock-up – my imagination fired as I thought about the drunks and the Irish that would have been holed up in the singular dark solitary confinement shed. This town has a lot of stories and one day we will return to discover them.

Crossing the iconic Murray River always gives me a buzz and I wasn’t disappointed this time. The wide brown strap of water was dotted with house-boats … a future watery adventure taking shape in our minds. There is something earthy and awesome about the towns on the Murray … they smell fresh and wholesome. Our puppies really enjoyed jumping off the banks of the Murray and scrabbling to get back to land. And we enjoyed laughing at them!

The night was spent in a very tidy town, Narrandera. We pulled up at the rest stop right out front of the Visitors Centre and popped the top. Puppies slept inside with us this night because our youngest pup barks at trucks … and we had them rattling past us all night. I love little towns that have perfectly mowed public lawns and funny little sayings on their signs … their slogan is ‘Take a Meander in Narrandera’. Cute.

And yesterday … well there isn’t a story to recount. Just a quick drive up the Hume and a voyage under the harbour and we were at home, bundling out of the Kombi all bleary-eyed, tired, smelly, hungry and a little disappointed that our adventure was over.

Thanks for sharing it with us … you can read our tweets and see our photos in this Storify if you’re bored or mad or keen to take on the journey like us!

Cool Family 3000 Cross the Nullabor.

More interested in hitting the beach, we iMapped our way to Fremantle. What a place! So much like Melbourne meets country village – really a great place. We were stoked to find that there was a dog-friendly beach in Cotesloe – there are almost none of these in Sydney! What’s more, the beach looked like the setting for a Corona ad – minus the waves and hot chicks and cold beer. Our puppies were thrilled with ‘their’ beach. We spent far too long out in the sun here.

As always, the big tribulation for the day was finding pet-friendly accommodation. For this Fremantle was a disappointing epic fail.
We headed south to a place called Kwinana Beach but the nearby caravan park was chock full of holiday makers. Our kombi had decided that getting gears was too much like hard work and was unwilling to give in to Lee’s attempt at tweaking the clutch cable. We found ourselves at Kwinana Beach with a van that wouldn’t move. In case you didn’t know, Kombis aren’t your everyday car and finding a willing mechanic plus getting parts is a tough job. Kudos to Lee who had the foresight to search the Kombi Club forums and found a trusted VW mechanic who was happy to help us out … in two days time!
And that’s how we ended up free camping at Kwinana Beach for two nights. A little patch of sunshine that can be summed up as follows: swings, sand, fishing, swimming and relaxing. On our last night we were woken by the shouts of ‘Hello! Wake up! There’s a fire! You must move your car!’ Like you know what to do when you hear that! Me – I just looked out the curtains, saw the blazing car five metres from our van and hit play on my ‘Instant Hysteria’ button. I shook the boys awake and told Lee to drive … but, oh, Kombi wasn’t working and we had the camping chairs, esky, water bottle etc in the way of the tyres. Seriously – a torched car right beside us! We’d been woken up an hour or so earlier by a car – the car – doing burn-outs in between our van and another car. It had scared me cos my ever-anxious mind imagined it losing control and smashing into us at speed. Luckily Lee managed to get first gear – just – and we moved a safer distance away so we could watch the mini-drama unfold. The firetruck and cops came and the boys were treated to the kid dream of watching fire-fighters put out a burning car – featuring mini-explosions and flying embers.

After the firetruck had left we decided to use the early start to get to the mechanics – in second gear! To add to our morning of mayhem, Lee took a late turn into a street and a cop pulled us over. Luckily WA cops are more human than robot and thus were understanding of our mechanical malfunction and let us go. Phew.

Six hours and $220 later we were back on the road heading south. If you ever need a mechanic just south of Perth, we highly recommend Motor Trend in Rockingham – the guys are just awesome and the lunch bar does a wicked burger with the lot (minus the meat).

The goal for this leg of the trip was Margaret River or there abouts. I didn’t know what to expect of this area – Lee had hopes of finding another semi-secluded beach park to free camp at. We didn’t expect the area between Busselton and Margaret River to be so populated. There isn’t a beach there that doesn’t have a crowd of mini-mansions overlooking it. Not our scene – we’re from the Northern Beaches, we’ve seen enough beach mansions. Finding it hard (again) to accommodate the dogs, we ended up at a very remote campsite called ‘Big Valley’ that is actually a working farm. The hosts were really wonderful – I loved that our guide was a young woman on a dirt bike who later got in an enormous tractor. Cool. We were shown a huge paddock for the dogs to run and the kids could ride their bikes down a grassy slope beside a sheep paddock. Seriously family-friendly place.

6th January was our 11th wedding anniversary. We’re not present givers, which suits us both, and were happy to spend the day cruising around the Margaret River region checking out breweries. We particularly liked the Bush Shack Brewery – super nice people, playground for the kids, dog-friendly, lots of space, not wanky and the drinks were excellent. Lee enjoyed the chili ale and I was very happy with my alcoholic creaming soda – they do mail order, so google the name and order some rad beer and alcoholic soft drinks. We had lunch at Prevelly Beach and laughed ourselves silly as our puppy, Chino, lunged through waves to get a stick – such a surf doggy!

Our destination for the night was Walpole on the south coast, and we made it there late-ish at 7pm. We did a stop off in Pemberton to see the climbing tree. I’m afraid of heights, so I wasn’t keen to climb up spikes 61 metres to the top of a tree. Lee was very keen … but due to his fractured patella he couldn’t go the whole way. Disappointing. Walpole? Hmmm … it was raining. It was very, very cold. Friends of mine love Walpole. Maybe one day I’ll go back and find out why.

‘Crossing the Nullarbor’, for many Australians, is a quintessential experience of the ‘Australian Outback’.

My hubby has been dreaming of this trip for a long time.

The conditions weren’t ideal for our trip, considering the temperature was tipped to exceed 40 degrees. And boy did we feel the heat! Once we ‘broke on through’ to WA via the quarantine inspection station, we were on the Nullabor Plain. As we drove we were shocked to see trees – OK, they were more like large shrubs, but to be honest I’d imagined a two-lane highway flanked by a desert resembling a salt lake. This was more like the desert of the Barrier Highway only with the occasional tallish shrub. After paying over $2 a litre for petrol at the Nullabor Roadhouse, we found ourselves driving for hours and hours at 70k/h in 40+ degree heat. By the time we reached Eucla we were all in agreeance with Mr Eyre (the first European to cross the Nullabor) when he said that the Nullabor is:

“a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into in bad dreams”

We piled out of our Kombi – which was more like a giant steel oven – and found ourselves lying in the shade at the Eucla Roadhouse playground. The thermometre read 45 degrees – and it was in the shade! Our poor puppies were making a sorrowful symphony with their heavy panting and all we could do to keep them cool was pour water over them and try to get them to eat ice. Chino decided that olives were tastier – don’t think those salty morsels helped her keep hydrated!
After snoozing on the ground intermittently, we gathered our courage and headed back into the heat – our goal was another 180kms. As the locals say, ‘The 100kms you do today, you don’t have to do tomorrow.’ This leg, for me, was the worst. The desert wind whipped through the van, smacking me sharply in the face and stinging my eyes. I tried unsuccessfully to escape the heat that was pouring through the front vents of the dash, but simply found myself with my head in my lap. If you don’t know, Kombis are air-cooled and don’t have air-conditioning. We had every possible window open and the tail-gate open, but poor Kombi was doing its best just to charge on, considering the air that was meant to cool its engine was over 45 degrees!
We crawled into Mundrabilla at 3.30 in the afternoon. The roadhouse has a caravan park which is just some desert ground indicated with a ring of stones. We just looked around and laughed – what a place to spend New Years Eve! We didn’t care though, it had showers with cool water and a bar with cold beer.
We were treated to the most beautiful hospitality – great food, a game of pool and a laugh. When the sun set and the heat finally receded a little, our boys covered themselves (and our dogs!) in glow sticks and danced around whilst we sat on the classy fold-up camp chairs sipping cheap wine from plastic cups. Oh, and we played Bingo!

Heat exhaustion beat us and we headed to bed before bringing in the New Year, only to be woken by the barking of our puppy and the cracks of fireworks exploding directly above our van. Fireworks in the middle of the Nullabor on New Years Eve? Yup! The locals of Mundrabilla – all 15 of them – put on a great little amateur fireworks display. We sat consoling our nervous puppies and laughing at our luck.

That brings me to today … here we sit in our Kombi, free-camping at the Esperance showground. We woke at 4am this morning and drove 600kms from Mundrabilla via Norseman – in the rain! Yup … after the insanity of the heat on NYE, we were given a reprieve on New Years Day – thanks 2012! Making it to Esperance was a mission, but we’re glad we pushed on …

We spent the night at the Foreshore Caravan Park which is expensive but is super convenient being so close to the shops and sea. The boys really loved Ceduna, it was their ideal spot cos they could play in the sand, play cricket and generally just muck about.
I liked it too but for one incident that made me sad. As we headed for the beach to see the sun set we came across a young mum and her three children. One of the kids, a sweet little thing of about four or five went quietly whimpering to her mother holding out a finger dripping blood. As we walked closer we could see dark claret patches on her little white shirt – she’d cut herself pretty badly. There was a group of tourists looking at the sunset and staring a little at the situation but mostly ignoring it. We immediately showed concern for the girl and worried mum – how could we not? – and I ran back to our van to grab our first aid kit. I applied a small cloth bandage and some bandaids to her baby-like fingers and gave her mum a few more for the trip home. She was very thankful and her big-eyed daughter looked up at me a little bewildered. This situation might not impact you, and you might be curious as to why it impacted me. The mum and her kids were Aboriginal. I can’t help but think that if they had been white those tourists might have been more eager to help. It made me so mad, I couldn’t help observing loudly – within their hearing – that I was surprised and disturbed by the bystanders lack of care.
And it’s that memory of Ceduna, more than the turquoise sea, that will stay with me.