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"Our education system was perfectly designed...to prepare workers for routine jobs that no longer exist. As we try to out-drill and out-test Korea we are leaving millions of young adults ill-prepared, uninspired and lacking the skills they need to thrive in an innovation economy. After seeing this film, you'll never look at school the same way again. " See Trailer https://vimeo.com/122502930

I've spent the past few months with GCSE and A-level classes doing absolutely no writing at all beyond sample tests and student blogs. Students realise how high the bar of public domain writing is. This can be initially intimidating, but that removes all apathy or sense of the humdrum. Asking all students to write blogs as learning unfolds and interlinks empowers the teacher to be more supportive because they're less tied to the bureaucracy; it raises challenge levels; it enables IT-skilling; it lets students see their own progress and differentiates well; it means more productive and accelerating learning-talk over rote-writing.

"When a teacher, school, or district tells parents and community members, "We're going to do Project Based Learning!" the response may vary. You're lucky if some say, "Great news! Students need to be taught differently these days!" but a more typical response might be: What's Project Based Learning?  That's not how I was taught. Why do we need PBL, if (a) our school is already doing well, or (b) what we really need is a better literacy/math program to raise test scores?  Isn't that just a trendy new thing that doesn't really work?  How is this going to affect my child (and me)?  Basically, they're asking for the what, why, and how. Here are some successful strategies we've seen to answer these questions."

"We have always struggled to envision the future, often superimposing new technology over our current views. Though the creators of the Jetsons did not have the constraints of standardized tests, limited budgets, or even gravity, their schools closely resembled those of the 1960s -- which, in many ways, still look like those of today. The challenge of imagining the future of learning can seem daunting. However, snapshots already exist. We just need to look beyond our current classrooms to identify some of the key tenets for our learning environments of the future."

""I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate" picks up on the education topic but takes a different stance and angle from "Why I Hate School But Love Education". This poem talks about how we have been made to think about how education and getting university degrees can give us opportunities to have a better chance in making our dream careers a reality. It also touches on how as individuals we are judged and tested by how well we perform on exams, but not all people perform well in exams so why are they made out to feel like they're dumb? The inconsistencies of the education system are really peeled open to reveal a deep problem that needs to be addressed and how society's needs have changed to make this even more apparent. "

Our education system was perfectly designed...to prepare workers for routine jobs that no longer exist. As we try to out-drill and out-test Korea we are leaving millions of young adults ill-prepared, uninspired and lacking the skills they need to thrive in an innovation economy. After seeing this film, you'll never look at school the same way again.

"A rigorous and engaging classroom….what does that look like?  Recently I tweeted a link to an article by David Price that challenged the current perception of what student engagement looks like. The article was a summation and analysis of a 20 year longitudinal study of Australian students.  Using the study, David's article addressed the following myths. 1. I can see when my students are engaged 2. They must be engaged, look at their test scores 3. They must be engaged - they're having fun The article (found here) was an incredibly interesting read but the Twitter conversation after my post was for me the most interesting part. "

"Google+ Hangouts are proving one of the most popular features of the new social networking service, but there's no built-in option to record them. Until Google adds such functionality, we've found five workarounds to help you record your next Hangout - free. While we'd strongly suggest any G+ pros invest in specialist software, our solutions will suffice for capturing consumer Hangouts and offer easy sharing options, too. Take a look through the gallery for our five tested suggestions - which vary from quick and simple browser-based options to more advanced software downloads - and let us know in the comments any alternate ways you've recorded your Hangouts."

"Two quotes about schooling particularly resonate with me. The first is from John Dewey's Experience and Education (1938): "What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul?" (p. 49). If the experience of "doing school" destroys children's spirit to learn, their sense of wonder, their curiosity about the world, and their willingness to care for the human condition, have we succeeded as educators, no matter how well our students do on standardized tests? The second quote comes from John Goodlad's A Place Called School (1984). After finding an "extraordinary sameness" in our schools, Goodlad wrote, "Boredom is a disease of epidemic proportions. … Why are our schools not places of joy?" (p. 242). Now, a generation later, if you were to ask students for a list of adjectives that describe school, I doubt that joyful would make the list. The hearts and minds of children and young adults are wide open to the wonders of learning and the fascinating complexities of life. But school still manages to turn that into a joyless experience."

"This formula has been proven in my class over the last 6 months. PBL is my favourite thing at the moment, and if you've read my personal blog you'd think I had the words edmodo and PBL tattooed onto my brain. (I don't, I promise!) PBL is a tough nut to crack when you're working for a public school with limited resources and the pressure of external standardised tests breathing down your neck. PBL is hard because it requires quite a lot of planning as well as quite a lot of guts - you need to have faith in yourself as an educator and faith that your students will 'go with' your radicalised view of teaching and learning. Getting your students to work in small groups to complete a project that will be shared with a real-world audience is pretty daunting. But it is made so much easier, and made so much better, thanks to edmodo."

Check out how this Aussie teacher works with her class in Edmodo, especially step 5 the reflections.

"I've been reading snippets of Eli Pariser's book, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You. He leads off the book with a discussion of the effect of Google's "personalization" feature on the ranking of search results. This feature uses 54 signals (what browser version you're using, your prior searches, geographic location, and so on) to customize search results for each user. Pariser was concerned about this and tested it by asking two friends to run the same search at the same time and comparing the results. He found that the results were disturbingly different, and concluded that search engines are "increasingly biased to share our own views. More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch what you click.""

"There is a new timeline tool in town! Actually MyHistro is more than just a timeline - it has a  built-in mapping tool too. MyHistro allows users to build timelines around a theme or story with options for including text, video and photos. Every 'event' the user adds to their story can be geo-located on a Google Map. Stories can be developed by individuals or as a collaborative effort; the owner simply invites others to co-author a timeline. Comments are limited to registered users only. Registration is free with unlimited space and number of timelines you can create."