Exercise

My preference is for exercising
mind and not my muscles
but getting out to move about
can clear out brain-bound tussles.

I've walked a lot just lately
and although arthritis stalks me,
the feel-good factor is addictive -
I will be less porky.

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Jack and the Beanstalk

The 5 to 8 year olds, years one
to four: our junior school,
will soon begin rehearsals for
a stage performance. Cool
and cute, sweet or brat,
we need to choose the cast.
Then dancers: teams of stars
and clouds. Online, I've spent the last
few nights in search of backing tracks.
As well as pix of folks-
of villagers and peasants too,
Jacks and giants, harps and cloaks,
tights and aprons, jerkins, caps...
since sewing costumes grudgingly
is shared between 2 teachers.
One of whom is me.

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gifted and talented

Our group of local schools will soon
complete our IT contract,
so now we're planning what might work
to build on skills, in fact
we had a meeting of the leaders,
talked about a plan
for setting up a base and satellites
of teaching spaces... can
we apply for funding to equip a place
for talented we'll stretch?
A base with tech equipment, visually superb?
A place imaginations sketch.


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Winter Voki

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broadband

At last! I bit the bullet,
spent the time and money too.
A parcel came: a metal box
called "adsl & router". Phew!
Last night I got my work laptop
going on broadband
Tonight, eventually, my old
laptop connected and
later or tomorrow I'll
do the old pc downstairs.
So now I'm off to Second Life
Hip hooray. 3 cheers.


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voki

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Second Life

I used to spend my leisure hours
here online. Attraction:
ICQ and yahoo too,
msn... the action
with instant messages and webcams
kept me keen those days.
Then that wore off and message boards
took over: my next phase.
Since then I've dabbled with facebook,
feeling old and bored
but second life just might be right
if dial up were more broad (band).





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Visiting my kids

We flew down south and saw our son
and saw his flat and feed him lots.
We saw Da Vinchy models and
we walked and toured tourist spots.
Cadbury's is famous for its
chocolate, factory was great.
We bought our son some underwear
and took his girlfriend on a date.

We flew back north and drove to see
our daughter and her man, we went
to check the business franchise she
has bought. Then viewed the house they'll rent.
They're packing now and plan to move
this weekend. She is so excited.
I hope her business venture works
to make her rich and so, delighted.

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Easter on the Marlborough Sounds (rondelet form)

Lazy rivers
spill in bays of saline silk, slow,
lazy. Rivers
tangling bush-greyed hills in slivers
of sea, use mermaid combs. They flow
on drowning paths laid out below.
Lazy rivers.


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Contact lenses

The plastic 'glass' is oblong
and the frames form bridge and arm:
my new specs cost a fortune
but there's more to this alarm...
As well as buying updates
I'm spending even more
and now I'm trying contacts
(never saw past cost before).

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The Change - a sonnet

Menopause

Invisible and hormone stoked, my sauna
sears with fifty minute interims
as steaming waves of tidal trauma
drown moon-cycle youth by sluicing limbs .

Instead of days spent draining wasted nests
of unproductive eggs each month, I mark
the hours in mammalian sweating crests.
I'm caged and leashed within a wildlife park.

I picnic anyway, there are more choices
when the years leave nothing much to prove.
There's fascination locked in long-lived voices,
value found in spending time. I move
with less allure, I hide as I endure,
determined to be gracefully mature.


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the meaning of life

Sorting socks is soothing.
So many monotone.
So many paired with partners now
but others left alone.

Life is like a drawer of socks.
Some tightly wrap around.
Some separate. Some lose touch.
Socks and people: so profound.



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ICT & PE

Our cluster group for ICT has planned another conference.
We did so well last year that a repeat was commonsense.
I've thought of several topics for presenters to present on
and started finding movies for some models (deconstruction
of movies showing sporting skills helps students want to learn them.)
And Youtube is a source of many such a sport gem.
Listing any skills that they can see while they're reviewing
creates success criteria we use for self reflecting.
Then photos or short videos on classroom cameras show what
the students have achieved in lessons - Tick their list or not?




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next challenge: flash

Now facebook has been sorted and I've added applications,
posted youtube movie links and photos of vacations,
I'm ready for another challenge: now I'll learn to Flash.
(I've tried it with a shareware app but only made a hash
of all the layers.) But collegues want to try it now - we'll work together solving
all those complicated bits that had my brain reverse-evolving.


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facebook

I've seen the way the kids all go
for online profiles on bebo
and heard about the adult look
of something like it called 'facebook'.
So I decided it was time
to sign up at this facebook. I'm
a member but I cannot see
anything but 'edit' me.
I want to make a page to view
but after checking tabs all through
I've left the site. Another time...
I'd rather watch some TV crime.

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Spent 2 weeks in Dunedin

My boy is 21 years old but nearly didn’t make it.
A broken nose meant abscess growth and septicaemia.
His arm swelled up but he was loath to leave his freezing flat
until his nose appointment so he also got pneumonia.
He staggered in and scared a nurse so much that she soon put him

in Intensive Care! Sick boy. That’s one place no one seeks.
He didn’t know how close he’d been to death – just one day off –
He didn’t know how long he’d be recovering – two weeks –
They operated, drained the dangerous abscessed nose and then,
they operated one more time to drain his elbow too.
Then operated yet again to drain his lungs and left
a dangling tube stuck in his back that poured infection through.
It snowed outside but he was stuck in bed. He slept a lot.
He moved four times to different wards and suffered pills and pokes,
He lived for dressing changes, food and visitors who came
in droves... so many girls who cared and even more good blokes.


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Yes

Watched a movie: "Yes" - in verse
by Sally Potter. Like a dream,
a fantasy, lost love and worse
submerged a 9/11 theme.

Visual tricks matched verbal feasts.
Stereotypes of lonely lives,
of dirty secrets, human beasts,
arab men and aging wives.

Contrasts: sterile empty mansions,
delapidated eastern streets;
busy kitchens, arguments,
hospital and catholic priests.

A cleaner understands this life,
moving dirt around. She'll guess
that zero dirt cannot exist.
Nothing? No, there's only Yes.


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Adventure racing

I've never been a sporty girl, I never hope to be one
but yesterday I went to watch adventure sporting be done.
I went to act as driver and 'support crew' was my role there,
delivering the mountain bikes and changes in their gear.

They didn't even know how many different sports there'd be
until the briefing on the night before (while I had tea.)
They had to run and hike and ride and go spell-dunking too.
They had to kayak on a lake and with a compass, follow clues.

I drove along clay country roads, slip-sliding down and scaring
myself a lot but found the places set aside for daring
parking... Hiking over paddocks... Getting shoes all wet.
My team survived and finished well. It's me who's overset.


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Teaching How to Think

REFLECTION ON 2007 L@S CONFERENCE:

I've heard a lot of theory spouted:
e-games held in high esteem,
problem solving skills undoubted.

It seems they lead to brave risk taking,
virtual, true, but consequential.
And lots of quick decision making...

All this visual strategising
teaches skills for future lives.
(That's the gamers' theorising.)

I believed, but second thoughts,
about commercial dumbing down
of movies, games and news reports...

have made me wonder at the value
of these numbing fantasies.
Is 'thinking' what they'd aim to sell you?

News is censored for appeal;
movies aim at teenage minds.
Computer games are just as real.

Do online feats co-operating,
co-ordinating ally moves,
teach body-language-cue translating?

Are e-rewards for perseverance
and using cheats to rise a level,
encouraging respect, forbearance?

Are the skills that gamers learn
essential for our future years?
Is life a game? Is it youth's turn?


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ICT Contract -the challenge-

A teacher who's truthful, confesses
that the secret to half her success is
not her planning as such,
nor evaluation so much
as experience - outwitting guesses.

An old teacher in term one confesses
she has wondered a lot what success is.
Is it constant revising
and more improvising?
Can change ever minimise stresses?

An old teacher of research confesses
that the secret to any success is,
to make reading a crime
that wastes valuable time
and display, as correct, all their guesses.

An old teacher who likes to inspire
all around to go forth and desire
to be learning each day
in a challenging way,
could be building her own funeral pyre.


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