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 […]
“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept” Henri Cartier-Bresson I always enjoy using Lee Filters, especially the Big Stopper on my X100S. Since upgrading to the X100T I have had limited time to experiment but am enjoying my new Little Stopper and have been stacking these two neutral density filters for 16 stops of goodness. The featured image above, […]
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 […]
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Arthur C Clarke’s third law of prediction came to mind while walking through wetlands near my home on the way to my local beach. I had woken very early and packed my camera kit for some photography thinking I’d set up well before the dawn. I started […]
There’s been a good variety of books completed this month including graphic novels, historical fiction, essays, memoirs, biographies, contemporary fiction, revolutionary pamphlets and plenty of history. Christopher Hitchens and Thomas Paine Last month I consumed oodles of Orwell and re-read Hitchens’ evaluation of the author’s importance to contemporary literature and journalism. This has led to re-discovering […]
This book is written in the belief that the nations of Scandinavia and Finland, or Nordic Europe*, do continue to provide important living proof that economically successful, socially fair and environmentally responsible policies can succeed. Northern Lights: The Positive Policy Example of Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Norway by Andrew Scott will brighten our national mood, […]
Back in 2008, Martin Weller’s video, A Twitter Love Song, captured the potential of social media to be the ‘sweet spot’, a kind of comfortable marriage of the personal with the professional. This ‘subjective’ video message of Martin’s really appealed at the time (and still does). This, I think it is fair to warn you, is a […]
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 […]