Posted in education-news, tools and gadgets on Jun 21st, 2007 3 Comments »
Report from the AGE today that the NSW State Government will install 200 high-tech digital whiteboards in NSW public schools, thus ‘transform[ing] the way education is delivered’, according to the report.
At least the accompanying photograph shows students working with the technology rather than the usual visual of a teacher flipping around maths objects to the [...]
Posted in politics, teacher-bashing on Jun 20th, 2007 No Comments »
Now there’s a thought that might get some traction. As politicians help themselves to another 6.7% pay increase while teachers pays go backwards in real terms, AND it’s teachers who are in the spotlight for their performance! perhaps we should look at politicians pay in terms of performance?
And in the areas of the truth about [...]
Posted in education-news, politics, teacher-bashing, teaching on Jun 19th, 2007 No Comments »
I think this letter to the AGE today pretty well sums up my view on this one too. I’d just come out of a Year 11 English class discussing the analysis of language of the media and saying that whenever someone says something like ‘Pretty much everyone agrees..’ you should sit up and be suspicious! [...]
Posted in education-news, politics, teaching on Jun 15th, 2007 No Comments »
Today’s article on performance based based pay by AGE education editor Farah Tomazin makes pretty good sense, despite a pretty broad basic assumption that performance based pay is, in fact, a good thing in itself. That’s debatable in the educational context I’d say. I did like this bit from the article:
There is no doubt about [...]
Posted in tools and gadgets, wikis on Jun 12th, 2007 1 Comment »
Earlier this year I blogged about a concept mapping software called Rationale, which has some nice features, particularly in the area of planning essays and analysing arguments. Not quite the free-form approach of Inspiration, and not the crazy online lower-caese way of bubbl.us I was talking about earlier this week, but some good specific features [...]
Posted in education-news, politics, teaching, teaching strategies on Jun 12th, 2007 2 Comments »
The ABC reports today that the Federal Government plans to push ahead with a trial of performance pay for teachers despite a lack of evidence that it will actually work (in improving learning) and with a woeful lack of understanding of the complexities involved. My fear is that the Federal Opposition will play tweedle-dum and [...]
