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Derek Wenmouth produced this slideshare "Introducing some of the challenges, changes and trends facing schools and teachers in NZ in 2011"

"We are suffering here and there from a cut-and-paste culture bred by the ease with which any of us can locate and save information. Sadly, Google and its relatives give us all a false sense of security and wisdom as we can search for something as elusive as "the truth" and Google delivers an answer in less than ten seconds. Enter "the truth" in Google, elect "I'm Feeling Lucky" and with little hesitation or needless strain or effort we have our answer."

An older but good blog post by Jaymie McKenzie that explores the wisdom we think we are getting when we totally rely on a search engine to deliver the 'answers' instead of activities that are more challenging and worthwhile.

"It doesn't seem to matter what age group or demographic that I talk to, kids (and adults) everywhere are fans of Angry Birds. As I was playing around with Angry Birds (yep I'm a fan too), I started thinking about all of the learning that could be happening. I have watched a two year old tell an older sister that "you have to pull down to go up higher". I have watched as kids master this game through trial and error. Being the teacher that I am, I started dreaming up a transdisciplinary lesson with Angry Birds as the base. I happened to be writing an inquiry lesson that has students look at inventions throughout time and thought: the catapult-that is an invention that has technology and concepts that are used even today. This is one of those inspirational moments that comes when you are drifting off to sleep and has you frantically searching for paper and pen to record as fast as the ideas come. So what did I do? I got myself out of bed and went to work sketching out a super awesome plan. Here is the embedded learning that I came up with"

Sir Ken Robinson and Joel Klein discuss the future of education in this video from The Economist. The permalink is http://ideas.economist.com/

Two Melbourne developers launch Rubrica - design and share rubrics on your iPad