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I’ve been inspired by the Flip The System movement for a couple of years now; I like the fearless way they’ve embraced the challenge of finding and amplifying teachers’ voices in the current educational climate. So, it was with a fair amount of enthusiasm that I ordered the Australian version, edited by Deborah Netolicky, Jon…

The first time I met David he was cleaning his gun. I’d been seeing Elizabeth for a while, and it was time for the fateful first meeting with the parents. Of course, I was young and immature and had teased Elizabeth about being a ‘westie’ a lot over our developing relationship. I met her mum…

I don’t get as much time to read for pleasure as I used to; I remember when I was young I would read books every week – but these days it feels like it can take a very long time indeed to make it through the book I’m currently reading. I also note that I’m…

I’m not really sure where this blog post is going to go; one of the reasons that I decided to have a website is so that I can write things on it – even if it is intermittent. They writing isn’t so much about sharing my ideas – though anyone reading it is welcome –…

I can’t remember when I first played Morrowind. I think I was living in the UK at the time, and I was thrilled that I had managed to hack my work laptop to play something that I was actually interested in. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t the right way to go about things – certainly…

I’ve been doing a lot of reading about complexity theory recently. There are different terms used when discussing complexity – I’ve heard complexity thinking, complexity theory and complexity pedagogy – but, at the broadest possible level, they are all roughly similar. It’s an idea borrowed from the physical sciences and especially systems thinking, to try…

I’ve been doing an online course through Lynda.com all about Instructional Design. In fact ,it’s a collection of courses – I think Lynda calls them a Learning Path. I’m doing them because some of the work that I’m doing at UTS is very much of the learning design mould, and I thought the course might…

One of the things that we’re (rightly) proud of at my union is the level of service we provide members when they ring seeking assistance. I don’t have a lot of experience with other unions, but, from what I do know, it does seem like we do a good job. And there is plenty to…

This rather poetically named blog post is about the kind of things that I learned through doing my PhD. I’ve gone with the title above, rather than something rather more prosaic, because, the Ph D is so often characterised as a journey, and this made sense to me – when you set out on a…

I’m writing a few posts here about finishing my PhD studies; it’s probably appropriate that I try to put down some thoughts after coming to the end of such a journey – and, in typically academic fashion, I think that writing is thinking. Something that I’ve been reflecting on lately is the notion of timing….