Cool Online Tools

Next week I facilitate a workshop designed to assist Year 11 students find some useful online tools to support their learning, especially research, collaboration, organisation, study and presentation. my original wordle There will be a very, very brief presentation and overview of each tool and then students will be free to experiment, exploring the tools of use/interest to them. Do you mind checking out this list and suggesting some more tools?... Read More

Readability

Readability is a simple tool that ‘makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around’ what you’re reading. Check out how it works:  Read More

Flickr, tourism, my kids & Hansard

Something unexpected happened recently that I want to share with you. It is pretty self-indulgent, excuse me for that, but having my daughters mentioned in parliament is very exciting to my extended family. Some of you would have seen this article in our local newspaper, via my Facebook or twitter. Our Federal Member contacted me as she intended to give a speech in parliament mentioning the Flickr page I established for a local coastal walk. It... Read More

MySchool: Part II

The MySchool site lists each Australian school in a group of 60 ‘similar’ institutions using the ‘Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage’ (ICSEA). As explained at the site: The performance of schools on NAPLAN tests is greatly affected by a range of student intake and school location characteristics. When comparing schools, it is important to compare like with like. The My School website allows and encourages comparisons... Read More

The squabbling continues…

NSW may scuttle computers in schools deal and way down at he bottom of the article one reads, tomorrow is the deadline for NSW to sign on to the deal. We’d just like to get started knowing where we are heading – and when. Timeline needed…now! A good blog post about the underfunding of the revolution is Australia’s Digital Revolution – Part 2 – the 1 percenta. The irony is, that even with all the funding in the... Read More

Underbelly

Newspaper articles so often seem to be written in an historical vaccuum. Have Australians ever glorified ‘villians’ in previous eras, when the media was less pervasive? Of course, we can mention Ned Kelly and a whole host of bushrangers, along with more recent examples that are similiar to Carl Williams eg Chopper Read. Historically, ballads and folk tales do the same. Really, there does not seem to be a need for such moral outrage over... Read More