December 17, 2009 by darcymoore
Senator Conroy’s recent announcement about the censorship of the internet in Australia has disturbed and perturbed Australians who reflect intelligently on the nature of our civil society and the freedoms we enjoy.
The benignly titled press release, ‘Measures to improve safety of the internet for families’ has been released in the week before christmas in an attempt to escape analysis from a distracted public and journalists.
I would encourage you to read this post by @trib and applaud Penny Sharpe’s stand. Stilgherrian has been writing passionately about this issue in Crikey and at his blog all year.
Please find the time to understand this censorship and express your disgust! Consider emailing Senator Conroy about this fundamentally important issue of internet censorship in Australia via the GetUp site.
Many people have stopped following Kevin Rudd on twitter in protest too.
The #nocleanfeed hashtag on twitter and site will help keep you up to date and informed, as well as expressing our protests at this government folly.
Posted in Digital life, Government | Tagged #nocleanfeed, censorship, internet | 2 Comments »
December 15, 2009 by darcymoore
“As students realise that the tools for living are the same for learning, they will naturally expand the range of things they can do.”
Read Download Genesis
Posted in Web 2.0, eLearning | Tagged seth_godin | Leave a Comment »
December 10, 2009 by darcymoore
Opportunities for professional growth and renewal are plentiful, if you work as an educator but rarely does one have the kind of opening to a new world that has presented itself recently.
Carsten Søndergaard and I are exchanging our jobs for a term.
Carsten is a Pædagogisk Inspektor at Viborg Katedralskole, establish in 1060, in, of course, Viborg. This is a leadership exchange and Carsten will fulfil my role as a deputy principal and vice-versa.
My family is keen and Lucy, particularly, is looking forward to school in Denmark and learning another language.
I am a little concerned about struggling in my professional role due to my monolingual status. My school is getting a great deal though with Carsten being a fluent English speaker. I will start learning Danish these holidays. Anyone suggest a quality audio resource?
I am particularly interested in what the Danes are doing with online examinations and hope to make some good contacts and learn much from their experience.
Anyone already completed a teaching exchange in Denmark?
Also, there must be opportunities for some students in your schools to do some virtual exchanges with the contacts I make in the Danish education system. Ideas?
What else can my PLN come up with that could be exciting and beneficial to students and colleagues?
July 2011 is sooo far away but there’s plenty of time to prepare and learn and savour!
You may wish to follow Carsten on twitter!
Posted in Pedagogy, Professional development, education | Tagged Denmark, exchange, Viborg | 5 Comments »
December 3, 2009 by darcymoore
Posted in Web 2.0, education | Tagged PLN | Leave a Comment »
November 30, 2009 by darcymoore
The Edublog Awards are now in their 6th year. Bloggers provide me with so much inspiration and so many new ideas that reflecting on the year for these awards is very pleasant indeed. It is also very difficult to choose just one blogger or tweep (apologies to colleagues who have missed out from me this year and I did agonise over this).
My nominations are as follows:
- Best individual blog – Chris Betcher because he continues to lead and generously share with all
- Best individual tweeter – @steve_collis as I like his style
- Best new blog (to me) – Simon Job for his excellent Maths teacher blogging
- Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based – @etalbert for her wonderful 2.0 slideshare alerts
- Most influential blog post – Stephen Downes‘, ‘An Operating System for the Mind’ is the best post I read in 2009
- Best teacher blog – Kelli McGraw who continues to inspire English teachers
- Best librarian / library blog - Judy O’Connell because it is!
- Best educational tech support blog – Tomaz Lasic who continues to MOODLE and inspire his colleagues
- Best educational wiki – Sue Waters’ PLN wiki
- Best educational use of audio – The Virtual Staffroom
Perhaps others would consider nominating, for their excellent tweets and blogging in a number of categories, Tony Searl, Stu Hasic, Dean Groom, Simon Borgert, John Larkin, Martin Jorgensen, Steve Wheeler and Roger Pryor
Congratulations and good luck, you are all wonderful!
Here are my nominations for last year’s awards.
Posted in Digital life, eLearning, education | Tagged Eddies, edubloggers | 3 Comments »
November 27, 2009 by darcymoore
Welcome to our blogging workshop today for the NSW English Teachers’ Association annual conference.
Before we commence, lets gather some data using a great online tool called Survey Monkey (only for conference delegates please).
A key issue: why do you want to blog? What is your purpose? What do you want to achieve? How can you connect?
Kelli McGraw is a great example of an English teacher and leader blogging. I recommend you read her recent post inspired by a move to Queensland. Kelli’s latest post about our ETA conference backchannel #etaconf09 is a must read too.
BTW: at some stage you should register for the conference ning.
You may wish to post some comments and a link to the new blogs you set up today.
Posted in Pedagogy, Professional development, Web 2.0, eLearning, education | Tagged edubloggers, ETA, leadership | 1 Comment »
darcymoore