Blog

I’ve been on Twitter for more than 8 years now – I’m hardly a ‘power’ user, whatever that is, and I don’t post that often, to be honest. Rather, I see it more as a personalised or curated news source: I follow people or accounts that post things that I am interested in – lots of…

Originally posted here: http://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=1652 My research interests are closely aligned to the development of civics and citizenship education. Specifically, I am curious about the kinds of educational activities that encourage young people to become active or ‘justice-oriented’ citizens. Now that our marathon federal election is over I believe it is time for us to look more…

The chaos of the election campaign has morphed into the chaos of a potentially hung parliament. Bitter recriminations are flowing between shock-jocks and party members, and social media accounts are busy either being created or deleted. New outlets are in a frenzy reporting everything that’s not nailed down – even when it is becoming clear…

I’ve been reading danah boyd’s work It’s Complicated which is about the lives of teenagers in the digital world. It’s an excellent book, and casts a whole new light – for me, at least, on the way that young people engage with their communities via the mechanism of digital and social media. Of course, before I begin…

By now, those with even the mildest interest in politics will be aware that the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union, and David Cameron, the Prime Minister, will step down. Depending on whether you talk to people in the Leave or Remain camps, the stock market is either fine or it’s in…

I recently created a retro gaming console using a Raspberry Pi. The first game I got working was the old classic, Spy Hunter, which I used to play on the Commodore 64. I remember being about 7 years old and being completely obsessed with the game. Now, I look at it and I’m perplexed by…

It seems that everywhere you look, everyone in education is talking about STEM education. Whether it’s teaching coding to all students or making sure that all schools have access to makerspaces, STEM education is very much the buzzword of the current time. And why shouldn’t it be? There’s a lot to be excited about in…

It seems obvious that, if you are going to teach a subject, then you should really know a lot about the subject, right? Certainly in high schools, where teachers often specialise into one or two subject areas, there is a real emphasis on the subject matter knowledge of the teacher – which is why, the…

This will be the first of what will be, I imagine, a number of different posts about the role of the public sphere in civics and citizenship and education. They will be informed by my own reading of some of the recent writings in the area, which I will acknowledge, but all errors are, of course, my…

There has been a fair amount of discussion recently about the role of technology in schools. I say recently, but this seems to be something that flairs up quite regularly – certainly, for as long as I’ve been teaching there have been interminable debates about the value of technology and how it should be deployed…