Your occupation?

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Originally Posted by autobreadticon

COOL, what do you do in the army tho, is it like in the movies, SGT BILKO?

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Lol sometimes it is :p

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

I only see a disembodied head and hands floating in mid-air! Where's the rest of Soundwarp's body?! :p :)

I experienced a touch of occupational irony today. ;)

unicron: I bought some second-hand paint once.

:D

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Hahahahahahaha

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Originally Posted by The_Damned

so 16 1\2 years working in the same place.::eek:

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that's a long time and a long committment :D

I've personally never taught IB so I must admit that I'm not too knowledgeable/familiar with it (hence the much shrugging in my previous post :)). I did one of my prac teaching blocks at a school which had a lot of students doing IB and some of teachers there told me that the IB was fundamentally/substantially not much different from the HSC and that it was a course that some students chose because it was perceived to be superior and/or more prestigious than the HSC but in reality they were both more or less as good as each other.

Again, it's just what I've been told - I cannot speak from personal experience as I have never studied nor taught the IB curriculum.

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Originally Posted by STL

The VCE is inferior to the HSC but at the end of the day both of those are inferior to the IB. Recognition comes from being measured against the best in the world and being accepted to have achieved a level of quality that is global.

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I've heard some teachers argue that the VCE is superior to the HSC. *shrug* Again, just second hand information as I've never experienced the VCE curriculum first hand. Also, the HSC is supposedly meant to be reasonably good by global standards.

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Originally Posted by STL

You show your VCE or HSC to the US universities or the European ones, your odds of a call back are minimal. When I was visiting overseas universities, just the fact that I had a scholarship to study the IB meant I was treated very well and with great interest. I hadn't even started my IB at that point yet.

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So they told you that the fact that you had enrolled for IB placed you at a greater advantage over those studying the VCE?

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Originally Posted by STL

The other aspect is that like Blackie was pointing out the IB gives you skills that the HSC/VCE never will. The VCE/HSC system is so centric around memorisation, exams and assessment tasks whereas IB is far more focused on learning, technique and skill sets.

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While it's true that the IB has an entirely different form of assessment and curriculum I don't think it's accurate to say that HSC is centred around "memorisation" if by that you mean rote-learning. Rote-learning is something that is largely frowned upon by most educators and is only used in areas where nobody has devised a better method of teaching something, e.g.: multiplication table. There are still some things that still need to be taught and learnt by rote - but it is avoided as much as possible. The current HSC is outcomes based. Syllabuses vary between different subjects of course so some subjects (possibly mathematics) may lend itself more to memorisation than others.

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Originally Posted by STL

Things like the Theory of Knowledge and the Extended Essays are exercises in spoon fed or repetitious learning; they force you to open your mind and look at how you manage things.

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HSC does involve a lot of spoon-feeding, this I will admit. I disagree on "repetitious learning" though - again, not so much on rote. We need to focus more on making students into independent learners (the lack of independence is where all the spoon-feeding comes in). But in my prac-teaching I saw IB students who were worse than spoon-fed, they were bottle-fed. I don't know if this is the norm, again I'm only speaking from my limited observation.

As for schools that offer/teach IB - in Sydney I've only seen IB offered/taught in private schools and never in public schools.

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Originally Posted by Eruntalon

I currently work two jobs at Nando's and a Japanese Restaurant, still live with my parents.

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Please tell me you can take orders in Portuguese and Japanese. I went to a Japanese restaurant a few weeks ago and asked the waitress in Japanese for a glass of water and she gave me a bowl of miso soup... GRAAAAAAAAAARGH!

I don't care if she isn't able converse to me about theology in Japanese, but you'd think she'd be able to take a freakin' order. (-_-)

The Portuguese and Japanese words for "thank you" are similar. :)

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

Again, it's just what I've been told - I cannot speak from personal experience as I have never studied nor taught the IB curriculum.

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I don't really think it matters what you or I have experienced. It's the simple fact that universities across the globe themselves regard it highly that says enough. You also need to look no further than the conversion rates between VCE/HSC and IB to get an idea of the comparative difficulty. I mean a bare pass in IB is the equivalent of an ENTER of 75 odd in VCE. Facts speak for themselves.

And as I've alluded to, you need to look beyond just what the education fraternity thinks and look at employers too.

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

So they told you that the fact that you had enrolled for IB placed you at a greater advantage over those studying the VCE?

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They didn't even register what VCE was to be honest. IB they understood straight away and appreciated the standard that I would be achieving. This and the SAT tests would be what was relevant to my success.

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Originally Posted by GoktimusPrime

While it's true that the IB has an entirely different form of assessment and curriculum I don't think it's accurate to say that HSC is centred around "memorisation" if by that you mean rote-learning. Rote-learning is something that is largely frowned upon by most educators and is only used in areas where nobody has devised a better method of teaching something, e.g.: multiplication table. There are still some things that still need to be taught and learnt by rote - but it is avoided as much as possible. The current HSC is outcomes based. Syllabuses vary between different subjects of course so some subjects (possibly mathematics) may lend itself more to memorisation than others.

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Well the VCE says that as well. Unfortunately, what you say you do is very different from what you actually do. I tutor kids from all sorts of backgrounds, both as part of volunteering and private work b/c I enjoy teaching. I can tell you now, that students will tell you that a large part of learning is memorisation. Teachers tell the students otherwise but that's not what happens on the ground. Most uni students who have just left high school will tell you that too.

At the end of the day, I think that the modern school environment makes it very hard for a teacher to open the minds of kids up. There are just too many distractions. Yes there are the studious type but they are in the minority. The vast majority of students though have a myraid of social concerns and learning is on the lower end of their spectrum.

The main thing it comes down to though is a school by school basis. We've got to remember that each school approaches things differently. I'm not one to say which school is better but unfortunately that the future seems to dictate that wealth will be a prime indicator of academic success.

Hmmm... I'm probably out of sync with the discussion you guys are having with high school and HSC because I didn't do that here and even Uni feels like an eternity ago (but I did read the entire thread with interest!).

I'm a lawyer at one of the 'big three' Australia law firms, and... erm... girls in the corporate world are so much hotter than any I've met while in school/uni :p

I hope your other half didn't hear you "think that"... :D (You know they have better hearing than Superman, Don't you? ;))

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Originally Posted by heroic_decepticon

I'm a lawyer at one of the 'big three' Australia law firms, and... erm... girls in the corporate world are so much hotter than any I've met while in school/uni :p

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I've found law school to be full of gold too. Much more than I expected when I first entered. My mates and I always thought arts would be the sh*t but how wrong we were. But sometimes I wonder how many of them only made it b/c of their parents. It's kinda cool but kinda sad in a way.

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Originally Posted by STL

I've found law school to be full of gold too. Much more than I expected when I first entered. My mates and I always thought arts would be the sh*t but how wrong we were. But sometimes I wonder how many of them only made it b/c of their parents. It's kinda cool but kinda sad in a way.

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*Some* of the arts girls at my uni scary me... :(

lol you guya have it good, i guess im being punished for having such a good run, because the girls in my course arnt great.....

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Originally Posted by blackie

lol you guya have it good, i guess im being punished for having such a good run, because the girls in my course arnt great.....

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Der dude! you do engineering! Melbourne's engineering dept is probably the scariest this side of the hemisphere so consider yourself lucky. But I hear the RMIT fashion and visual arts faculty ain't bad either. ;)