Apr 05
Meet ‘Ricky’. He is Aboriginal, Noongar his people. He’d be a poster boy for many of the statistics and labels entrenched in public psyche about this group of people, particularly when young – low literacy, poor school attendance, lazy, the only good thing he can do is kick a footy, use hands, drawing and art …
Dec 15
My big(gest) lessons and reminders of 2011: The importance of doing what you love doing in your career. I never have or will regret joining Moodle HQ but I never have or will regret leaving Moodle HQ this year either. Thank you Martin & Moodle HQ. I love Moodle and its community but I am …
Dec 01
I get to play at school. No, really. And so do our students. This time, we gave birth to an idea of converting a couple of broken plastic desktops destined for the rubbish tip into a giant Monopoly set (not a new idea). And this was not going to be just an extraordinary set in …
Nov 01
This is ‘Billy’. He is 15. He allowed me to post this photo of him from a visit to the local animal centre yesterday. This is one of my favourite photos. It means so much. A couple of months ago, Billy was in a bad, dark space where no young person (or adult for …
Oct 28
Most edu-bloggers, myself included, predominantly rain down on our keyboards to share our successes, ‘what works’, fire the odd rant and share musings on how things could, or even should, be. Well, I am writing today to share a struggle, possibly a failure. Excuse the odd expletive in there but they are part of the …
Sep 09
I have shamelessly re-purposed the title from what has to be one of my new favourite TED talks, alerted to by @malynmawby (Thanks Malyn!). See it below … Did you catch those points? Failure is normal. Nobody knows ahead of time how long it takes anyone to learn anything. Work your ass off until you …
Aug 29
I got some very kind replies on Twitter about this ‘golden moment’ so I thought I’d expand and tell the full(er) story. Quick background: Our class (well … group) is in the middle of (re)designing our room. We have come up with a design, we’ve found and from today already have a large, lovely second-hand …
Aug 24
This afternoon, after lunch (and those who teach will tell you the vagaries of THAT particular time) we gathered about 25 school staff and students for a chat with an interesting guest speaker via Skype – Ira Socol. If you don’t know Ira I recommend you check his blog and/or connect with on Twitter – …
Aug 17
One of the best times I’ve had in my teaching career was starting and teaching a Philosophy & Ethics course at a high school – even though the course was choked off in the end, read all about it. I had taught and truly enjoyed teaching P&E not because I think students should know Aristotle …
Aug 05
Thumbs up … If you are sensitive to expletives, please stop reading now. It’s Friday and I need a stiff drink. I have just spent first week as Advisory Teacher at our Big Picture school. This is about as remote as it gets from the quiet of a desk at Moodle HQ. It is also …
People say…