http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts schools, change, tech, values, learning Sun, 11 May 2008 05:29:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [wrote this as postscript for some studies - following the intuition that the common experience of ICT as web 2.0 may eclipse some crucial understandings of classic IT, water down the content of  computer science in schools]  : Sitting on a train, after a day wrestling with a research proposal, an interesting ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2008/04/25/the-web-20-bubble/ My little boy likes 'The Incredibles' brand of superheroes, so I know that Pixar film rather too well. There’s a clever intro to the movie, where the super heroes talk about their alter egos. One of them, glib and suave, complains that “superladies, they’re always trying to tell you their ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2008/04/25/extranets-and-alter-egos/ i wondered recently, and ages ago, about the unrealised potential of tinkering with software to learn maths  etc, from the "inside";  more of a modelling approach using iteration etc.  So here's an example of that ... taking the popular internet game LineRider  -which is full of neat, but hidden, school level ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2008/03/04/linerider-meets-year-8-maths/ I went back to my desk the other day, and found half a dozen large art works had been placed there, to return to some year 8 students. The glowing creativity, and the teachers effusive praise, made me pause, since I’d just been ruling perpendicular axes on the board, and the ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2008/02/27/ict-honour-the-flipside/ i wrote origially wrote this post ages ago on the local maths network blog ; but think its worth repeating here.    (at the time i saw this as "KLA specialists versus middle years approaches" because that was the tension i saw in the local system - and the way maths ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2008/02/16/maths-wars-speciality-or-generalist-approach/ there is a vigorous discussion occuring on the Vic 7-10 IT email list about the pros and cons of the last IT conference - was the "revolution" theme, and a lot of the web 2.0 focus (the miracle of wikis and blog etc) , limited to buzz words without educational ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2007/11/30/web2-revolution/ (an enquiry about borrowing a science kit prompted me to post some notes about a project we ran earlier this year). A group of students at Weeroona College have been working with the Discovery Centre to develop curriculum resources for primary schools.  Phil Sparks, Discovery Centre’s education officer, said that this was ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2007/11/02/girls-in-science-project/ ok. this is rather exciting, i think Some of the Whitehills cluster schools (and a few schools in Mildura) have been involved with a pretty cool virtual world project called River City - immersive 3D world for learning science, where you engage in enquiry learning tasks via avatars (virtual characters). ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2007/10/23/enquiry-learning-in-virtual-environments/ One of our cluster projects this year has been on "Sustainability", supported by a grant from Australian Schools Innovation in Science, Technology and Mathematics. So, since our launch earlier in the year, schools in Whitehills cluster have been working on “sustainability” related projects. The aim has been to embed sustainable ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2007/10/03/sustainability-celebration/ i've written a couple of slightly more formal things over the last couple of years - so i thought why not upload and link them all in a blog post. 1. here's an article i wrote that relates to a concept mapping software idea - a personal project thats been ... http://www.thinkingcurriculum.com/thoughts/index.php/2007/03/27/academic-stuff/