‘Rethinking Education’

Michael Wesch has been such an important educational thinker and innovator for so many of us in recent years. Here is his ‘Rethinking Education’ video recently posted on his YouTube channel which is a must subscribe to space. You can submit entries for @mwesch‘s next video here. This is an remix of the submissions so far:  Read More

Video Games: My Personal History and Recollections

Do you advocate playing video games in education? We should talk more about our own life experiences as part of this conversation. I have been reflecting on my video game playing past and finding it interesting to try and remember what was played and when. I thought I would share this with you in the hope that others would post or comment with their own personal histories in respect... Read More

Golden Ages and the Problem of Perception

I believe we are in a Golden Age of civilisation. Not everyone has this way of seeing. I hear many commentators, educators and parents express grave concerns about the impact of technology, the internet, mobile devices and computers on young people and education in society generally. To me, it seems pathological, reminiscent of the comic book scare in the 1950s. @teachpaperless... Read More

Memes and Optimism

What is a meme? Wikipedia says: The British scientist Richard Dawkins coined the word “meme” in The Selfish Gene (1976)[1][4] as a concept for discussion of evolutionary principles in explaining the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. Examples of memes given in the book included melodies, catch-phrases, fashion, and the technology of building arches.[5] I first came... Read More

Where Good Ideas Come From

I keenly await the new Steven Johnson book, Where Good Ideas Come From, released next month. Until then, here’s his most recent TED talk.  Read More

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow is an author, essayist, activist and public intellectual I admire greatly. His musings on copyright and creative culture are of particular interest, as is his advocacy for the rights of young people. Educators should be, IMHO, cognisant of his ideas. The fact that Doctorow operates in a traditionally commercial way, as an author who makes the bestseller lists, while... Read More

The Endless Ocean, Situated Learning & James Gee

Holiday Fun At the beginning of the school holidays I asked Miss 4 and Miss 6 what we could do together for fun. Quite a list emerged, including - ride the bikes, play ’Cinderella’,  take photos, see Toy Story 3, play soccer in the backyard, tease Mum and go to websites –  and ‘Dad, can you fix the Wii’? The Wii is now fixed and we had fun playing... Read More

Lessons from fashion’s free culture

Johanna Blakley‘s talk is an interesting rumination on the nature of ‘copyright’ in the fashion world.  Read More

One Social Web

OneSocialWeb is a ‘free open decentralized social networking platform’ in development and will, undoubtedly, try and capitalise on the widespread dissatisfaction with Facebook’s privacy policies.  Read More

Whatever Happened to the Book is Happening Now!

At great risk of appearing unneccesarily sycophantic, I need to say that Mark Pesce‘s post, Whatever Happened to the Book,  is clever, unusually clever, even for Mark. Everything that currently intellectually interests (read obsesses me) about literature and our hyperconnected age is explored. Please read it closely and tell your friends, especially if they are teachers... Read More