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In another 2 or 3 weeks I begin my formal education as a high school teacher. In preparation for doing that I've joined various online groups and started listening to K-12 education related podcasts. A common refrain in the podcasts has been the problems associated with teaching to the test. Both US and Australian education commentators have been pointing out that a major consequence of broad-scale, standardised testing - such as the National Assessment Program: Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests in Australia - is teaching to the test. i.e. the education of students suffers because anything that doesn't contribute to the attainment of "good" test scores is ignored and other potentially harmful practices are adopted. For example, This article from the Australian context draws heavily on a Diane Ravitch article in the Wall Street Journal....more...
Apart from the many todos, the last post covering bim2 development left off at the task of registering a new student feed. Summarising/recording the development of bim2 to complete that task is the purpose of this post....more...
After more years than I care to count, almost as many structures, and many, many more plans and timetables, the thesis is just about done. I have just finished stuffing around with Word and have produced a single PDF that will almost certainly be the version that is submitted....more...
The next step in my journey as a full-time Uni student happened today when I saw a notice announcing the draft class timetable. As a result I offer some commentary on the problems of "service" provision as the metaphor for many modern universities/organisations....more...
The following is a summary and some initial reflections on the paper...more...
So the Australian Learning and Teaching Council has got the chop. There are a lot of folk upset about this and I can understand why. A lot of people invested a lot of time and energy into ALTC activities, some/many of which had good outcomes....more...
I'm currently reading a draft of my wife's PhD thesis. The thesis uses metaphor to examine the concepts that underpin research within the Information Systems discipline. It finds that research within the discipline appears to have a very heavy emphasis on techno-rational type conceptions of organisations, individuals and artifacts. There are various connections between this work and that of learning analytics and some of the assumptions behind the semantic web. This is an initial attempt to make some of these connections. Given limited time (I have to get back to commenting on the thesis), this has become more a place-holder of thoughts and ideas I need to explore more fully....more...
I find myself in an interesting transitionary period in learning. I'm in the final stages of my part-time PhD study, just waiting for the copy editor to check the last two chapters and then its submission time. I'm participating - participation that has been negatively impacted recently by the desire to get the thesis finalised - in a MOOC, LAK11 and looking at returning to full-time study as a high school teacher in training. It is from within this context that the following arises....more...
As part of the LAK11 course Howard Johnson has commented on an earlier post of mine. This post is a place holder for a really nice quote from Howard's post, an example from recent media reports, and perhaps a bit of a reflection on responses to analytics....more...
Have been listening to a Dave Snowden podcast of a "101 organic KM course". Amongst many familiar themes is the mention of the pitfalls of too much transparency hurting innovation....more...
I'm currently participating in the Learning and Knowledge Analytics MOOC being run by George Siemens and others. This post outlines the process I used to create a podcast of the presentations (click on that link if you want to subscribe to the podcast) being given as part of the course....more...
One of the activities for the first week of the lak11 MOOC is to get started with using Hunch and reflect on it as a model for learning....more...
The following floats/records some initial ideas for connection two of my current projects, BIM and lak11. The ideas arise out of some discussion with my better half who is currently using BIM in one of the courses she is teaching....more...
The following is the summary of my first reading for the LAK11 MOOC and follows on from my initial thoughts....more...
So, the year of study begins. First up is an attempt to engage in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Learning and Knowledge Analytics. This first post aims to contain some reflection on the course syllabus and what I hope to get out of the course....more...
What follows is an early attempt at the acknowledgements section of the thesis. My better half, also completing here PhD, queried why this section would be needed? I will be including because there are some people that need to be acknowledged for their contributions....more...
I've just finished the Douglas Rushkoff book Program or be Programmed: Ten commands for a digital age. As the title suggests the author provides ten "commands" for living well with digital technologies. This post arises from the titular and last command examined in the book, Program or be programmed....more...