Posted in conferences, e-learning on Aug 31st, 2008 No Comments »
Bernajean Porter gave the opening keynote on ‘Raising a Generation for Greatness’. She spoke about a three to four month window of opportunity for change to take place when an opportunity comes along, before the mould on the jelly sets, which followed up nicely from Bruce Dixon’s opening, which talked about the once in a [...]
Posted in conferences on Aug 30th, 2008 No Comments »
Just arrived in Lorne this afternoon for the Expanding Learning Horizons 2008 Conference, which I’m looking forward to. I haven’t been for a few years so I’m looking forward to connecting up with old friends, making new connections, learning a lot and presenting with a colleague on online safety and ethics.
I took the ferry across [...]
Posted in politics, teacher-bashing on Aug 28th, 2008 2 Comments »
It didn’t work in the USA, it didn’t work in the UK, but let’s try it anyway. The Rudd government’s plan to ‘name and shame’ under-performing schools, principals and teachers is simplistic, populist stuff. Stuff that wont improve student learning.
The Australian reports:
KEVIN Rudd will demand states take tough action against failing schools, sacking principals and [...]
Posted in parents and schools, politics on Aug 27th, 2008 No Comments »
While we hold these truths to be self evident: that school attendance is good; the latest government think-tank idea, withdrawing welfare payments from families who don’t make their kids attend school doesn’t hold up.
Attending doesn’t mean there’s any learning going on
Linking school to hunger isn’t good
What will schools and teachers do with students who have [...]
Posted in e-learning on Aug 19th, 2008 No Comments »
I liked this cool looking graph from Techcrunch today, not just for its look at technology (I agree that tablet pcs are probably about to get some real impetus in the next year or so) but also because of its illustration of that cycle of innovation, expectation, hope, disappointment, small movements forward.
How might we apply [...]
Posted in professional learning on Aug 18th, 2008 2 Comments »
Went along to a Australian Government Quality Teacher Program (AGQTP) network meeting last week and one of the documents we looked at was ‘The 9 wants of professional learning communities for sustained “long haul” culture rather than short term buzz’ by Ron Ritchart, who we’ve been working with over the last couple of years.
I’d seen [...]
