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Number Talks are a wonderful way to see where our students are with their mathematical thinking. As a part of a daily routine, a Number Talk promotes number sense and mathematical reasoning. In this post, I revisit what a Number Talk can reveal about our students' understanding of mathematics, and how they might be used to promote a fresh perspective. In addition, I examine a success criteria for Number Talks that is more expansive and recognises their true power.

Signposts of the Revolution? What We Talk about When We Talk about Learning Spaces

NYU professor Clay Shirky gave a fantastic talk on new media during our TED@State event earlier this month. He revealed how cellphones, the web, Facebook and Twitter had changed the rules of the game, allowing ordinary citizens extraordinary new powers to impact real-world events. As protests in Iran exploded over the weekend, we decided to rush out his talk, because it could hardly be more relevant. I caught up with Clay this afternoon to get his take on the significance of what is happening. HIs excitement was palpable.

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Thomas Friedman talking about the explosion of MOOCs. Like his quote: "Big breakthroughs happen when what is suddenly possible meets what is desperately necessary."

Great TED talk on the future of learning and innovation.

Add voice reader of page content to your web page. How could this be used and not be distraction. Beyond accessibility?

Better late than never as I have just joined this group. ReadSpeaker provides text to speech (TTS) engines for websites and iOS and Android apps which combine text reading with word by word text highlighting on any end user hardware. The service has a growing range of early Australian adopters including Centrelink, Comcare, Dept of Health and Ageing, Dept of Human Services, FAHCSIA, and the Australian Paralympic Committee. In elearning, adopters include Gale and Cengage. I would be happy to provide information to interested elearning professionals and I can be reached on richard.ings@readspeaker.com.

Despite this being a 'thinking' conference, despite us all being advocates for structured and scaffolded models of thinking, not one group had applied any thinking routines, utilised a collaborative planning protocol or talked about applying an inquiry model or design thinking cycle. It wasn't that we didn't know about them. It wasn't that we don't know how to use them. It wasn't that we don't value them. We had all the knowledge we could desire on the how to and the why of a broad set of thinking tools and anyone of these would have enhanced the process, but we did not use any of them. Why was this the case and what does this reveal about our teaching of these methods to our students?

I have just had the opportunity to spend the weekend learning alongside a large group of mathematics teachers. After a day and a half of talking and thinking about mathematics teaching, I am excited to get back to school and try out some new ideas. There were also some key takeaways for me that I share below. These are the questions or wonderings that my mind wandered to while listening to the numerous talented speakers over the past two days.

we offer seven principles based on research on good teaching and learning in colleges and universities. Good practice in undergraduate education: encourages contact between students and faculty, develops reciprocity and cooperation among students, encourages active learning, gives prompt feedback, emphasizes time on task, communicates high expectations, and respects diverse talents and ways of learning.

podcasting in VET

This was BEFORE the #iranelection