Archive for 'technology'

Is yellow square or round?

“All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask – half our great theological and metaphysical problems – are like that.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed In my role, people often ask me to do things for them that seem really […]

Just in time – notes from this morning’s #TTSed breakfast

This morning I shared breakfast with some teachers. We shared our experiences with using Google Docs in the classroom, Teacher Dashboard and BYOD. I was able to share a few ideas and I told them that I’d email them some notes. I changed my mind: I’ve decided to blog the ideas. BYOD: – check that […]

Guest Post: SAMR and me

SAMR was such a new concept to me I decided to ignore it. I’ve been out of the classroom for a while. I didn’t understand it and it seemed too removed from what I was doing in the classroom. But I found myself wanting to get the students to use their devices to their full potential. I […]

Guest Post: Back in the day

So back in 1996 I was a bright eyed and bushy tailed teacher grad. Newly married, my new teaching career was carefully planned out before me. A couple years to become registered. Complete my degree then after that have some kids. Like all perfect plans they didn’t eventuate. God brings imperfections and surprises. Looking back […]

The Classroom as a Dinner Party

Recently I’ve begun to see everything within a food metaphor – this all started with my Learning Is A Banquet post. Can we go a  little deeper? What if teacher were the hosts of a pot luck dinner party and the students were the guests? If guests show up with nothing to contribute, they’re still welcome. […]

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The teaching profession needs to undergo fundamental change

Are computers programming our children or are we teaching our children how to program computers? I bought Miss11 an iPad for Christmas. She takes it to school and uses it for learning. Maths Games, Spelling Games and research are most of what she does in year 6. This is surprisingly good. You couldn’t motivate her […]

Investing in Educational Success – what it might mean for parents, unions and laptops

The General Election in September will be all about education. The National Party has been on the front foot this year – and this is a little unusual. One of their key policies is IES – Investing in Educational Success. In a nutshell, $358m over three years invested into teacher salaries. Clusters of about 10 […]

Can girls fix computers?

HP have a great onsite warranty scheme. If your computer breaks, they a technician to fix on onsite. It’s a great service. A few times now I’ve had a young lady from India fix machines from me. She breaks a bunch of stereotypes. She’s a very competent woman who fixes computers. She came today while […]

Kodu game lab “see how they run!”

I’ve been looking at Kodu Game lab with my Year 8 Technology Classes. Kodu is an app where students create their own games. There’s some great programming and creativity going on, but the main thing that excites me is how little instruction I need to give. Every student is really just working it out by […]