The following documents a quick kludge required for the assessment for a course I teach. It's primarily a document to help me think through the task and document what was done and why....more...
As mentioned previously the simplistic (lazy) introductory forum for #edc3100 didn't achieve it's ill-defined goals. I need to find a new one....more...
The following is a repeat of this post for a different offering of the same course. It's also a quick how to primarily intended for the students in the course. Summary and comparison first, then the how to....more...
The following is just a "diary entry" recording a bit more evidence for the story that our students are neither digital natives nor digitally literate. It may or may not become useful in future research/writing. It's not meant to be insightful, just a record of an experience....more...
The course I'm teaching requires each student to create and user an individual blog. The blog should be created on an external blogging platform of their choice and used to reflect on their learning in whatever way they see fit. There are a couple of constraints around regularity (at least 2/3 posts a week), length (average of 100 words), links to resources (60% with links to online resources), and links to other student blogs (2 of all posts over a 3 week period). All this is meant to be automatically marked....more...
The following describes the process and results of using Gephi to generate some visualisations of the inter-connections between the blogs of students in the course I'm teaching. The process is heavily informed by the work of Tony Hirst....more...
Yesterday I attended a session with three different presentations focused around "student voices and their current use of technologies at USQ". There was some very interesting information presented. However, I have a few reservations with aspects of the research and especially with some of the conclusions that have been drawn. I'm hoping to reflect upon and post more about this when I have some time. But an experience just now reinforced one of my reservations and is worth a short sidetrack....more...
Consider this a plea for suggestions. In particular, consider it a plea for workarounds that I can implement quickly (and painlessly)....more...
Just how much of a cage should I make my course into? How far should I take the constraints? The following sets the scene and asks the questions. Would love to hear alternate views....more...
It's that time of year again - week 1, semester 1 - and after almost three-quarters of a year there are face-to-face students to tutor and lecture. Have to love the pedagogical assumptions built into the fabric of the technology that is a University education (a good example of technology becoming mythic). The following captures a few thoughts from the first lecture/tutorial....more...
According to the Wordpress dashboard for this blog this is the 1000th published post (I have 100 odd drafts that I never finished or thought better of posting). Given I'm about to mark first year in a new job in a new institution in a new region, undergo my annual performance review and commence a new academic year, it would seem time to reflect and think about the future....more...
Late last year Nesta - a UK-based charity - released the report Decoding learning: The proof promise and potential of digital education. Nesta commissioned the London Knowledge Lab and the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham to "analyse how technology has been used in the UK education systems and lessons from around the world. Uniquely, we wanted this to be set within a clear framework for better understanding the impact on learning experiences"....more...
In around two months a couple of hundred pre-service teachers will be wanting/required to start engaging with the course EDC3100, ICTs and Pedagogy. For the last 3 or 4 months I've been reading a bit and generally mulling over what I'll do and how far to go. Back in July I started off with this initial post. It's now (past) time to make some of this explicit, make some design decisions and implement it. This is the start. Littered through the following will be questions and reminders to myself for further consideration....more...
Earlier today I tweeted the following...more...
The following is a summary and some reflection on Hixon et al (2012). I'm particularly interested in this topic due to my belief (based on 20 years experience and observation) that most institutional approaches to change in learning and teaching has only been successful in moving the same 10% of staff. A 10% that didn't need a lot of help in the first place....more...
The following is a summary and touch of reflection on Couros (2010) and is the another step in thinking about the design/implementation of a course I'm working on....more...
Doing a bit of reading of the literature. As preparation for the redevelopment of a 3rd year course helping pre-service teachers figure out how ICTs can be integrated into/transform their learning and teaching....more...
The great sage of our time offers the following definition of dilemma...more...
The reflections on my couple of days at the PLE Conference in Melbourne will have to wait a couple of days. Semester starts on Monday and I have some course preparation to engage with. The following is an attempt to capture some thinking about the re-design of the Weekly Ramble...more...
After a week of increasingly intermittent engagements with Twitter I stumbled back into the Twitterverse this afternoon and one of the first things I see is this post from @marksmithers. It is Mark's response to the call for help from @courosa for his keynote at the Melbourne PLE conference next week. Alec's question is...more...
Came across this post titled "Five Trends to Watch in Education Technology" via Stephen Downes' OLDaily. In particular, I was really drawn to trend #1 - the Curriculum. In particular, because it connects with some ideas that have burbling away for the least week or so sparked by some questions from a colleague....more...
For a variety of reasons I returned to giving a lecture today. Here's a quick reflection and thoughts where I might go next....more...
It's the start of the second week of the course I'm teaching. I'm directly responsible for 60 odd on-campus students and 130 or so online/distance students. That split reminds me a lot of my teaching at CQU in the mid-1990s. The deja vu continues in terms of getting a feel for how the students are going, how are they responding to the course, its model and content? Back at CQU the solution was inspired by course barometer idea from some University folk in Sweeden....more...
Time to tweak the course site again. I attempting to encourage the students to engage with technology, to become digital residents. The assumption is that they will really only be able to design great teaching with ICTs, if the use of ICTs is part of their everyday life. One aspect I'm attempting to encourage is blogging....more...
Am in the process of creating a new blog to be called "Is my digital footprint ready for teaching?". The following describes the why and what and records some initial planning/design....more...
As the semester starts warming up the online students are starting to post their introductions using Popplet (essentially a simplified Prezi, but one which is being a little unreliable today), Prezi or other tools. One of the interesting threads that run through many of these posts has been the amazement at how young children, as young as 1 or 2, quickly become proficient at using information technology. My two young suns are currently getting into pocket edition of Minecraft on their iPads with no advice from me....more...
Almost 20 days ago I started thinking about the design of the Moodle (1.9.x) site (called a StudyDesk at my institution) for my course. As O-Week draws to a close, the following describes the current final product....more...
Another weekend and I'm thinking about EDC3100, and thanks to an IT maintenance day bringing Moodle down I have the time to post here. The following is an attempt to conceptualise and describe what I hope might become the replacement for the lecture/tutorial model that is dominant in this course. It is informed by/borrowed from the work of many I've seen over recent years, especially the Siemens/Downes MOOC movement...more...
Do you know of any "dating services" for online courses?...more...
The following tells the story of how and why I designed the following "Web 2.0" (and yes, I am very reluctant to use that term for a range of reasons but will for a range of other reasons) introduction of myself....more...
This Chronicle-based blog post titled "Four things lecture is good for" is resonating with a lot of people. At least judging by the retweets etc....more...
This is in response to a blog post with the same title. The title attracted me I've just started work within a teacher preparation program and have some concerns about such programs being irrelevant....more...
Almost 16 years ago I gave my first presentation at an academic conference. It was AusWeb'96 and I was talking to a paper titled "Solving some problems of university education: A case study". I started out my presentation with "Lectures suck!"....more...
I've come home early today from my new job within a Faculty of Education at a University. Entirely because the quality of the technology I have at home far exceeds the quality of the technology I have at work. The following suggests that this little anecdote highlights one of the contributing factors as to why the quantity and quality of ICT integration in schools is less than good....more...
Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be responsible for the design of a Moodle course site. This will be the first time in almost 5 years that I've been the academic responsible for a course site, the first time in Moodle and in fact the first time in an "LMS" I didn't design. Add to this my on-going feelings of discomfort about the affordances of Moodle's course structure (scroll of death etc.) and the observation of some truly ugly Moodle course sites and I feel the need to be further informed....more...
It appears that the planets have aligned to provide the opportunity to marry some of my teaching duties with the very interesting Pre-Service Teaching Networking (#pstn) project. The project's about page gives a pretty good description and ther's more detail in a related Google doc. There's also more in the project's outline....more...
The following is a summary/reflection upon "Making better connections: Models of teacher professional development for the integration of information and communication technology into classroom practice". A report funded by the Australian Federal Department of Education written by a range of folk, including a few names I recognise....more...
And so it's onto chapter 2 of the set text for the ICTs and Pedagogy courses I'm going to be teaching....more...
After a couple of weeks off-line, I'm slowly catching up on making public some writing. This post is a follow up to a previous post with some initial thoughts on the ICT and Pedagogy course I'm teaching this term. There were some great comments on that post which I need to think and write about, but later. This post is a collection of some impressions and reactions to the first chapter of the set text for the course....more...
I'm currently engaging in a bit of light reading as an escape from the constraints of regular teaching. The title of this post comes from Terry Pratchet and Feet of Clay (p 206)...more...
Apart from starting the hassle map exercise my last lesson in 10 Mathematics also included my first use of the Active Expression "student learner learner response system". While a bit disorganised, I can see some benefits. But I still feel a bit dirty....more...
A little while ago I blogged about the idea of having the students in the Year 10 mathematics class I'm teaching generate a "hassle map". Essentially a list of the things that annoy them about the class with the aim of doing something about it. This week I implemented the idea. The following describes the week, talks about the responses from the students, and lays out some initial thoughts about what will happen next....more...
Came across the idea of a hassle map via the following tweet from @susangautsch retweeted by @michaelbtw. It's generated two immediate responses...more...
A few weeks ago I posted about some apparent trends in the number of enrolments within the Queensland High School subject Information and Processing Technology (IPT). All things being equal, I'll be qualified to teach that course in Queensland High Schools next year....more...
Just over a month ago I started planning a Unit of Work (UoW) for Year 10 Core Mathematics. i.e. the rationale and design of about 8 or so weeks of lessons for such a class. The following gives a description of the final unit of work....more...
In an earlier post I wondered if how high school classes in Information Technology(IT)/Computer Science(CS) are being taught is turning students off and, if so, is this why enrolment numbers are dropping. In the comments on that post Tony suggests some other reasons for this decline. Including the observation that IT courses in local schools (both Tony and I live in Queensland, Australia) are primarily seen to serve the needs of students who want to be IT professionals. The further suggestion is that since...more...
As part of my study to become a high school teacher (Information Technology and Mathematics) I have to develop a unit of work for a senior class (defined here as being in Grades 10-12). As part of this process I'm meant to...more...
So, yet another assignment as a pre-service teacher. This one is a 2000 word report on a challenge facing Queensland education. The title of this post is the current title for my report. The following contains the "abstract" we were required to post to the course discussion forum and some initial planning for the broader report. If you have any suggestions fire away....more...
I'm in the process of reading up on the Australian Federal Government's Digital Education Revolution. There appear to be some interesting things going on, but there are also a few things that I'm shaking my head at....more...
The following is a first draft of part of an assignment for a University course titled "Learning and Pedagogy in Secondary". A part of the assignment description is...more...
The following is part of an assignment for my study to become a teacher through CQU. It's written as a letter/report/web page, an odd mix of genre....more...
The following describes the rationale behind the design of the first unit of work to be completed in a Year 11 Information and Processing Technology (IPT) course taught using the new senior Queensland IPT syllabus (QSA, 2010). The design of this unit is informed by the outcomes of a profile of potential students in this course. As such the design is informed by connectivism and attempts to embed students within authentic practice as an IPT professional. The contents of this document include the following sections:...more...
The following learner profile aims to provide a generic profile of Year 11 Queensland students enrolling in a senior course in Information and Processing Technology (IPT). While informed by observations of students gained during Embedded Professional Learning (EPL) it does not draw specifically on profiling activities of those students. Instead the profile draws on what is known about these students from the broader literature. The main reason for using a more general learner profile is that any limited profile of a single IPT class generated through activities organised by a student teacher is not likely to be as representative as drawing on an array of literature and supplementing this with classroom observation....more...
The last post was the first step in designing a unit of work for a senior IPT (Information and Processing Technology) course as part of an assignment for a course titled ICTs for Learning Design. The intent is to show an ability to integrate e-learning into learning design in effective ways. The first part of the assignment requires a profile of the learners. The following is my first attempt at such a profile. I'm very interested to hear comments from those folk who are currently teaching IPT. Am I on the right track? What have I missed?...more...
This week is assignment week. One of the assignments I need to complete is for the course ICTs for Learning Design. This final assignment requires us to design a unit of work (a sequence of learning experiences) for a particular subject that makes effective use of eLearning. The following is the first step in this process....more...
This post is a request for pointers to the examples of really innovative/effective/different high school classes in Information Technology (IT/IPT) or Computer Science (CS). Even with just 10 days of prac teaching within a school setting, I can recognise the rationale and constraints that contribute to the use of the apparently typical curriculum. I would, however, like to break that mould and do something different. I'm assuming/hoping that I'm not the first and would like to benefit from the experience and ideas of others....more...
So next week sees me actively engage in a bit of teaching through leading small episodes that form part of my mentor teachers' existing plans. In another week or two that will expand into complete lessons. One of the interesting parts of this activity has been the necessity to fit within the existing plans and approaches used by my mentor teachers. Approaches that I wouldn't necessarily have thought of and which place some constraints on what I can do....more...
The following post brings together two recent events in my life into an attempt at a WCYDWT question for mathematics. It's not a perfect fit for WCWYDT, but close....more...
My first two days of prac teaching last week included three mathematics classes. In two of the classes I heard students ask the teacher, "Sir, when are we going to use this? Why are we studying it?". The other mathematics class was grade 12, obviously they benefited from their longer experience and were more pragmatic when they asked, "Will this be on the test?". Since that time I've been wondering how I might answer this question when it is asked of me....more...
So, onto behaviour management and this week, Challenging Behaviours....more...
Way past time to catch up on this work. So week 6 is looking at "Models for Teaching and Learning Multiliteracies"....more...
After a couple of weeks focused on assessment, not to mention two assignments which I'm far from happy with, it's time to return to some study. First, the ICTs for Learning Design course and this week the focus is on...more...
Via George Siemens I learn about my iPhone tracking where I've been, a nifty app that can visualise that data, some useful resources to implement this sort of visualisation, and some detail about the file format. The obligatory visualisations of my movements - significantly less a world traveler than George - follow (click on an images to see it larger)....more...
Ahh, the life of a student. No sooner is one assignment completed, is another one underway. In this case, one I've essentially ignored/forgotten about until a week out from being due....more...
What follows is a ~1600 word reflective blog post required for assessment purposes. I find myself less than pleased with this assignment. In part because I don't think 1600 words is enough to do justice to the problem. But also because of my own limitations in terms of knowledge of the context and content....more...
The assignment for ICTs for Learning Design that I am meant to be completing has a rubric with four criteria. The fourth criteria is...more...
Update/recommendation: The following may be helpful for some, but it has it's limitations. For example, in terms of coming up with L&T applications for Minecraft I was constrained by my limited knowledge of Minecraft, and even worse, a limited view of L&T. For a broader view I suggest reading about and engaging with Massively Minecraft. You have to be in it to learn it....more...
And so the final group of technologies to play with prior to the assignment. This is an open-ended group and includes: animations and simulations; Google earth; Google Maps; and Google docs. The "historical" recap of what I've done associated with these technologies is part of the assessment - showing that I've "played" with the technologies....more...
Late last week I was thinking about how I could develop something approaching a WCYDWT lesson for mathematics. It is something I am going to have to do very soon now. As it happens, in looking for the WCYDWT link, I came across this Diigo group that I am going to have to return to....more...
Following on from the last post this one reports a bit more on activities associated with the Group 3 technologies, tools that "present learning or information". The point is mostly to document that I've done this stuff (for assessment purposes) and also to implement the necessary analysis of one of the tools....more...
So, in a few weeks time I'll be teaching mathematics to high school kids. Almost certainly grades 8 & 9 (find out next week). I've been doing a bit of reading and have joined various online groups. Last week I purchased a couple of textbooks used in local schools to refresh my knowledge and see what's being covered....more...
So, these are tools to "present learning or information". The chosen representatives are Powerpoint, Prezi and Glogster. Am thinking I'm might try a quick search for some alternatives, time permitting....more...
I'm in the midst of a course in which the second assignment is asking us to analyse four groups of e-learning technologies and how they apply to our future learning and teaching activities. Today I've finished some readings and some activities around the group 2 technologies: online images, audio and video....more...
Following on from the last post, this one reports on the experimentation with a collection of technologies that fall under the category of Group 2. We're meant to play with these technologies and then select one to analyse in a little more detail. This builds on the analysis of group 1 technologies....more...
Another week, another group of technologies for the ICTs for learning design course. Group 2 is focused on images, video and audio tools. This post focuses on the readings, the next on the activities....more...
As part of assignment 2 for ICTs for Learning Design we're meant to examine/play with examples of four different groups of technologies. Choose one each week to analyse in a little more detail and use that as the basis for the assignment. This post is my reflection on group 1. A group that contains blogs, wikis and websites....more...
Another task related to the ICTs for Learning Design assignment is in examining podcasts. Rather than access existing podcasts, I'm going to reuse an idea first generated for a "Web 2.0 course site" and which I've reused a couple of times in MOOCs. The use of social-bookmarking and a feed aggregator to enable the creation of a collaborative podcast....more...
The ICTs for Learning Design course I'm taking has at least four weeks structured around looking at 4 different groups of technologies where each group is made up of multiple examples. For example, the first group is "Online spaces" and includes blogs, wikis and "websites" (e.g. Weebly). We are meant to explore and experiment with these technologies and then select one to analyse. The analysis is intended to...more...
The ICTs for Learning Design course requires each student to create a blog. The blog is then a key part of the assessment, it's actually how we're meant to submit assignments. The public nature of the blogs has caused some concern, but we are now being encouraged to read and comment on our peer's blogs....more...
And now onto weeks 5/6 for the PCK course I'm studying. Within two/three weeks we'll be heading out into schools, so the content for this week is starting to become fairly central. i.e. what is the curriculum and how are you meant to plan teaching/learning around that curriculum....more...
So, only two weeks to catch up on this course....more...
And now begins a couple of weeks catch up, and hopefully getting up. The following is reflection on weeks 3, 4, 5, and 6 of the course on Supportive Learning Environments I'm studying....more...
Week 4 of the literacy and numeracy course....more...
So, after a delay due to an assignment in another course and organising a new car, it's time to catch up on Week 3 of this course. Just as week 4 is starting and the first assignment is due. A few late nights coming up....more...
This is version 2 of an attempt at the first assignment for the ICTs for Learning Design course....more...
The following is a first draft of Assignment 1 for the ICTs for Learning Design course I'm taking. Am wondering how much it will change by Friday (submission date). If only to reduce it by about 1500 words to meet the maximum word count....more...
Looks like I'm going to be away in coming weeks and the first assignment is due soon, so time to get a little ahead. So the following documents/reflects week 3 of work for the ICTs for Learning Design course....more...
And lucky last. This is the course I haven't gotten into as much yet, hopefully that can start to change. And today's topic is "A Workplace Focus"....more...
Two courses down, two to go. The following summarises study and thoughts for week 2 of the Supportive Learning Environments course....more...
Okay, so now it's onto the second course for the week. The topic for this week is "Learners and Learning". Looks like we're learning about the brain, how it works and the Dimensions of Learning (That this link for DoL is on the institution's website, but with a strange title is interesting. Sure there are some stories behind it)....more...
Another task for the ICTs for Learning Design course. This one is described as...more...
During week two for the ICTs for Learning Design course we are required to post a reflective blog post on the "Mobile phones wiki" exercise. This is mine....more...
Work for week 2. The following is a diary come min-reflection for the work I'm doing for the 2nd week of the ICTs for Learning Design course....more...
This is the second of two reflective blog posts associated with the ICTs for Learning Design course for week 1. Each of these will follow much the same format as the first....more...
The following is a reflection on one activity required during the first week of the ICTs for Learning Design course I'm taking. Over the next few weeks there will be a number of these reflective posts and then, eventually, a post that synthesises these posts into one reflection....more...
It's the start of week 2 of my studies in a post-graduate teacher education program. Time for a bit of reflection and planning....more...
A tweet from @rgesthuizen pointed me to this article which argues that only weak students are ending up as teachers because education programs lack intellect. This is of interest to me for two reasons. First, I'm currently enrolled in an education program and I'm not sure my experiences match 100% what is claimed in the article (perhaps an interesting US/Australian difference). Second, because the fatal indicator of a lack of intellect within education programs seems to be in direct opposition to the positions I've seen in my first week of study....more...
And another weekly reflection of tasks and learning associated with a course. This one is for the Literacy and Numeracy course....more...
So the practice is established, I am aiming to write a single blog post per week, per course as part of my studies to become a teacher. This post if for week 1 of the supportive learning environments course....more...
The Australian government has launched version 2 of its MySchool website. The sites is meant to hold a profile of all Australian schools and enable people to perform comparisons. There has been some significant criticism of the data included in the profiles and find the site to be technically quite flawed (e.g. its been down and when you do get access the method you use to examine and compare data is poor). There has also been the first round of media stories using the availability of the data to draw conclusions (e.g. Elite schools don't excel)....more...
To some extent this post is a cop out. Rather than take the time to looking into what, is for me, an important and interesting question I am going to post this for two reasons. First, to remind myself to follow up later. But mostly and second, to see if someone within my PLN (why do I find the use of that term somewhat troubling?) can offer some suggestions....more...
This is the fourth of these weekly summaries/reflections - perhaps learning log is a better description - but only 1 is complete so far. Hopefully this will be #2. The course is titled Pedagogical Content Knowledge and appears to aim to use Schulman's ideas of PCK to frame the necessary learning about both pedagogy and the content for the pre-service teachers in this course....more...
The following documents some reflection on output of a learning task associated with a course on ICTs for Learning Design I'm currently taking....more...
So, it's the end of O-Week and a four day residential school for Graduate Diploma of Learning and Teaching Students - a post-graduate, pre-service, teaching qualification. About 100 students got a lot thrown at us for four days, now it's time to get into some work. The following is an attempt to get some idea of and reflect upon the work I need to do with the "e-learning" course. Others will probably follow....more...
So, post #3 for week 1 of the ICTs for Learning Design, this time on connectivism. There are two parts to the question, the second is somewhat easier and asks fo examples of how connectivism could be used in a classroom/learning context. The first is somewhat more difficult....more...
Okay, so blog post #2 arising from week 1 of an ICTs for Learning Design course I'm doing. This post is intended to address the question of 21st century learners. In part this connects back to a sentence from the start of this weeks study guide with which I had problems. That sentence was...more...
The following post if for the course EDED20491 and is in response to the following activity...more...
This week brings the first formal tasks of my new phase as a teacher in training. We, the students enrolled in the Graduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching, are required to attend four days of a residential school. These four days coincide with Orientiation Week and we'll be attending bits of standard O-Week, but mostly focusing on the res school....more...
This time next year I should probably be teaching high school IT and maths. Because of this I've been thinking a lot about what type of teacher/educator/facilitator I'd like to be. What will be my ethos? I'm sure I'll be asked that in coming weeks as I study....more...
Apparently, it is too complex to create a personalised class timetable for students at the institution I'm attending. I have previously described what I (as a student) have to currently do to create my class timetable as well as explaining that I helped implement a personalised class timetable system at the same institution about 10 years ago....more...
In the next couple of weeks I re-commence my face-to-face university education. This time in a Graduate Diploma in Learning and Teaching in order to become a high school teacher. As it's less than two weeks from the start of term, the materials for the courses are now becoming ready. The following is an ad hoc collection of thoughts and experiences as I try to get an overview of the material and the term ahead....more...
Spent yesterday playing cricket in the local competition. A first step in returning to a "normal" life. As it happens one of the guys I was playing with - and have known for a long time - is also a Deputy Principal at one of the local primary schools. He asked if I was still working at the Uni and I explained no, I was heading into high school teaching. From there the discussion turned to teaching and its issues and benefits. Before too long I asked about NAPLAN testing and its impact. "It's all we're teaching at the moment", was the response, essentially much the same as I I mentioned in a previous post....more...
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...
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...
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...
If you read, listen or watch to a certain sub-section of the media around schools and the education system more broadly it's not hard to come to the conclusion that schools are broken and need to be changed. A couple of recent posts from the feeds I track have got me thinking. George Siemens recently described his belief that it is so broken that it needs to be changed from the outside, probably by entrepreneurs. George Couros, speaking from within the systems, has generated some discussion with a post reflecting on whether or not and why people don't like change. He summarises some of the comments in this post....more...
In the first few years of teaching information technology at university I met a number of mature age students who were returning to study to get degrees. These were amongst the most enjoyable students to teach, not to mention simply being the best students. One of those students struggled with aspects of the technology, but stuck at it and did well. So well, she ended up completing her PhD years and years before I even looked like completing mine. She even ended up being the head of the school teaching IT....more...
This is a simple holding place for some ideas and quotes from George Siemens' recent Connectivism: Changing times talk....more...
As described earlier the next couple of years probably has me becoming a high school teacher. A transition I am planning to blog about, perhaps eventually to do some research about. This comment by Scott Aldred suggests that this might be an interesting experience. Scott's point is that various constraints and factors arising from the nature of public education and its organisation within Australia and Queensland are such that reflective blogging is not as straight forward as you might hope. Given that I'm generally somewhat cynical/critical, this might become problematic....more...
As mentioned last week, I'm slowly commencing the process of becoming a high school teacher in information technology and mathematics. As part of that process I'm trying to get back into maths - its almost 25 years since I did my undergrad math courses - and build up a network of folk and ideas....more...
As recently noted, I'm about to return to university study. Have decided that I'm going to keep a journal of the entire experience. Perhaps with some intent later on to use this as data for research around the student experience. This may be of some interest as I will be studying at the institution I worked for as an academic for 20 years....more...
I am unsure whether or not I believe in specific turning points. Perhaps life is a bit more complex. The metaphor of life as a road with specific forks which mark the turning points, seems a bit simplistic. But today does feel like a turning point due to two events:...more...
Most university teaching is crap. Too general, too sweeping? Maybe, but based on my experience I'm fairly comfortable with that statement. The vast majority of what passes for teaching at Universities has a number of really significant flaws. It's based more on what the teaching academic is familiar with (generally based on the discipline experience) than on any idea of what might be effective....more...
Back in 1998/1999 I supervised a couple of project students (who have gone onto bigger and brighter things) in the development of some multimedia resources to support a course in operating systems. The most recent version of the course is available here....more...