Teaching Technology: Sunday Night

Today was a quiet day in some respects... I had a lot of marking to do which I did early on and it kind of depressed me a bit, I had hoped after this amount of time the kids would be producing some decent levels of work, sadly they arn't. I pregraded some work last week and gave them a week to improve it and more than half of them havent bothered to change or adjust anything. I had such high expectations for this project and I don't think they were unfairly high, that the effort and work handed in has disappointed me greatly. Its strange the teaching here is so much more rewarding yet the standard of work handed in for this project after 7 months is terrible I would equate a lot of it to primary standard and I know the kids are far better than that which gives me a problem. Is it because they can't be bothered (They were told last week they will not have technology next year as it will be limited to grades 5-8 so when they move up they can't take it). Or is it something I am doing or not doing as a teacher to inspire them. I admit it has taken a lot of the shine off my drive this weekend and I am sorely tempted to stop the project and bin it and instead put the kids back into a defined class system where I dictate the lesson and they write it out, giving them freedom to be creative and to solve the problems seems to have failed, and those that know me well will know I don't like failure in any form if it is attributable to me. This part of the work was supposed to be the forerunner to building the models for the school but I really feel I need to stop and revisit some areas. The trouble is I dont have enough time to do that unless I scrap the project completely and after 2 months of planning and preparing I am not sure if that is a sensible decision to take. I will sleep on it tonight. I had my usual walk on a sunday afternoon allowed me to test out the new glasses some more and its been a good buy definitly feel so much better wearing them though I find the computer screen a bit of a problem as the focal distance seems wrong now, or I might just have to hold my head a bit higher to get the focus right. As usual I got back into the house just as the rain started .. almost exactly on 3pm though today we had Hail as well. News has been full of information about the killing of 2 of the most wanted FARC personnel on the list as well as the recent release of 2 more of the hostages. It does make you wonder how they can expect to get hostages released while at the same time carrying out military missions of extreme predjudice. Finally a Mothers day wish to my Mother .. Happy Mothers Day. Photo's added are of a small cacti type plant... The Rain and Hail ... The way Apartments are built so close to the mountains and the small patch of blue sky amongst the clouds..