21st Century Educator

In this issue: Student comments about the blog. Please send comments to edtech@brettmoller.com

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So there are many blogging about this one. I guess I have a few things to say and questions to ask of my colleagues. First up I have my podcast where I discussed this issue at some detail. However, I thought I would blog some of my questions and provoke some thoughts from others.

1) How do we encourage teachers who don’t like using technology because their students seem more competent and knowledgeable than them?

I currently have a colleague who was worried about this issue. However, she found the answer without really looking for it. She very quickly learnt that the best thing she could do was embrace the knowledge the students had and use it to her advantage. Very early in each year this colleague has a number of students that she quickly identifies as her “Tech helpers” for the year.

Something that interested me was a session on BIT by BIT by former Governor of Main Angus King. I am not totally sure how successful the Maine laptop program is or was but how was it expected to work with computers alone? Do we not just come back to the PD question again? Hmmm seems to me we are going around in circles…..

In this issue: Update on student blog project, integrating technology, Conferences. Please send comments to edtech@brettmoller.com

Right click to download the podcast

In this issue I update everyone on the launch of the student blog project. Please send comments to edtech@brettmoller.com

Right click to download the podcast

Well here is the 3rd Podcast. In this issue I discuss the Student blog porject and introduce the concept. Make sure you check out the project http://www.brettmoller.com then click on student blog.

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Forgot to mention in the last blog about the Sunday program this morning that tried to have a go at hillsong church. Nice timing just before the conference. We watched it this morning before heading out. It had very little substance and really didn’t “uncover” any sort of misconduct or dodgy doctrine. They carried on about church being too close to politics and the whole money thing.

Same old same old….. Problem with the view that church shouldn’t influence politics is that if they don’t someone else does. So we even have Christian’s influencing politics or something that comes out of secular humanism. The prime minister opens the new church building and suddenly there is up roar because it looks like he agrees with them!! The program tried very hard to paint a picture of a church that was money and power hungry…..

Interesting thing is that I don’t think the interview with Brian Houston worked in attempting to make this sound like something bad. He openly admitted the huge amount of money that goes through the church, and he admitted that the government supports some of their charity work. However, he nailed the point home when he stressed that it was a non for profit organisation that used the money to help the needy.

A big church brings in big $$ and uses it to reach others with a positive message of hope!! Oh no they must be stopped, before more people get their lives back on track!!!!

I think all this story will achieve is some publicity for the church that will spark an interest that may bring people to church. Oh and that may be a problem too…. as we can’t have people spending their time in church instead of on the streets wasting their life away!!

(please not the tone of sarcasm in some of these comments!!!)

Linda and I have arrived down here in Sydney for Hillsong conference. The flight down was late but it worked out ok in the end as we could get into the hotel as soon as we arrived. Today was time to hit the shops. We had to walk about 20mins down to the shopping mall. Linda had a ball looking through every shop in Pitt st!!

We then caught a train out to see a friend from uni. CJ and her husband Nick recently had a baby girl. She is very cute and spent most of our lunch sleeping. We then spent some more time shopping through chatswood mall!!

Linda let me sit here with my laptop while she is adjusting the length on some new jeans. We can’t wait till tomorrow night!! It will be great!!

Hey, we are just finishing off packing for hillsong….. it is 2:15am and we leave in 7 hours. Can’t wait for the conference to start. Praying that it will be a time that we can get challenged and refreshed!! The boys and I are going to try and do some podcasts. Stay tuned and make sure you leave comments so we know someone is listening.

Cheers,

Brett