“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 […]
“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. […]
“The Red Room Company works in partnership with schools, teachers and poets to put the playfulness back into poetry. One school which has particularly embraced creativity through these projects is Dapto High School.” LIFE MATTERS I had a fun start to the last week of term today being interviewed on Radio National by Natasha Mitchell about our partnership with […]
“I’ll close my eyes and admire the quality of the silence I’ll write rhymes in my mind honestly and define them Solidly redefine and memorise them Until like a diamond when I come out I’ll be better than when I arrived in” […]
The Wollongong Living Books program brings to the community a collection of human ‘books’ that represent a diverse range of backgrounds and life experiences. Our students have enjoyed listening to Living Books several times at school. There truly is a diverse range of ‘books’ on offer and wandering from group to group, it is evident how interested our students […]
It always concerned me that Amazon had such a monopoly on ebooks. However, my customer satisfaction since purchasing my first kindle in 2009, compared with the obvious inferiority of other e-readers, has been high. The price, ease and massive catalogue of ebooks available did not make it seems so bad to have all my eggs in one basket. I […]
Our exchange to Seowon High School, our sister school in The Republic of Korea, has been an absolutely superb, exciting and positive experience for the students, staff and parents who made the journey during the school holidays. For the last five years our school’s Wider World View @DHS program has encouraged students and staff to […]
A comment – as I negotiated customs at Sydney Airport with a large party of students on their way to visit our sister school in Korea – keeps swirling round in my mind. The official scanning bags engaged me in small-talk asking where we were headed. When I explained our excursion was to Korea to […]
Does your school hold authentically democratic elections? The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is conducting our school elections for the first time in 2014 as our ‘Nurturing Democracy’ program continues into its third year. Students from Year 7-11 will experience the same voting protocols that their parents recently followed at the 2013 federal election. Students will […]
The School Library Association of NSW invited me to speak about advocacy at their recent conference at the State Library of NSW. I was asked to talk about a range of topics including: the transition our school library is currently undergoing with the assistance of Kevin Hennah; the partnership with our local municipal library; the need for teacher-librarians […]
“The teacher’s job is not to transmit knowledge, nor to facilitate learning. It is to engineer effective learning environments for the students. The key features of effective learning environments are that they create student engagement and allow teachers, learners, and their peers to ensure that the learning is proceeding in the intended direction. The only […]
What ought one to do? Socrates I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it. Albert Einstein A quiet conscience makes one strong! Anne Frank Do you believe Australia has great need of […]
The science of teaching is knowing a number of different methodologies. The art is knowing when to use which. Source: Taming The Beast Our school has had a government funded 1:1 laptop program since 2009 that is ending. We have learnt […]
“We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don’t need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime.” Seth Godin “If you can’t dance a step, you can’t teach it, and if […]
“More than anything else, we want to take the politics out of this issue.” […]
Two years ago I posted about the tech tools I use daily. Many I continue to find essential, others have fallen by the wayside. What follows is a brief update to close 2013. Best wishes for the New Year! Reading, writing, saving & sharing WordPress: my blog records some of my professional thinking and life. Often I share […]
The world is but a canvas to our imaginations. Henry David Thoreau Today we enjoyed the fifth annual conference held at Nan Tien Temple for our professional development on the last day of the school year. The focus this year, although still optimism and resilience, is more about nurturing creativity and the keynote/workshops reflected this theme. […]
Our school has moved to implement a BYOD (Bring your Own Device) policy for 2014. We have spent the last 6 months exploring what is best for our community and practically possible for students, as well as their teachers. There are a variety of opinions, challenges and POVs but a specific model has been chosen. […]
Educational leaders need to do better in ensuring a more cohesive educational experience for students in our schools. We must ameliorate the current, balkanised, approach to how curriculum is delivered in high schools with new, cleverly designed, models of learning. That’s why I’ve been at the Big History conference at Macquarie University for the last […]
While school traditionally separates art and science, theory, and practice, such divisions are artificial. The real world just doesn’t work that way. Architects are artists. Craftsmen deal in aesthetics, tradition and mathematical precision. Video game designers rely on computer science…The maker community brings children, hobbyists and professionals together in a glorious celebration of personal expression […]
The Red Room Company created a quality learning experience for our students this month with the first two of an ongoing series of workshops. The ‘quality’ and ‘experience’ really does need to be emphasised as the pedagogy employed by our poets – Candy, Lorin and Tamryn – was superbly physical, reflective and high energy, engaging […]
To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. William Blake Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity is an extraordinarily important course developed by Professor David Christian which is […]