Adobe Post is a great free tool for placing text on photos and is compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. Of course, this makes it useful for all kinds of social media posts and teachers may find it great for making: • inspirational quotes • event invites • album covers • email newsletter graphics • […]
Staff Development Days provide great opportunities to reinvigorate professional enthusiasms as well as to reflect on learning and life at school. For the last six years Dapto High has spent the final day of the academic year off-site at the Nan Tien Temple in Wollongong. The idea is that staff can best help students learn […]
What place does citizen science have in our schools? I pinched the title of this article from a paper published this year by the Office of the Chief Scientist. Professor Ian Chubb, Australia’s Chief Scientist** alerted the delegates at the inaugural Australian Citizen Science Association conference held in Canberra this year – Maximising the Capacity […]
“WordsEye is cutting-edge technology that works by parsing text input into a semantic representation which is then rendered as a 3D scene. This process relies on a large database of linguistic and world knowledge about objects, their parts, and their properties. A set of 2D image filters can be applied to any scene to add […]
Google has launched a new service which purports to allow users to control their online information. Their new About me page lists information such as work history, contact details, educational background, web presence, places you have lived, gender and birthday. The page allows users to edit and delete information that they don’t want people to be able […]
This is the first in a planned series of posts that each focus on a tool that will be useful to both students and teachers in a BYOD context. The plan is that each posts explores an application or accessory that will really be useful and easy to use. This first one looks at an Optical […]
My study tour focuses on how the latest learning about new and emerging technologies, such as non-medical DNA analysis, can be shared effectively and ethically by teachers across the curriculum and state, using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in an effort to genuinely personalise learning for students. Personalising Learning in the Age of Knowledge My […]
“Travel is still the most intense mode of learning.” Kevin Kelly There’s many experiences I wish all students could have as part of their schooling. Going on overseas exchange, or hosting a visitor, is high on my list of absolutely life-changing events. Our school promotes this notion of ‘a wider world view’ by encouraging travel and […]
Two weeks of holidays certainly provided time for more books this month than last. I continue to enjoy the pleasures of rereading and science fiction, as well as some light but thoughtful travel books and tomes exploring historical wisdom on how to live – and win elections! High Possibility Classrooms Dr Jane Hunter has written a […]
“Citizen Science is a partnership between individuals and scientists for investigating pressing questions about the world. The purpose of this conference is bring together the Australian Citizen Science community to share skills and ideas and encourage collaboration.” The first day of the Maximising the Capacity of Citizen Science for Science and Society conference is almost concluded and it […]
Certain books, though, like certain landscapes, stay with us even when we have left them, changing not just our weathers but our climates. Robert MacFarlane This is certainly true of Robert MacFarlane’s books. He is a perfect writer for me. His obsessions with authors, walking, literature, language, nature and landscape are just thrilling. That saying about reading […]
“Teaching is a dynamic and rewarding profession. Good teachers provide students with rich, interesting and well-structured learning experiences. Teachers who provide these experiences enjoy the opportunities offered by the profession and recognition of their achievements by the community.” Australian Professional Standards for Teachers My employer and union have collaborated, supported by the Secondary Principals Council (SPC), with the purpose of […]
Italy A full two weeks of the April were spent in Italy – most of the trip was spent in Perugia, a town located in Umbria before having a few nights in Rome – and I tried to read appropriately for (and during) the experience. River of Shadows by Valerio Varesi is not my usual genre, […]
Our school runs a program – A Wider World View – that encourages students and staff to participate in exchanges and homestays. Currently 17 students and 3 teachers are enjoying Italy, particularly Perugia, in Umbria for a two week Roman holiday. Umbria, I am embarrassed to say, is not a region in Italy that I […]
“Science fiction is a literature that belongs to all humankind.” Liu Cixin March has been an exciting month of science fiction reading and some progress has been made finding novelists writing in languages other than English. The trick, of course, is to be lucky enough to find novels superbly rendered by their translators. A tip from […]
‘More teaching, less tech-ing’** My employer has provided Google Apps for Education (GAFE) since the beginning of the year. Actually, this started five years ago when the student email service was hosted by Google but has taken some time for the full suite of tools to become available. We have been promised GAFE for the […]
Active and informed citizens…are committed to national values of democracy, equity and justice, and participate in Australia’s civic life. Melbourne Declaration The Student Representative Council (SRC) hosted a forum today for the candidates seeking election in the state electorate of Shellharbour where our school is located. The event was packed, attended by all senior […]
It is not a New Year’s resolution but I intend to write one blog post a month about what I’ve been reading. Usually I write a roundup of books enjoyed twice a year but these posts do not tend to say much in the sense of being reviews. They are more lists with a few […]
“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” Today, and I do feel a little sad about it, was our sixth and last ‘Resilience and Optimism’ Staff Development Day Conference at the Nan Tien Temple. It is time for renewal and in 2015 our school will find a new venue and approach to our […]
Dapto High School is moving to BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) for Y7-12 in 2015. In this year of transition we have learnt much from the experience of trialling BYOD in 2014 with Year 9. This post is part of a workshop for deputy principals at our annual conference, earlier in the year, that explored […]
Twice a year at this blog I reflect on books read. While drafting that soon to be published post, I started thinking about how children become avid readers and how significant adults in their lives assist construction of this identity. I suspect that peers play a large part in this process but the ground must […]
“Diane Ravitch is the rarest of scholars—one who reports her findings and conclusions, even when they go against conventional wisdom and even when they counter her earlier, publicly espoused positions.” Howard Gardner ‘So Bill Gates Had This Idea for a History Class’, although inaccurately titled, is quite a good article from The New York Times […]
What percentage of students in Australian schools are explicitly taught digital citizenship skills? There are plenty of government sponsored projects that provide resources but how many kids are truly learning at school how to succeed in an online world? How many teachers have the skills to teach them? I do not know. There’s no data. […]
“An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best.” Michel Houellebecq “I sink down […]