The more I read edublogs (a term that now rolls off my tongue) the more I read about teacher and parent dislike of the standardised test. I am certainly attracted to these conversations, as I too believe they are an educational tool from the industrial revolution that no longer has the same esteem it once held. Read the rest of this entry »

Social networking is getting a lot of attention these days. People have largely debated whether or not social networking in schools is beneficial or not. Popular social networking sites such as facebook.com comprise of around several million members, and although there is an age limit of 13 years old, many users are kids.

Schools do their part by blocking access to social networking websites however that isn’t always enough since kids can access social networks via their home computer, and even their cell phones. What really needs to be done is to integrate social networking into education. Read the rest of this entry »

I initially became interested in blogs as an educator because of the isolation I felt in the classroom, and as a result of my geographic location. Working in remote communities in Australia made for a pretty barren professional life. I am now involved in several discussions each week that revolve around a range of educational topics. Read the rest of this entry »

Talking with colleagues last week and we started to discuss what we see in each other that makes us good teachers. This got me thinking, and late last night (or was it early this morning?) I came up with this list. It is a list of the traits I have seen in great teachers (remarkable teachers) over the years.

1. Be crazy about your kids (read students if they are older students)
2. Expect great things from everyone
3. Devise lessons that your students will love
4. Go beyond the 4 walls of your classroom…physically
5. Be honest, kids can see through your lies Read the rest of this entry »

Photoreading is a technique used to absorb information via the subconscious mind. Unlike traditional reading, information does not pass directly through the conscious mind. Photoreading kind of takes a shortcut and enables you to take a mental snapshot of the text via your subconscious mind which helps you retain information longer than usual.

Photoreading is based on three primary concepts. The first concept states that humans learn faster when fed with visual data i.e. images. The second concept here is that we can learn faster unconsciously then we do consciously. The third concept is that when we use our left brain and our right brain it allows for us to accelerate the learning process.

There are five important steps of photo reading:

1.    Inducing yourself into a light hypnotic state. Read the rest of this entry »

Since I first came to learn about the Learning State (or the accelerated learning state or Hakalau) several parts of my life have ‘grown’, or improved.
I first came across the learning state when studying for my NLP Practitioners course. By allowing our peripheral vision to expand beyond our normal boundaries we can process/read/learn directly with the unconscious mind.
As we know, the unconscious mind can take in pretty much everything around us at any given time, and the conscious mind is restricted to 7 plus or minus two things at a time. So to ‘open’ ourselves using the Learning State gives us access to so much more than we may have accessed previously. Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I rocked up to work and was greeted by the usual (fun) mayhem. I work in a special school for High school students and the start of the day is usually exciting, hectic, and at times manic.

One of the staff that is normally ’switched on’ and totally has the student’s needs in mind was in a bit of an agitated state. He did complain a little, but it was his body language and his tone of voice that was the dead giveaway; what most people would call his ‘vibes’ I think.

He was conscious that he had done so, for he approached me later to discuss it. Read the rest of this entry »

NLP or Neuro Linguistic Programming as it is called is a method through which a person learns to control the way his or her mind works. NLP when used for educational purposes holds the potential to increase a student’s ability to learn as well as shorten the time required to learn. Read the rest of this entry »

The definition of “teacher” according to Dictionary.com is “a person who teaches or instructs” and the definition of “facilitator” is “a person or thing that facilitates”. In other words, a teacher is responsible for teaching knowledge to a person while a facilitator’s responsibility is to facilitate or aid a person’s own process of learning. We can conclude that the second form of learning is better because it involves a combination of independent learning and guided learning rather than simply guided-only-learning. This helps challenge the learner to achieve higher performance outcomes as opposed to remaining at the same level as with guided-only-learning (i.e. passively receiving facts with no requirement for significant independent thought).

The traditional idea of a “teacher” is associated with primary and/or secondary education and a “facilitator” associated with tertiary education. However, I have personally experienced effective teachers and in-effective facilitators. This is because each educator chooses their own preferred style of imparting knowledge. Irrespective of what, when or where learning is taking place, I think good educators acknowledge facilitated learning as the style of choice and promote a “student-facilitator” relationship rather than a “student-teacher” relationship in their learning environments.

Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) helps to furthur explain the idea behind facilitated learning. The ZPD is the distance between a student’s independent performance (lower score) and their facilitated performance (higher score). The ZPD shows that a student’s facilitated performance score raises their potential to achieve a better level of independent performance. This illustrates the bottom-line benefit of facilitated learning.

Do you see yourself as a Facilitator, or a Teacher? Does it matter?

Here is a second acrostic poem written by Anggi, a student Teacher from Bandung, Indonesia. As you can see it is written about the Treasuring Education Conference.

T : There was a lot of excellent presenters
R : Really,,,really,,,really,,,interesting
E : Empowering people
A : Add my knowledge
S : Sharing experience in teaching and everything
U : Unforgettable moment
R : Rich of knowledge, skill, and everything about education
I : Improve my English and my ability
N : Nobody felt bored
G : Gain many fun, relaxed, and meaningful things

E : Everybody have opportunity to join with Time to Shine
D : Don’t miss it!!!
U : Unusual presenters, participants, and materials
C : Cooperative people
A : Addicted, exciting, challenging, and useful
T : The golden frame was my favorite session
I : Influence my life
O : Open my insight
N : Nice occasion to join with Treasuring Education,,,,
Thanks Time to Shine I never forget You,,,,!!!!

Nice one Anggi. Please leave a comment to let Anggi know how great her poem is.