Nov 07 2008
Scrounging around looking for blogs I could reply to I came across Razza’s post on powerpoint. Having spent many years as a tutor I know the joys and pain of powerpoint….. anyone ever been to a 5 minute presentation that had 50 slides or a presentation for an hour where the presenter just read verbatim from the powerpoint for an hour? If so you’ll know what I mean when I use the phrase death by power point. However it need not be that way, as Razza suggests.
Nov 07 2008
An article by Lederman examining the state of scientific education, possible reasons for declining levels of scientific education and offering solutions caught my eye recently. As many of you are aware (ie those I study with and those who have read more than one of my blogs) I am a cynic when it comes to theoretical articles and cure alls offered by researchers who have yet to step foot in a class and teach, however I was pleasantly surprised when I read this article as it gives valid explanations on the changing aspects of scientific education and reasonably well thought out solutions.
Nov 04 2008
Increasingly sophisticated, yet easy to use, technology allows ever increrasing opportunities for the average Joe or Jane to place their face in the spotlight. This podcast examines what it is an how this affects teaching. Self-promotion
Shrinking Sydney is an example of just how effective such self-promotion can be.
Nov 03 2008
Thats right, you heard me… its not the university teaching the new batch of teachers how to use ICT to teach… and why is that… because they are even more removed from technology than the new load of teachers coming through.
Maree asks the very pertinent question Who is teaching who…. referring to technology at school and students greater knowledge and experience with it than teachers. Sadly it seems that the answer is – not university… and this is not just an Australian problem with the UK and the US facing the same issues. I point you to this post as evidence of what I am talking about. Continue Reading »
Nov 03 2008
Learning how to design learning for a digital generation – thats what this subject is all about right? Well supposedly….. Sadly I have found that I am left out to dry, having to learn my own way forward – learning about integrating ICT into my lessons with only so much as a here is the literature… go read it. Theory is all well and good but solid practical examples of how to introduce digital technology into lessons is needed, not just theoretically what technology could be used for…. Now you are probably thinking… well there he goes getting onto his high horse again… and maybe I am… but I want to encourage everyone in this subject… we are not alone!!!! Continue Reading »
Nov 02 2008
Marc Prensky again shows us he is a digital immigrant
with his fascination (bordering on pathological) for technological gadgets, beaten only by his lack of understanding with regards to how the real world works. In his 2004 article he suggests several uses for phones and blithely ignores the problems that are associated with phones in school…. I am not trying to suggest that phones could not become a useful tool, however, I do suggest that Prensky needs to get his head out of a theoretical gadgetry book and try to see the other side of the coin….
Prensky doesn’t have a skirt… ergo he cannot be filmed up that if he allows mobiles in the classroom.
Prensky doesn’t have to control mobile phone usage in tests.
Prensky doesn’t have to deal with children inciting others to fight so they can video it and put it on youtube.
Prensky doesn’t have to deal with children fullstop…. Learning can be achieved by a mobile phone but in most cases it is a tool that could be used occasionaly to improve connections between areas or allow for reminders or take home work… really though there are already tools which fill these niches well and create less hassles.
Oct 29 2008
After reading a recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a woman who was divorced in an online reality and then went back and killed her virtual ex-husband …. and is now being charged with illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.
It led me to think just how much of an effect the virtual world can have on the real world and whether this is something that should be being encouraged in a school environment. Granted kids are likely to be exposed to it in some form without involvement from school but is it right to increase children’s exposure to such things.
Within virtual worlds people can be or do just about anything within the guidelines of the terms of conditions set out by the creator of the virtual world. In essence this sounds acceptable however the terms are usually extremely broad and very hard to police. Second life, for example, is awash with lewd material not suitable for younger members of society and that is one of the more controlled environments…
Of course people in virtual worlds aren’t all bad as this posting shows, however this is a very rare case as is evidenced by the comments following it.
So my question to you is “Should we as educators be promoting involvement in activities which may increase the risk of children being exposed to inappropriate material?” and “how beneficial to learning does it need to be to outweigh the risks associated with such exposure?”
Oct 22 2008
Well I thought I would get it out there at the start to save people wondering while they read this. So what prompted this statement… I was reading Gee’s article on Learning by Design: good video games as learning machines (it came with a warning even – read at your own risk… big ideas here – although sadly it didn’t even come close to the level of big ideas covered in the matrix).
So anyway being a lover of a good computer game I jumped in to read…overall I thought it was a reasonable read (in fact one of the better I have read over this course), sadly however I came to the end thinking that they had missed some rather important points. Continue Reading »
Oct 07 2008
Just before we begin let me just say that I do not have a fascination with breasts (well anymore than normal)… its just a pure coincidence that two topics that involve appendages of the female variety just happen to appear together.
I would like to tackle the tricky question that Julia proposed in: Does this baby make my boobs look big? No no the baby does not… in fact it is a set of complex hormonal influences and not the actual baby that changes the size of a mother’s breasts…
Ok so thats the first part answered.. now onto the second… Continue Reading »
Oct 02 2008
Stuffing… everyone has done it at some time in their life… The turkey or chicken at christmas chock full of stuffing goodness, the dirty clothes when you have a surprise visit from a guy or girl you wouldn’t mind “stuffing”, the mess in your room when your parents come in to inspect after you were supposed to clean it and you haven’t and finally, my favourite, the attempt to place as much food in your mouth as possible before being kicked out of the kitchen. Of course there are many many many more scenarios (which may or may not be depicted to the left) that you can possibly think of but we won’t.
So I guess it doesn’t come as any real surprise that the people who set the syllabus have done it too. Now don’t get me wrong here I am all for a good syllabus… but no-one likees that stuffed feeling where you have eaten so much that you can hardly move for fear of unstuffing yourself in a fairly undignified (and smelly) manner. The syllabus at the moment is crammed full of information, facts, figures and concepts that need to be taught and understood. Sadly it is too full, or stuffed, there just isn’t time to cram everything in. This is what Jamie McKenzie believed when he wrote “Stuffing technology into the curriculum“. Continue Reading »
