Ramblings

I have been using social media in my classroom for a few years now. I have a class Twitter account. I have set up all my students with their own blogs. My class communicate with other students around the world using Edmodo. We have mystery skyped classes in the USA. We have shared our videos on the class YouTube account. My class has engaged in online learning on various interactive, social websites such as Khan Academy and Scratch. But as impressive as this list may appear, I feel as if there are so many aspects of social networking as a tool I have only scratched the surface of. In all of these social engagements, I have remained the one in charge. I have been the instigator of the social engagement; the engineer, the conductor, the driver, the orchestrator. This has made it a very manageable, controllable experience. One that most educators would feel safe in. One where the learning outcomes have been planned and catered for. One where the outcomes are possibly even predet...

I know of an ethical dilemma where a teacher posted on her private Facebook page some blatantly racial comments about a newspaper report on the actions of an Indian taxi driver. Many other people had also commented and expressed their opinions about this man’s reported actions. This teacher’s comments could be judged to have been inappropriate by most people’s standards. The comments were racial and offensive. Her Facebook page was open with no privacy restrictions. While her offensive comments were published for all to see, so was her place of work and her connection to her wider school community. This post was brought to her principal’s and her BOT attention via the fact that many of her Facebook friends were also work colleagues. She thought her comments were humorous. She felt she was just reiterating the general population’s disgust for what this man had purportedly done. She did not feel she had an obligation to uphold any higher code of ethics or standards than everyone...

It wasn't until I did a paper for my Masters on The Role of the Female in Traditional Storytelling that I began to evaluate and understand my privileged position in society as a white, middle class male. I have always thought of myself as being caring and understanding to all people, regardless of race, religion, beliefs, or gender. That paper helped me see that it was easy for me to hold to the belief system I had, simply because of the position I held in society, simply because of my gender, race, and financial stability. When I did that paper, I found it difficult to actually conceptualise what my culture actually was. I am from English, Irish decent with parents born in the British Isles, and yet, I feel neither a connection, nor an affinity to either of those places. With globalisation (brands, sports teams, music) and the  Californication   of our ideas through the American film and television industry, I felt devoid of a thorough understanding of what my white, midd...

In looking at trends affecting societies around the world, the word 'globalisation' crops up time and time again, in many varied contexts. Power (2000), National Intelligence Council (2017) highlight how globalisation can accelerate the growth in disparities between the rich and the poor, the have and the have-nots. In education, Core Education announced their top ten trends in 2016 on their website . Computational Thinking (CT) jumped out at me because I had done my Literature Review on that topic. They pick CT as one of the top ten trends because they see all students needing these skills, even if they are never going to become computer programmers. They say it is a fundamental way of thinking about, and seeing the world. I think that CT being many people's pick as one of the top trends in education is another form of globalisation.   NMC Horizon Report (2016) says that developing CT skills  "has  been  linked  to  economic  growth."  C...

The debate about the comparative underachievement in education of children from low  Socioeconomic status (SES) is one that governments and societies have gnashed their teeth over for generations. Still clear in my head, are the images of the forced busing of black students in the USA in the 60's in an attempt to change local school demographics.  Statisticians, and even worse, politicians can argue the numbers. Salvatore Gargiulo's sabbatical report quotes research that says that 27% of NZ children live in poverty. The UNICEF's report, Measuring Child Poverty shows NZ as mid table for OECD countries, just behind Australia, just ahead of the UK, and way ahead of the USA.  In education over the last thirty years, schools have been measured, and by some, even judged by measuring their SES. The decile system has ranked schools in an attempt to try and level the playing field and increase the resources that schools with predominantly lower-SES students. In some ways,...

Communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning  in a  shared  domain  of  human  endeavor.  (Wenger 2011, p1)      When I started my teaching career in the 80's, I definitely belonged to comparatively fewer Communities of Practice than I do now. My job was rather insular, in that I belonged to a profession, I worked in a subset of a school called a syndicate, and I worked within the four walls of my classroom. I had very little interaction outside of my immediate collegial community. And even then, my interactions were limited by the social context of the times. Colleagues shared resources, divided up workloads, and very little else. It was rare for anyone within that narrow model of what a Community of Practice is, to ask for help, change the status quo, experiment, or venture on a new path. Change in education was not rewarded, therefor...