World-Jumping

Jumping from one work to the next can be tricky if you are an Avatar. This great video by BotGirl explores Evolver, which allows you to move your avatar between worlds. There are plenty of ways to use this to dream up classroom literacy activities using it — even if your bubble is stuck in [...]

To quote, unquote and requote – 21st Century illiteracy?

Alvin Toffler is often quoted as saying “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” Numerous powerpoints, wikis, documents and articles use the quote in order to talk about digital literacy and management. Many cite his book “Future Shock” and [...]

Re:Reinventing Project Based Learning

If you have not yet discovered the excellent Reinventing PBL book by Suzie Boss and Jane Kruass — then I recommend adding it to you Christmas reading list. Learning about project based learning will give your classroom a real kick into the motivation zone. Much of PBL’s theory does not require technology at all as [...]

Tweeps vs Bloggers

I was asked this week if I thought blogging had been replaced in relevance by Twitter. I don’t. Here are few examples of why I think blogs under-pin much of what flicks too and fro in  micro-conversation — especially the disputants that want education to change. At some point, someone somewhere decided that being good [...]

Why do teachers let themselves go?

I wonder, if the distance teachers are willing travel to learn after leaving University diminishes over time. Take technology out the loop [the thing that brings learning ridiculously close] and consider the teaching strategies re-thought, re-worked or added to over time. Do teachers, once they get the job that most suits their lifestyle – close [...]

Banned from Face Book by the school

A colleague spoke to me recently about an issue that they had experienced. Is it a horrid twisted fairy-tale or a valiant attempt to save society … [resisting 50 B movie sci-fi puns] The parent had been called to school about an ‘incident’ using Facebook. The child, a boy aged 16, had filled out his [...]

No Clean Feed 2

The digital-president Rudd has once again got the social movement up in arms over the National Filter announcement today. The shadow minister is not exactly oppositional to the idea. In a statement Smith said the Coalition “supports measures to protect children from inappropriate internet content” and that “appropriate adult supervision and guidance should be front [...]

Integrating 3D into English Stage 4

Integrating virtual worlds and games into Stage 4 English isn’t technically hard — although they syllabus only mentions CD-Roms and Websites due to it’s age. So lets start simply and work through an idea. I’ll add some examples and leave you to explore them later. The point of the post is to clearly illustrate that [...]

Underneath Pearson’s Poptropica

POPTROPICA – the virtual world that is the new black for pre-schoolers and primary age explorers. This isn’t a game review, this is a heads up that Poptropica is the ‘must play’ social game – for now. So quit Farm Town and Cafe World for a moment and lets take an educators look at Poptropica. [...]

How to run your first EdTech PD session and live

There are a few things that you can do to encourage staff to use technology in classrooms – without scaring them or isolating yourself. This is a simple way to engage newcomers with EdTech. Personally I don’t do the ‘heres the massive hyper-world you are not in‘ presentation. So if you are thinking about running [...]