I have just read a very interesting article from the BBC called “Ready for the robot revolution?” The article itself is very interesting and a great starting point for discussion in class but two aspects were worth discussion. The first involves Azimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics – this is a standard and one I make [...]
Around the outside of my classroom are whiteboards that the students use for their work. There are four of them and I seldom write on them but the students make quit extencive use of these. The students today were looking at the London Riots and examining the social and ethical issues (for IB ITGS Teachers [...]
Infographics are a very powerful tool for learning. While we do have learning preferences – Visual, Auditory, Read/Write or Kinesthetic – our dominant sense is visual. Further we process images faster, some estimate 60,000x faster than text. Infographics when they are well designed effectively carry a message to us and our students that is easy [...]
My students are currently investigating IT and education for the IB ITGS course. As part of the course they are producing a multimedia training resource for the year 7 students on how to use the windows 7 operating systems. They are producing an interactive resource that has the following elements: graphics – moving or still [...]
Well its more than just knowing stuff. For me education is holistic and encompassing. It is about learning in all aspects of life. I have to admit that I struggle with the concept of academic schools, where the other equally important parts of a person life are ignored – culture, sport and service. I find [...]
Part of the IB ITGS course is the case study. Its a critical element of the external assessment the students undertake at higher level for the ITGS course. The students are presented with the case study during the first year of the course and are examined on it in the external examination (paper 3). This [...]
Wow, the last two weeks have been frantic and the first thing that suffers is blogging. Here is my collection and finds for the week (oophs 2 weeks) 1. NetNewsWire – http://netnewswireapp.com/mac/ The announcement by blog lines that they are closing down, has forced me to move from using bloglines as an aggregator. So a [...]
Mumbai is dirty! There are piles of refuse and waste littering the streets, the waterways are black and their banks littered with plastic. Its Hot, sweaty, smelly and crowded. There seems to be no plan in how the city has developed. Mumbai is a city of contrast, with extremes from “wow!! to whoa!?”. From poverty [...]
My time in Mumbai has been frantic. Over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I ran 12 one and half hour long sessions on the ITGS syllabus and assessments. It was intensive, demanding and immensely beneficial. I frequently refer to Dale’s learning cone in my presentations and consider it as I teach, but this workshop reinforced the [...]
Wow, what a month. I am sitting rather comfortably in the lounge at Auckland Airport waiting for the first leg of my flight to Mumbai, India. The last two weeks have been filled with preparing the 12 x 1.5 hour sessions for the workshop I am running. I had thought that my knowledge of the [...]
