21st Century Educator

Greetings all…. Thought I would post a quick update as well as ask for some assitance from you all….

I am looking at a new project for later this year (nothing official yet) where I will be using a lot of Apple technology and their pro apps. It is a school setting (K-12) and is something that is starting to look promising. First task is to think through some creative learning spaces… Does anyone have photographs of some great creative learning spaces that they can share? Eiether pasting URL’s in the comments or emailing them to me brettmoller@mac.com

This is to be a open creative learning space for students (possibily with laptops). Even if you have ideas that you want to add…. Everthing would be appreciated… I am going to add everything I get to the blog here for folk to comment on. Will write more about the project as I learn more about it myself!!

This is a really simple site that helps you make a cool widget for your blog or myspace. Fill in your usernames to many popular web 2.0 websites, and it auto-generates a widget that you can paste right into your blog. Code is public domain-ed, and you can even host the images yourself easily so you can store everything on your own server. I am going to work on my tonight… Stay tuned to see an example.

Brett Moller
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Get Your Own Widget

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Japan’s public broadcaster NHK reported late last week that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry plans to introduce the open-source operating system Linux for use within classrooms across the country in the near future.

read more | digg story

There has been a great deal of discussion over here in Australia about educational reform.  I thought these thoughts maybe of interest to local and international readers.  Given that we are heading into an election year this year we have the federal politicians presenting their education policies….  For those that don’t know we have a separate education system for each state here in OZ.  That basically means there are 7 different curriculum boards etc…  This has always been an issue in a nation that has a fairly transient population (everyone is moving to my town - Gold Coast). 

The first issue that I would like to share some thoughts on is the argument of having 1 national curriculum.  In this day and age there is a need to have a nation wide curriculum that is designed and created by a national representation of educators.  While I am a fan of having a national curriculum I certainly can’t see our politicians getting it right.  In fact it bugs me that decisions on education and what/how students will be learning are made by politicians who have little to no experience in the field.  If I hear or read another article quoting a politician saying that “In my day we did….. and it worked well.”  That just rings alarm bells with me.  Sure maybe there are particular things from the past that we should look at in education reform, however, students today and the learning environment (just to name a few) are completely different.  You are not going to make an impact by changing the school system to something that resembles a system of the 1950’s.  The chart below tells us so much on what effect school is having on our students.  I grabbed this off the US Apple Education site….  I don’t think students here in Australia would be too different to this….

Better still, why don’t these national political committees that are setup actually ask students what they want and look at how the students are best learning.  However, I guess that wouldn’t be popular because the students can’t vote!!  How about addressing the problems of the increased number of young enthusiastic teachers (the ones that connect with students) who are leaving the profession in droves.  Perhaps that may answer a few questions around educational reform? 

Some weeks ago I was angered to read an article in our paper that suggested that we needed to bring back streaming of classes based on academic performance.  Our state education minister believed this was a great idea and was going to extend the bright minds of our state and help the students who are struggling.  What annoyed me more than the fact that the research done in this area actually proves this is a failed method of teaching, was that the only other opinion sorted by the paper was that of the chairman of the Parents and Citizens group!!  Oh my we are going to let parents and politicians tell us how to run schools.  Imagine for a moment what that would look like?!!?!?!? 

When I hear the thoughts of national standarised testing coming into this country I also cringe.  All we have to do is look over to our friends in the US and realise that these systems only create students who become good (or not so good) at recalling facts.  Once again, an idea from our politicians.  When will our decision makers realise that a complex system such as the educational process will not fit neatly into a little box.  The workers of the future need to have skills that are much more demanding than being able to recall facts. 

I am going to expand on this further in the near future….  Thoughts????

On another note…  Still looking for a new job….  On the bright side, I have more time for study and my blog!! 

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