#Eduhype

In New Zealand education policy, the failure of Talent2 and the Ministry of Education to build and deliver the Novopay payroll system has been widely covered in the media. This failure occurred for a number of technical and contractual reasons, many of which have been laid out in reviews. The recently released Ministerial inquiry lays the blame for failure in a range of places. But in reading some of the timeline details, and the technical review I got the sense that during the process, failure was not tolerated or accepted. ...

Malaysia announces plan to place Christian faith at the centre of education. Which of course it doesn’t. But with a bit of text editing, that blog post about the power of Google to transform education becomes this. “As a parent of three kids, I have the same aspirations as many other parents and educators—to provide them with the best opportunities to learn and discover their passions. For many students, the Christian faith has become an incredible resource for the classroom, offering tools to work collaboratively, share and research. School systems of all sizes—from a single primary school to an entire country such as the Philippines—have “Gone Bible” in their schools and embraced the gospel to transform education. ...

In my role as IT/e-learning lead teacher I get lots of queries and requests for help. But two questions put to me this week got me thinking. Q1: “I am getting a lot of can’t send undeliverable messages-have been for over a week. On my class computer under outlook I have a whole lot of unsent because they won’t go. Could you have a look at some stage as my parent emails are not making it at times-even when reply to sender.” ...

Tune Up Your BS Detector via @jessicahagy EDIT: Just in case you think I’m being hyper-critical of iPads in education, the author Justin Reich really smashes it with his previous post, which is very aptly titled: If you meet an iPad on the way, smash it. The thinking described there really resonates with me - and as JR points out in the comments, is a key part of his thinking also. ...

SPOILER: I’m conscious this post may cause people to tell me I’m wrong. I’m OK with that. Please comment from your perspective, and your expertise. In that horrible way of education, the soon to be inaugurated Network for Learning, is known by the shorthand: N4L. Because, you know, it’s for the kids. Or possibly, it’d get sued by the National Football League for using the obvious acronym. ...

This image annoys me. To me it shows a real deficit thinking model that exists in our teaching profession. And it falls into the trap of accepting the common perception of what’s actually important in education. I get the aim of the exercise. Let’s talk to the ones doing the teaching, and find out what they think is the most important thing they need. Which is fine. But asking teachers to tell us what they need is only going to tell us what they believe they need as individuals. We can tally up all those responses and make statistically sounding conclusions, but it’s still basically what a bunch teachers want. ...

This weeks mass hysteria from the NZ Herald has been brought to you by Orewa College’s decision to add digital devices to their stationery list for Y9 students. Their preference is for an iPad2, which is, as I understand it, based on the battery life. It’s this expressing of the preference that has caused the brouhaha in talkback-land. Talk of “haves” and “have-nots”. Talk of bullies beating up nerds for their iPads. Talk of “well, back in my day…” ...