Nick @ Education.au

Out with some friends the other night, the conversation got around to how easy it was to keep in touch with family and friends. My husband sent an SMS to our daughter overseas, and minutes later she replied. The day before we had been having a conversation with our son in law via MS Messenger. In [...]

Although Beyond Television’s “Myth Busters” is credited with turning kids onto science, it’s not as if you can conduct any of their experiments in your school science lab. Sure, blowing things up appeals to just about all teenaged boys (and many men), but the liability insurance alone is enough to put off most science [...]

As part of your resolution in 2009 to be a leader in the world of using ICTs responsibly and greenly, think about what you can do in your small world to impact. The following videos will give you some pointers. 1. CEO of Education.au Limited Greg Black provides a checklist for educational institutions 2. Bad habits you may [...]

This promotional video for me.edu.au, featuring me.edu.au users Simon Brown, Jess McCulloch and Martin Pluss, provides an overview of the free me.edu.au professional networking site for Australian educators managed by Education.au on behalf of DEEWR.

The Season is upon us here DownUnder. I’ll take a rest from my blog until January 5 2009. All the best for the holiday season. Drive carefully and take care whatever you do and where ever you are.

This video clip from MSNBC reminds us of what we saw (from a US perspective) that related to technology and science in 2008. When you click on the link, you will probably find that the video starts instantly. .msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 425px;} .msnbcLinks a {text-decoration:none [...]

In earlier posts I’ve considered the Horizon reports and the implications of their finding for education. Just recently another interesting report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has been published. In a report titled The Future of the Internet III, a survey of experts shows they expect major tech advances as the phone becomes a [...]

Will 2009 be the year of the e-book? From the UK Independent: Bookworms who enjoy browsing through dusty tomes in second-hand shops might balk at them, but electronic readers are fast becoming the must-have gadget for literature lovers. Those who have made the switch from conventional books to their sexier, electronic cousins have until now [...]

It’s not often that a browser security issue makes the mainstream media, so when it does — it’s worth spreading the word. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, the folks from Redmond consider the risk to be a maximum severity rating of critical — so you should down tools ASAP to download and install this [...]

The other day I booked a flight and was asked if I would like to “carbon off-set”. One-way flights for 2 from Adelaide to Perth would create 0.508 tonnes of CO2-e emissions, which I could offset by paying $4.84. I agreed. But was it just a lurk to get me to pay more? How does the [...]

An excellent op-ed piece from the bright and brilliant futurist Mark Pesce on the ABC site highlights the dangers of censorship and the futility of filtering. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2447465.htm If a pornographic cartoon with The Simpsons cartoon characters in it is deemed child porn and passing on a link to a publicly available video of a baby being [...]

Last week the ACMA Communications Report 2007-2008 tabled in Federal Parliament revealed that using the internet is an everyday experience for many Australians. 55% of Australians are identified as ‘heavy’ internet users, going online eight or more times per week. Gone are the days too when we had to assume that dial up connections were [...]

Very interesting post appeared on the ABC news site titled ‘Lawyer uses Facebook to serve documents‘. A Canberra court has approved using Facebook as a way to serve documents. Apparently, the co-defendants have been hard to reach but there are Facebook accounts which list them as friends and has their birth dates. [...]

The Computer Technologies for Schools project is a national project aimed at providing surplus Information and Communications Technology (ICT) equipment to government and non-government schools around Australia. The project sources ICT equipment from the public and private sector and arranges distribution to schools. The Computer Technologies for Schools project began as part of the Prime Minister’s [...]

I guess we are all comfortable with the idea that our language is gaining new words every day and that eventually these words will be added to our dictionaries. The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. The same source suggests that [...]

The National Curriculum Board has made its curriculum framing papers for English, Maths, Science and History as well as the overarching paper “The Shape of the National Curriculum” available on its web site:http://www.ncb.org.au/our_work/preparing_for_2009.html. “The Shape of the National Curriculum” paper is said to contain the answers to the questions posed to the National Curriculum Development paper [...]

The Australian New Zealand edition of the Horizon Report was released at the beginning of last week. Towards the end of last week Education.au released a video in which CEO Greg Black and GM Garry Putland discuss the report.  Garry was one of the Australian contributors to the report’s findings and shares his insights on the [...]

Following on from yesterday’s posting I was interested to see that the latest issue of Innovate is a ” special issue on academics in virtual environments [that] focuses on the possibilities and pitfalls of teaching in virtual worlds. Our contributors offer insights into how educators exploring multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) can use the lessons learned [...]