This year staff at ICHK Secondary started the school year with a great PD session lead by one of our new team members, Phil Morgan. A deep thinker around creativity and education, Phil brought us up to speed on some ideas around creative thinking, and …
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Tag: creativity
Our School As A Box
Epic Wallpers
In Year 7, my students undertake a short unit of work called Epic Wallpaper, in which they attempt to make a glossy wallpaper using Acorn and some graphic design techniques. This is the first year I have run this unit, and it went very …
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Half Old Portrait
This morning I was approached by a teacher (Megan from HLY) whose students have been asked to draw split portraits of themselves, half their current age, and half when they are older. Megan asked if we could use some software to age the students, and …
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Ultra-Cheap Flying Camera
ICHK Zombiefest

Google Forms Choose Your Own Adventure
QR Code Madness
QR codes are square barcodes, which are quick to read and can contain more information than older linear barcodes. More importantly, QR codes can contains links which take scanners directly to a location on the Internet, and can be scanned by almost any phone or …
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Your Work: Dead or Alive?
Don't tell me a policy is a "living document" that is being constantly reviewed if you then go and print it on paper. Sigh. — Chris Betcher (@betchaboy) January 28, 2013This led me to compose the following email to my colleagues, as an opening salvo in a new offensive against the poor practice of printing:
Colleagues, you all know that I am opposed to printing. But there is more to it than just environmentalism.
If you want to think of your work as "living" (eg actively used, collaborative, flexible, responsive, meaningful) then why consign it to static paper? Why not share your work online, build an audience and set your work free. Put it in a blog, or an online document, invite commentary, make everyone an owner.
This is the future of knowledge for our students. Lead by example. Paper is a dead end. Isn't it time to upgrade?
Fortunately Chris Betcher put his thoughts down in a shared, digital environment, and so we are all able to make use of them. Imagine if he just printing them out, and filed them away.
On Creativity
I’ve got creativity on the brain at the moment, and the more I think about it, the more interesting it is, the more nuances I find. This morning I had 15 minutes with some Year 8 students I know well. I told them that I …
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Twine
http://supermechanical.com/twine
Twine fits into a seemingly new product category that I am sure will take off as competition arises and costs drop: small, configurable Internet-enabled sensors. Housed in a small and robust casing and powered by internal batteries, Twine can sense the world around it …
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