Watch out for those computers: they might break down!

I thought it was great to see a Principal of a government school brave enough to come out this week and remind us all how silly it is (in this day and age) that we actually get students to hand-write long (ish)  pieces for important assessment, and call this a contemporary education. Actually, Michael Phillips [...]

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Don’t scare the children!

Alongside the box of ‘things schools should be teaching’, a new box of things schools should steer clear from: in this case, teaching about climate change. Apparently, kids run the risk of being terrified by the ‘doomsday’ scenarios that the government is providing in its kitbag of resources for schools.  News.com.au reports:  Australian National University’s [...]

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NAPLAN knows…

I started off all indignant when I ripped Miranda Devine’s latest piece of folksy wisdom out of the Herald-Sun on Thursday but in the end you just have to laugh at the dross that comes out of the conservative media’s best and brightest day after day as if someone is paying them to do it! [...]

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What’s phones got to do with it?

Okay, I admit I teach in a pretty privileged environment where I don’t face the threat of violence from students on an everyday basis. That some teachers do face threats and intimidation in the classroom and that they can still go and make a difference to their students is an enormous credit to them. So, [...]

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Support good teachers

Earlier this year, in my Texas round-up of the ASCD  Conference (doesn’t Texas and Round-up sit nicely together in that sentence!)I attended in March, I posted the ominous ‘sack teachers’ Newsweek cover, which I thought epitomised something of the disregard lots of Americans have for the profession. So, good on ASCD and the latest (May [...]

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Australian Teacher

I’ve read Australian Teacher magazine one and off for a couple of years now, mainly because it’s stacked conveniently next to the copies of The Age and The Herald-Sun at the bottom of the lift well, which I pass ever morning. I’d pick up the student newspaper too and take a stack of both to [...]

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Teenage violence and male role models (Proof!)

Most Year 10 students could spot the flaw in the Herald-Sun’s “logic” this morning: Just 28 per cent of state schoolteachers are men, down from 32 per cent 10 years ago. Youth crime has soared in that time The full article, arguing that the the decline in male teachers in schools has contributed to rising [...]

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How your school ranks

Well you’ve got to say that the Herald-Sun delivers on its promises! This from out and about yesterday.

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Rupert Murdoch vs my Iphone App

I’ve been following the recent bluff and bluster from Rupert Murdoch with interest: ‘Google are ripping off my content’, ‘You can’t do this to me!’, ‘I’m taking my newspaper off the internet’, ‘Pay for view for news is the future’, stuff like that (I’m paraphrasing but you can do a Google News Search and get [...]

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Old News

I like newspapers, their feel and their smell, but they are going. A few of us were arguing about this last weekend, and it came up again on the TWIT Podcast I was listening to today (#157) Think of your students; how many of them are going to read newspapers in their futures? It’s old [...]

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