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I host a small radio program every Friday night on WOW FM. You can listen to it here:http://www.wowfm1007.com.au Originally, when I and the other teacher involved set it up, we envisaged it as a bit of an educational show, talking about current trends in education, sharing tips for teachers and discussing educational news. So far, so…

So my doctorate continues to progress – I’ve written more than 90 000 words now, although I acknowledge that a lot will be cut as I try to slim it down to a more pointed, sharp argument. I have to admit that I’ve really enjoyed it – I’ve set myself a target of about 1500…

The sudden interest in Game of Thrones – brought about more by the television series than the books – has made me reflect upon what makes a good fantasy novel. I’m nothing more than a reader – I’ve never written anything that’s been published or made into a TV series, but I have read a…

I realise that this is hardly every a popular topic, and it’s certainly not a popular topic at this time when we have Royals on tour in Australia, but I think it’s really time that we, as a nation, grew up and realised that there is no place for the English Royal family in our…

I work at a school where our literacy and numeracy are both areas of concern. Not because our students are not making progress – they are, often in advance of the expectations of other similar schools, but because many of our students start below average and sometimes struggle to reach that benchmark. It is what…

  We’ve recently adopted a number of new strategies integrating educational technology at my school. Over the last couple of years we’ve moved from a school that had a few laptops and no projectors to a school that is almost 1:1 (and will be soon), has Apple TVs in all the rooms, and is now…

So I’ve been playing around with a little bit of App Smashing in my classroom – or App Synergy as it is sometimes called. I just like the smashing part – it must be the cave man in me. Anyway, App Smashing is when you use more than one app to produce a quality final…

For me, one of the most exciting parts of any school day was when the teacher rolled out the old TV-on-a-Trolley and said, ‘We’re going to watch a film.’ Bad teachers would let us sit through a whole movie – Stand and Deliver was a favourite, I think I must have seen that and Dead…

I am a big fan of educational technology – that should really be a pre-requisite for being a teacher these days, simply due to the nature of the student experience in Australia today – but I get frustrated when I see it being used poorly in schools. I’ve lost count of the number of schools…

I was at a meeting recently where it was communicated to me in no uncertain terms that the only thing that mattered for students at my school was whether they were above state average. I have no intention of discussing that further on a public location like a blog, but to my mind it does…