in the age of Google, what value is there in teaching a fact? It seems now more than ever there is a need to address critical literacy. We need to learn how to dig deeper, not only find out what the facts are but which ones are significant and worth knowing.

This topic is near and dear to me but more importantly gives me a chance to spread a bit of link-love with “my man” Paul. Can you feel it?
Of course facts matter. Always have. Always will. Point is whether explicit “fact giving” has a place in the contemporary classroom. If all educators do is deliver facts that can be easily found with a search engine and delivered in a variety of modalities we are in grave danger of being outsourced. Automated even.
Personally I’m trying to outsource as much of this stuff as possible and focus on the things that only I can deliver. Tim Ferris and Daniel Pink style.
I had Let Me Google That For You unblocked for us last week. I use it daily…

Ep1 A quick intro (Basic)

Quick introduction, reading your feeds and bookmarking your feeds

Ep2 Share the feed-love! (Intermediate)

Sharing your feeds – Friend feed, Google Reader
Embed in your site

Ep3 Work that feed baby! (Advanced)

Combine, filter, syndicate and other things you can do to “work your feeds”

That will do for a start anyways. Ep1 coming soon…

He mentioned that there must be teachers out there who joined the profession because they have a love or admiration of the subject matter and that the students are secondary to that motivating force. That statement intrigued me. Would there be teachers who enjoy the subject, say Science or Mathematics, and have become teachers simply to impart their knowledge and love of the subject? Where does that leave the students?

This post started as a comment on John’s post (which I subscribe to) but I sort of got some steam up and felt it was better to post here with a ping back. So here goes…

I’m not so sure about the primary school teacher hypothesis (you’ll have to go and read the post) but a question I often “go fishing with” is;
“Are you a teacher of *insert subject* or a teacher of young people?”
My hypothesis goes a bit like this.
A teacher who ties their identity to their subject matter is likely to be more threatened by change and blindly resist. A teacher who has the best interests of the young people entrusted to their care at the forefront of their minds is more likely to evaluate things on their merit and act accordingly. Who will be happier in their job?
Another angle (can you tell I have done some pondering?);
Someone asks me, “So what do you do?”
“I teach at a school?”
Now in my experience there are two common follow up questions that stereotype two paradigms.
One says, “So what do you teach?”
The other says, “Do you teach primary or secondary?”
You with me?

A Texas school district will let teachers bring guns to class this fall, the district’s superintendent said on Friday, in what experts said appeared to be a first in the United States.

[From Texas school OKs gun-toting teachers - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)]

Has anyone ever heard of anything more preposterous? If you browse the article the reasoning is “it’s a matter of safety.” In the case of a lockdown “…what if someone gets in? It’s common sense.”

Whoa there cowboy. No. It’s not. That’s some technology that I would not like to see in the classroom.

What a mouthful. Might just call it the DERS for short. Well we (AH, HK and myself) “did” the symposium that I was prepping for in the last post. Mark Pesce was keynote. He has interesting things to say (forward thinking, bit on the edge?) and is worth checking out in my opinion.
Listened to him on previous Education.au podcasts. He participated in the forums with dana boyd when she visited last year.

Information from DEEWR was interesting, timeline of things, how money is being rolled out, deadlines for applications etc. I did find it curious that the mood in the room still contained a little negativity. Comments raised such as “when are we going to get training” and “this is all well and good but we need a cultural change.” Heck! Do these people want their slice of $1.2 billion or not?! Do they expect all the work to be done for them?

Silverton Primary School presented in the same session as us. They have lots of cool stuff going on and seems like a fun place to be if you’re a kid. The principal and one of the teachers showed off some of the kit that they use (mp3 recorders and players, Flip cameras, datalogging devices etc) and generated a bit of excitement. The inevitable question arose, “Where did you get the funding?” to which the answer was (I loved it) “We didn’t. The stuff isn’t that expensive if you shop around.”
Hello! Invest some time web browsing, take a (slight) risk and you get stuff for a great price. The Principal went on to say that he just likes gadgets and keeps “throwing” them at teachers and students to see what they come up with. Moral of the story? Take a risk. Crappy first draft. Nothing works unless you do.

We were also brilliant (of course!) although Mark Pesce thought we were a primary school (he twittered some complimentary things about our talk and Silverton’s). Should have given a bit of a preamble I guess. Roll on next week. Shorter presentation this time but a big one with big boss of CEO. No pressure.

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