Contemporary education – what it is and what it should be

I’ve been going through some boxes which have been gathering dust in my garage (as I’m prone to do over Summer holidays) and have stumbled upon something which has me a little sad, a little perplexed and, if truth be told, a little angry. It’s an essay I wrote in the early stages of my

literacy in the 21st century – what does it look like?

I’ve just finished reading a report by Henry Jenkins and others titled ‘Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century‘. As you would notice, I haven’t blogged much recently and the fact that this has moved me to do so should be testament to the effect it’s had. The report shifts

my research in plain english

I’ve been inspired by the conversations on #phdchat on twitter to try to articulate my PhD research topic in an easily comprehensible way. If you’d like to read some other examples, go to the phdchat wiki. I still consider myself to be in the very early stages of my research and feel a bit bogged

web 3.0 and beyond

I attended a webinar this morning with Steve Wheeler, the presentation from which is above. The salient point for me was the powerful combination of technology and social interaction – something which is obvious in the ‘real world’ but not always in our schools. While I agree that we can’t put all students in the

how to teach with emerging technologies when you don’t know how to use them yourself

I’ve just started my PhD and, over the past year in preparation, have collected a heap of articles/reports/references which I am now beginning to plough my way through. I came across a report published by BECTA in 2007 titled ‘Emerging technologies for learning‘ and have just finished the section written by Marc Prensky. BECTA itself