“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” “Fight evil, read books.” These two quotes are my favourites for the year. Pithy and profound, they seem to share great truths with some hope that one can start doing something positive right now. When so many issues […]
What is it to be a good digital citizen? How do schools effectively manage their online reputation and assist students to be safe? How does a school balance freedom of speech with the rights of others to not be bullied or have their reputations unfairly impugned? What is the law and how does it relate to the ‘community […]
My last session with EDGD824, my English pre-service teachers at the University of Wollongong, arrives this week and I wanted to say something to inspire them. There’s endless pages of quotes that Google can deliver in service of such oratory and many American or British television shows, novels and films that could provide an uplifting excerpt […]
Reading has always been a solitary pursuit – by definition – in my mind. I never sought membership of any kind of club or group that met to discuss books, other than being an English teacher spending my days in classroom conversation about reading, writing and literature. The idea of attending a ‘festival’ to listen […]
Streaming Music in Australia (at mine) I posted about the new streaming services, spoiling Australian music fans for choice, last month and felt like updating you with some recent thoughts re: the pros and cons of each. I trialled Deezer, Rdio, JB Hi-Fi and Songl. Spotify was, I thought, going to be the clear winner. […]
”Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity…It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.” David Bowie Sonos, with Spotify, Deezer, Rdio, JB Hi-Fi and Songl streaming have made my mp3 collection feel somewhat superseded, if not […]
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore Reading has always been a solitary pursuit – by definition – in my mind. I never sought membership of any kind of club that met to discuss books. The idea of attending a ‘festival’ to listen to an author, or ask them […]
My Year 10 English class had a guest speaker today. Rebecca Fernandez spoke about her journey towards making a living as a game designer. Rebecca’s mother is an ex-student of our school and the boys could relate to the experiences of a local person in achieving her goals. The boys listened politely and some were […]
My 5 and 8 year old daughters have monopolised our iPad since we bought it in 2010. I never really used it that much but my partner, who is not at all geeky, would prise it away from the kids for email, browsing, Plants vs Zombies, ABC iView and reading the ‘newspaper’. Wikipanion is her […]
From a teacher’s perspective, the Quality Teaching Framework is an important professional document supporting learning in NSW schools. At a glance, for readers unfamiliar with the QTF framework, here’s an overview: I’d like to relate a recent and ongoing class conversation, related to the element of ‘problematic knowledge’, raised in dialogue with some experts Year 10 engaged […]
cc licensed ( BY NC ND ) flickr photo shared by billaday The announcement of new education tools at the ‘Apple Special Event’ excites many and leaves others with a range of concerns. Here’s a guide to this Apple education initiative if you do not watch the presentation. iBooks Author is what excites me. I […]
What online and tech tools do you use daily in your personal and professional life? Have they changed in the last two years? What has failed to ‘work’ for you? I am having a little tidy – before the New Year – and was thinking about 2011. This is a brief ‘Christmas’ post (a list […]
The Edublog Awards provides opportunity to grow the community of edubloggers and let others know how professionally and personally important they are to us. It also gives one a chance to update blogrolls. I couldn’t believe that I had left some of my favourite bloggers of my roll. Apologies…and apologies to any friends, colleagues and bloggers […]
The # symbol, called a hashtag, is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet. It was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages. Twitter Help Centre Following the #LondonRiots or #UKRiots hashtag on twitter has made me think again about how to explore the important and relatively new […]
On the road for more than a month now, I have not been paying as much attention to my social media networks as usual and was a little horrified to see that foolishly I had two Google+ accounts. That’s to0 many circles. How did this happen? A colleague needed my (not often used) Gmail account […]
The department supports its employees’ participation in social media online applications such as social networking sites, wikis, blogs, microblogs, video and audio sharing sites and message boards that allow people to easily publish, share and discuss content. The above quote is the opening statement in the new Social Media Policy released by my employer, the NSW […]
Michael Wesch has been such an important educational thinker and innovator for so many of us in recent years. Here is his ‘Rethinking Education’ video recently posted on his YouTube channel which is a must subscribe to space. You can submit entries for @mwesch‘s next video here. This is an remix of the submissions so far:
Do you advocate playing video games in education? We should talk more about our own life experiences as part of this conversation. I have been reflecting on my video game playing past and finding it interesting to try and remember what was played and when. I thought I would share this with you in the hope […]
I believe we are in a Golden Age of civilisation. Not everyone has this way of seeing. I hear many commentators, educators and parents express grave concerns about the impact of technology, the internet, mobile devices and computers on young people and education in society generally. To me, it seems pathological, reminiscent of the comic book scare in the […]
What is a meme? Wikipedia says: The British scientist Richard Dawkins coined the word “meme” in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][4] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.[5] I […]
I keenly await the new Steven Johnson book, Where Good Ideas Come From, released next month. Until then, here’s his most recent TED talk.
Cory Doctorow is an author, essayist, activist and public intellectual I admire greatly. His musings on copyright and creative culture are of particular interest, as is his advocacy for the rights of young people. Educators should be, IMHO, cognisant of his ideas. The fact that Doctorow operates in a traditionally commercial way, as an author who makes the […]
Holiday Fun At the beginning of the school holidays I asked Miss 4 and Miss 6 what we could do together for fun. Quite a list emerged, including – ride the bikes, play ‘Cinderella’, take photos, see Toy Story 3, play soccer in the backyard, tease Mum and go to websites – and ‘Dad, can you fix the Wii’? […]
Johanna Blakley‘s talk is an interesting rumination on the nature of ‘copyright’ in the fashion world.