Brian's Blog

This is my interview with Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher discussing ways we can create opportunities for students to make connections globally with each other to leave a lasting impact.

Do you remember the moment that you decided teaching was your career? Some of us maybe still searching for that moment! For me, it was in Year 6, as we did the time honoured “light” unit of work. My teacher was eccentric but in one moment helped to define the direction of my professional life. Wrapped in his white lab coat and armed with 4 D-cell batteries, alligator clips, a jar and one of my pacer leads, he made magic happen! "Let there be light!" In that moment he captivated all of us with awe. I cannot remember the exact details of what he was teaching but I remember the experience of seeing the light illuminate from the bottle. There is a constant tension between what we need to teach and what we as professionals know our students need to know to apply this understanding. Frequently, these two don’t perfectly match and as a result, there is a tension. Teachers often try to find the links to draw correlations between the two but an essential and oft...

The next paradigm shift that is going to take in education in Australia will be the ready adoption of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) taught in a holistic and blended way. As part of this shift, makerspaces are going to become more common to allow students ways to express understanding and knowledge in practical and physical ways. They will use cardboard and craft, electronics, computer based tech as well as robotics and blended learning to achieve this (Cooper 2013). The Makerlab (an alternate name for the makerspace area) will be spaces or units where school budgets will be directed towards sparkfun kits, littlebits, makeymakeys and Ardinos. They will also provide students access to smart robotics for enrichment and reinforcement. These spaces are being designed to shift students understanding by moving to teach students about physical computing and how all things work in processes and systems. These understandings can be easily seen through active ...