Category: Popular culture
Digital Citizenship, Facebook and Schools
What is it to be a good digital citizen? How do schools effectively manage their online reputation and assist students to be safe? How does a school balance freedom of speech with the rights of others to not be bullied or have their reputations unfairly impugned? What is the law and how does it relate to the ‘community […]
Where is the inspirational teacher in Australian popular culture, literature and film?
My last session with EDGD824, my English pre-service teachers at the University of Wollongong, arrives this week and I wanted to say something to inspire them. There’s endless pages of quotes that Google can deliver in service of such oratory and many American or British television shows, novels and films that could provide an uplifting excerpt […]
Social Reading: Fad or Future?
Reading has always been a solitary pursuit – by definition – in my mind. I never sought membership of any kind of club or group that met to discuss books, other than being an English teacher spending my days in classroom conversation about reading, writing and literature. The idea of attending a ‘festival’ to listen […]
Music and Water II
Streaming Music in Australia (at mine) I posted about the new streaming services, spoiling Australian music fans for choice, last month and felt like updating you with some recent thoughts re: the pros and cons of each. I trialled Deezer, Rdio, JB Hi-Fi and Songl. Spotify was, I thought, going to be the clear winner. […]
Music and Water
”Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity…It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.” David Bowie Sonos, with Spotify, Deezer, Rdio, JB Hi-Fi and Songl streaming have made my mp3 collection feel somewhat superseded, if not […]
Social Reading
cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Darcy Moore Reading has always been a solitary pursuit – by definition – in my mind. I never sought membership of any kind of club that met to discuss books. The idea of attending a ‘festival’ to listen to an author, or ask them […]
Guest Speaker
My Year 10 English class had a guest speaker today. Rebecca Fernandez spoke about her journey towards making a living as a game designer. Rebecca’s mother is an ex-student of our school and the boys could relate to the experiences of a local person in achieving her goals. The boys listened politely and some were […]
myPad
My 5 and 8 year old daughters have monopolised our iPad since we bought it in 2010. I never really used it that much but my partner, who is not at all geeky, would prise it away from the kids for email, browsing, Plants vs Zombies, ABC iView and reading the ‘newspaper’. Wikipanion is her […]
Ethics, Gaming and Problematic Knowledge
From a teacher’s perspective, the Quality Teaching Framework is an important professional document supporting learning in NSW schools. At a glance, for readers unfamiliar with the QTF framework, here’s an overview: I’d like to relate a recent and ongoing class conversation, related to the element of ‘problematic knowledge’, raised in dialogue with some experts Year 10 engaged […]
Not a list (a reflective post with 2013 in mind)
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” “Fight evil, read books.” These two quotes are my favourites for the year. Pithy and profound, they seem to share great truths with some hope that one can start doing something positive right now. When so many issues […]