The case of the two naughty school boys who broke the law when they rode the baggage carousel at Auckland Airport and breached airport security has irked me no end. I have been thinking and wondering about it all week – as a parent, as an educator and as a citizen of NZ. The whole…
Category: education
Define ‘Creativity’
The table our senior students painted and donated to a local Kindy What is creativity? It is a serious question, and today I have had reason to pause and reflect on what creativity is, could be, or might be. Let us start at the beginning and let me give you a bit of a background. Back…
NZ Race Relations Day – Something to Digest
Things that make you go Hmmmm. Today is New Zealand Race Relations day and today I came across something on my Facebook feed (thanks Richard) that gave me pause for thought. Watch the video and let it be something to digest and reflect on, given that today is NZ Race Relations Day. If you are…
Does Education Kill Student Self-Management?
pic courtesy of @kerriattamatea This morning I participated in a breakfast chat (#BFC630NZ) on twitter where the topic was about self-directed learning and encouraging students to self-manage. It is an interesting topic and one which has spun my educational wheels since I started out as a fledgling but enthusiastic teacher, back in the ‘day’. All…
Please Sir, Can the Remuneration Authority Set My Pay?
Dear ReaderFirstly, I do apologise for not writing sooner, I realise it has been a few days and you may have missed me. Seriously, I have been busy, and taking a bit of a break from writing, after injuring my typing fingers in the #28daysofwriting challenge. (alright, I confess, I am telling a bit of…
The Future of Review…
I had a meeting tonight at the Review office. We have an ERO review at the end of term (much like an OFSTED review) and this was the preliminary discussion with schools on what to expect and how the Review office has adapted and changed over the last few years. Nothing innocuous about that. But,…
Day 27: Why Don’t We Just Ask #28daysofwriting
Excuse the poor lighting 🙁 Several days ago I had an e-learning meeting with other leaders in at the Cognition headquarters. Painted on their wall was the following quote by Marie Clay. For the uninitiated, Marie Clay was the mother of Reading Recovery, a highly acclaimed international literacy intervention for 6 year olds. Seeing…
Day 26: The future of learning #28daysofwriting
Sugata Mitra – Building a School in the CloudIn this video Sugata talks about what he thinks the future of learning is, and he shares his experiment in New Delhi with the computer in the wall. What he finds is fascinating. To begin with he talks about where the current system comes from, outlining how…
Day 25: I Confess #28daysofwriting
Today I am struggling to fit in the #28daysofwriting challenge. It is Thursday and I am tired. Not just a little bit tired but a huge amount of tired. It is coming up to the end of week four of term one, and I have already lost count of how many 12 plus hour days…
Day 24: Student Focus Groups #28daysofwriting
In yesterdays post “Student Voice – From Back in the Day“, I promised I would post about student focus groups today and how they are a vehicle to not only check on a students engagement, but also a barometer of how things are going in classrooms in terms of a students learning, and of teaching…