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 […]
Reviewing the books I read or re-read in 2015, I decided to choose the thirteen I had derived the most pleasure as a reader. In other words, I reflected on how much satisfaction was felt sitting with the book – and why. If you have the patience, the following slideshow will countdown to the book […]
“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 […]
This month I have made a conscious effort to finish a number of half-read books and finally investigate some that have been on my “to read” lists for years. Fiction Shaun Tan is another Western Australian who produces highly original, inspired words and images. Several of his books are truly wonderful. I have spent […]
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 […]
I haven’t analysed how much money I spend proportionally on hardcover, paperback, audio or ebooks each year but know it is not as predicted several years back. The truth is, I spend almost as much money on traditionally bound books as the other two combined rather than my expenditure slowing to a trickle, as expected. […]
But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting or repugnant. Only literature can give you access to a spirit from beyond the grave – a more direct, […]
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 […]