Professor Matt Bower

Full program is available from: http://www.educ.mq.edu.au/2010SydneySymposium/agenda.htm

Notes:

• Note that the Curriculum Corporation & Edu.au merged to form Educational Services Australia
• Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership (AITSL): http://www.aitsl.edu.au/
• AITSL has money to support technology integration into learning and teaching, but will not disseminate without referencing ACARA and ESA
• David Saltmarsh: 101 reviews of education in Australia since 1976
• Some great feedback on my presentation:
  • Search for “Classroom Action Research”
  • Two other advantages include helping pre-service teachers to better understand how to implement inquiry-based learning, and helping Education faculties to better understand which strategies work best (for instance by researching the efficacy of research-based learning).
  • Lookup “Teacher work sample methodology” – an approach to adapting teaching based on analysis of student products
    
• Mobile devices: Wireless Universal Resource File allows the mobile device type to be detected (in the same way as it is possible to identify the computer type when sending an http request). The only limitation is that it is only for phones, not ipods.
• “Augmented learning” – adapting learning based on student context, eg integrating authentic mobile data GPS, or providing them with media types that suit their preferences.
• The importance of teaching education students with respect – understanding that they have a lot to offer.
  

Today is my first day of annual leave in quite some time. I’m in Melbourne and it is a good time to reflect. Not only did I buy my first two recreational books in ages (The Audacity of Hope and The Hidden Brain), but I’m starting to think about ideas I would like to pursue for writing books.

For some time I have wanted to investigate relationships between the Bible, the Qar’an, and the Buddhist scriptures. I would like to draw out parallels, to strike at the fundamental similarities in those texts, and show that the differences are far less. As well, I am interested in drawing together research on the different areas of society (education, health, economics, justice and so on) and propose a vision for each of these areas.

But the third and final book I would like to write would integrate the findings from each of these. It would aim to show how the fundamental spiritual principles which are embedded in all of us can be used to inform how we construct and govern our society. While it could be structured in terms of different areas of society (education, health etc) and how our spiritual principles inform each of these, in order to emphasise the importance of starting with spiritual principles (honesty, love, forgiveness, etc) and to create an integrated work, the text should almost certainly be structured in terms of these principles and then show how these can underpin our different areas of society.