Blog Juice for Educational Technology

This evening I went to hear David Crystal speak at a free public lecture at Melbourne University on Language and the Internet (which happens to be the title of his latest book, a second edition only five years after the first). The lecture hall was p…

Just a question that I’m wondering about. I have started blogging with my classes and continued to do it because I believe it will help my students learn. And lots of teachers do say that it will help students become better writers, that they will ta…

This really happened. I was talking to a student, reminding her that she needed to use her class time wisely, and save herself from having to do the assignment entirely at home, when she informed me that she wasn’t that interested in the topic she ha…

You can tell it’s Saturday and I’m catching up on my bloglines. Via my

delicious network

, which comes up in my aggregator, I came across this beauty, saved by

Wes Fryer

. It is

Krashen’s Reading-Spelling Connection

- a hundred years of res…

Via Will Richarson:
Announcing the first annual “K12 Online 2006″ convention for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, October 23-27 and October 30 - November 3 with the theme “Unleashing the Potential.” A call for proposals is

I am so proud of those of our students in years 7, 8 and 9 who completed the

Victorian Premiers Reading Challenge

which finished yesterday. They read 182 books between them since the start of the challenge. I think its so great that they can be r…

The weather was beautiful, the company enjoyable and the speakers stimulating. Where were we? At the Melbourne Writers Festival, of course. As Rosemary Cameron, festival Director said, the presence of the students on students days brings the “festiva…

“Between 1983 and 2003, the average percentile rank of those entering teacher education fell from 74 to 61, while the average rank of new teachers fell from 70 to 62.”How and Why has Teacher Quality Changed in Australia? is a study by Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan that has received considerable publicity in the shock-jock media and when I asked my writing workshop class to reflect on their blogs

“What are good teachers like? What qualities do they have? What does it mean to be a good learner? What are qualities of good students? What expectations do you have of this class? What expectations do you have of me as your teacher? What does it mea…

This term we have been trialling aspects of the new study design which becomes mandatory next year. The normal features of English study persist; “Reading and Responding” to texts in Area of Study 1 (AOS 1) which has the regular study of texts li…

As I have mentioned before, our school will be starting with a new structure in 2007: a new structure of leadership and a new curriculum. This is caused in part by our school review (which recommended some changes) and in part by the opportunities c…

Writely has just opened again for new users. I’ve been using it to write my thesis and it’s great. It’s so easy to use and I can work on it at any computer connected to the intenet and save it. As the front page says:
Share documents instantly & collaborate real-time. Pick exactly who can access your documents.Edit your documents from anywhere. Nothing to download — your browser is all you

Some new blogs just posted on the
Directory of Australian Edubloggers
: Mark Howie has just started
(Re)writing English
; he says that the “enthusiasm with which other English teachers have embraced blogging as a means of reflective practice is som…