Month: February 2015

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School’s out Friday

Oh, Peter Sharp, how I would love to spend a day in your company. Watch him as he restores faith in humanity in the video above. Then be delighted as he makes train travel an experience you’d want to pay for.

Here is Pete’s description of his work as a social artist from his web page:

I quickly realised that my passion for creating social art was what I was born to give after inspiring and leading a social movement in Barcelona Spain.
The creation of art has become a shared priority for people from all over the world to unite in something that gives working proof that a better, more harmonious future is possible. My life work points itself towards engaging communities in playful activities that empower people to share acts of love and kindness with each other.
More power to you Pete. The world needs more of your ilk.
Enjoy the weekend. Start a social movement. Hug a stranger. Dance on a train. 🙂

 

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Improving STEM Education and Skills Conference – Day one

Well, I earned my keep as a network node today. I attended the ‘Improving STEM Education and Skills Conference‘ in Melbourne and tweeted myself silly for near on 8 hours. Tweets become my form of note taking at most conferences I attend, and they serve the dual purpose of providing a virtual presence for those people in my network who can’t attend.

Screenshot 2015-02-11 22.21.40

(Thanks Stuart Palmer for this image)

Conference organisers these days must be pretty happy when someone who tweets for purposes like this appear in their crowd. Most conferences I attend advertise the hashtag being used (in this case, #stemeduau) and the amplification of the ideas being shared bode them well, especially if the conference is one that operates annually.

Our school is committed to improving the STEM skills of our students and a team of teachers are exploring ways of making this happen. If you’re interested in STEM education and what was shared at this conference today, then click on this link and you’ll arrive at my Storify of collected tweets from today’s proceedings. Day two of the conference is tomorrow, but I won’t be there. I’ll be following the hashtag though!

Screenshot 2015-02-11 22.14.43

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School’s out Friday

Two things made me smile this week (in fact, there were more than two, but these two made me really smile.)

This made me smile tonight.

And earlier this week, this made me really smile.

Screenshot 2015-02-06 21.10.20

These are the moments that keep me in this game. I had another like this today, when a Mother of one of the students in my class came in to tell me how much her daughter was enjoying my class, and that whatever it was I was doing, it was working, because she was coming home talking about the class and the things we had explored.

It’s been a good week all round. I presented to staff earlier in the week and it was well received, and I feel like I’m making some inroads in terms of staff understanding the need to integrate technology into their classroom practice. Yep, good week all round.

The sun has made a welcome return to Melbourne. I’m going to make sure it’s a good weekend too. I hope it treats you well too. Enjoy 🙂