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Understanding the "Why" of any initiative should be a key step prior to implementation. Without a clear understanding of our "Why" how are we to judge the success of what we are implementing. How will we know which steps take us in the right direction if we have no concept of why we are journeying. In our implementation of ICT (Information & Communication Technologies) and now Digital Technologies, a lack of clarity on the matter of "Why" has often been the most significant challenge to success. 

Data occupies a somewhat curious place within education. Mention it to teachers and you tend to get one of two responses. One group will roll their eyes and with great sarcasm how data is "so exciting". The other group responds with something akin to "actually I quite like data" indicating that experience has shown them that they are members of a small group. The question is why do some people find data to be a useful and fascinating tool while others see it as a good method for inducing sleep? 

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?

This week I spent three days in Brisbane attending the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers' national conference. The theme of the conference was "Why Maths?" and along with 500 other mathematicians, we looked to find inspiring answers to this provocative question beyond the classroom. Here are my key takeaways from this event. 

We're seeing a huge anti-MOOC backlash now, but never saw an anti-OCW backlash. Why? Perhaps because even though to the public mind they're doing essentially the same things - publishing large collections of curated, high quality, freely available course content - OCW managed the public's expectations better.

Critical point: Manage expectations or it will fail

'Inside the Black Box' was written by Black and William in 1998 and in it they describe the classroom as a black box with inputs and outputs but what occurred inside was a mystery. For many teachers the reality has been that what occurs in their classroom has been both private and isolating, a matter between the teacher and his or her students but a task largely tackled alone. But this isolationist view is, in the age of the social media and networking increasingly challenged and more and more teachers are finding their voice, sharing their ideas and gaining valuable insights from a global community of connected educators.

Just over two years ago a group of teachers decided there Science Lab needed a signature piece to promote an interest in scientific inquiry. Inspired by a display at Questacon they embarked on a project to create a display to showcase the Periodic Table. After a three month journey into cabinetry and problem solving it is ready and this is the story of how it was made and why.

""I was standing in line in a coffee shop on campus, and noticed that many people these days are using smartphones," says Kayvon Beykpour, vice-president of Blackboard Mobile. "Students are doing all kinds of things with them: they're on Facebook, checking email, making phone calls. People were doing just about everything except interacting with the university, which we thought was a bit of a disconnect. There's so many things that, as a student, you need to do every day, whether it's registering for a course, or finding your way around campus, or checking the directory or athletics scores-and they're all traditionally different places. Why not create a really sophisticated, really elegant, and really beautiful app that brings all those different services together in one place, and makes it really usable for the student, for the faculty, for the tourist? And that's what our platform does.""