Aug

21

The Future is NOW

August 21, 2008 | 1 Comment

PLC Sydney’s move to trial the use of the internet and ipods in exams has sparked lots of discussion.
Chris Betcher, who works at PLC, presents the reasoning behind the move in his post, The Truth is Out There. He argues that schools need to prepare students to solve problems, not “know answers”.
“It ought to [...]

Dec

8

Students speak out

December 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment

There has been lots of discussion about realising student participation in the edublogosphere in the past year. Driven be a belief that students “should be participating in our edublogger conversations on an equal footing, as equal partners”, Clay Burrell and others have helped students set up Student 2.0, a blog that is “administered, designed, [...]

Dec

4

Designing the future…

December 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment

A great quote by Barry Vercoe, one of the six founding professors of the MIT MediaLab from Ewan McIntosh

How does innovation occur?
The future is not to predict but to design… Innovation comes from:

a clash of cultures
clash of disciplines
clash of ways of doing things
high tolerance of failure

In the words of Woody Allen: [...]

Nov

27

Is that a light on the hill?

November 27, 2007 | 1 Comment

An election has just been held in Australia and will bring a Labor government into power after 11 years of Liberal (Conservative) Party rule. The first priority of the new government, according to Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd, is an “education revolution”. The key planks of this policy include promises to link every school to a [...]

Nov

4

Re/thinking information

November 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Another instalment from Digital Ethnography. According to the creators: “This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and [...]

Oct

21

Digital enthnography v2

October 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment

From the creators of the Machine is Us/ing Us. There are some interesting ideas in this despite the whiney affluenza overtones.

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Aug

31

Flexibility is the key to success

August 31, 2007 | 3 Comments

Flexible curriculum, top quality teachers, high-level investment - are these the keys to building the best education system in the world?
Christopher D. Sessums has written an interesting post on factors that contribute to educational success, part of which is how schools attract and retain excellent teaching staff. He explores What do all great school systems [...]

Aug

26

Creativity versus Curriculum

August 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Are these two concepts mutually exclusive? While we’d like to think they’re not, the tyranny of content often means that we do not undertake projects that involve “deep”, connected and creative learning because we have “too much stuff to get through.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot as I compare my two history classes [...]

Jul

22

What will be the markers of our success?

July 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Christopher D. Sessums has asked some really insightful questions in his Reflections on the Value of Read Write Technology and the Future of Public Education.
They are:
“What do I want to see happen in our classrooms?
I wonder if other educators are not facile with Read/Write technology, will the Read/Write Web be as useful or meaningful to [...]

Jul

10

Schools of the future???

July 10, 2007 | 2 Comments

Via Graham Attwell’s The Wales Wide Web, is a report from the Independent newspaper, School’s Out Forever. Knowsley Council in Merseyside “is taking the dramatic step of closing all of its eleven existing secondary schools by 2009. As part of a £150m government-backed rebuilding programme, they will reopen as seven state-of-the-art, round-the-clock, learning centres with [...]