Trying this blogging thing again... somewhere else:

Going to check out Tumblr for a while.  Check it out if you want, and follow there instead if you like!

Lately I...

Education: evolution or revolution?

Oh... I want to teach in an agile space... please, please, please...

More Prof Heppell if you're interested.

Thanks... for what?

Been a while...  and there's not going to be much here this time either, but here's a little video that a friend sent me:



For the non-Swedish speakers – just listen to the mood music and get into it.
(Not the most flattering picture, but hey, if you're the star you can get away with it!)

And then...

it can be amusing to know...

that...

... it's an ad for the tv-licence in Sweden.  They have this system where you have to pay an annual fee if you have a tv which is used towards public service tv.  And this film is saying "tack" (thank you) to everyone who has paid.  The amusing thing, for me at least, is that I don't have a tv, so don't pay, but still get a little film saying thanks.  And just last night a guy from the TV licensing commission came round and asked me if I have a tv, simple answer: "No".  Although with a laptop and broadband these days, who needs one!

Africa: An Interactive Map Africa: vanityfair.com

Africa: An Interactive Map Africa: vanityfair.com

Taxes in Sweden... lol!

And here we go again... another journalist/newspaper wants to discuss taxes in Sweden in a ridiculously narrow and incomplete picture: here's the link.
Why discuss the top marginal tax rate in isolation? You should have added in the 25% VAT on many consumer items... makes it look even worse - great ammunition for all the free market capitalists, and their children ;)
But certainly do not mention that this affects 3% of the population who earn more than 44 900 kr/month (538 800 kr/year), which is:

• almost double GDP per capita (271 574 kr/year);
• more than double the average income in Sweden, even when excluding those under 20, over 64, and only including those that actually have an income (266 494 kr/year);
• more than double the median income in Sweden, 20-64 years old (241 911 kr/year);
• and almost more than double the median income for men, 20-64 years old - because we all know it's men's incomes that are important?! (306 520 kr/year).

The other thing obviously omitted is any reference to what you receive for your taxes in Sweden, which often cost in many other countries - either through up-front payments, private insurance, or levies (cute political name for "another tax when we promise no new taxes").  I could start the list by mentioning:

• free primary, secondary and tertiary education;
• subsidies whilst studying;
• free healthcare;
• pension;
• unemployment benefits;
• parental leave;

... the list goes on I'm sure - these are tax funded privileges that people in many other countries can only dream about.  Or, if you're American, you might even fight to prevent - can't even begin to imagine why people are fighting for the rights of insurance companies to make millions (or is it billions?) of profit on sick people... but that's another story.

So, thanks DN for Saturday morning reading with an amazingly biased editorial in your finance section - it got me up on my soap box again, which hasn't happened for a while in this forum - nice to know I still care!

Must be time for a coffee and "Vetenskapsfilosofi" av Bengt Molander... Happy Saturday to you all!

Reflections 090902

Has teaching changed with IT?

Internet is decentralised... traditional teaching is centralised (around the teacher)... Education/teaching has been transfered into IT... why no change? Should there be?

Meta data - how to make easier to classify? software to scan and suggest?

from Bansky

When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised God doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and prayed for forgiveness.
		- Emo Philips

2nd day of conference today... makes you think

me again!

Maybe this won't just be a sporadic once (twice) off. Should really right something about the Beverly Hills High kids about to graduate... maybe soon.

But just wanted to share what I was listening to:

Ruh's new album on Spotify, or check out their own website.

Good night,

rich.

Cyberculture and Education

Finally getting back to doing some work for the course I am taking from unimelb - enjoying actually discussion what all this IT in our world and schools is actually doing, rather than just blindly using it. There's been some interesting reading and viewing, so I thought I'd share:

and:

Where was Rich?

Got me thinking...

So I decided to watch something from TED instead of STC whilst gobbling down some pasta pesto - lazy dinner I know, but hey...

And after listening to how all the plastic in the ocean is ruining the world I found this little gem.  Makes me start thinking about how we might be able to change IT tools we use in the school to be designed from the perspective of the learner, not from the perspective of the computer and keyboard... tablets are a start, but surely there's more - Siftables for example:

Kenya

Been ages, been busy... and now I'm in Kenya.

Check out the blog if you're interested:

http://vrgeamun2009.wordpress.com/

warm,

rich.

Happy Reading

Here's a piece that does express some of my hopes for 2009. Hope everyone is well.

rich.

Thanks for the article Tori!

Happy New Year: Why money is not enough
Alain de Botton
(taken from Monacle, issue 19, volume 02. pg... 049)

I believe 2009 will be the year when the question of how society should be arranged will cease to be an idle, abstract topic, dwelt upon by ivory-tower intellectuals after a few glasses of wine, and will instead enter the workaday mainstream with a vengeance. Everyone will become a political philosopher; and all of a sudden, some of the great issues facing our world will be up for grabs. It will be a frightening, exhilarating time. Expect to see record numbers of people reading political blogs, attending classes in political theory and turning once again to Karl Marx, Adam Smith and John Ruskin.
All this because of a consensus about the virtues of individualism, liberalism and consumer capitalism is splintering beneath us. At the heart of the debate lie questions about fulfillment. We'll be asking whether the modern economy has been attending to our needs.We'll be asking, to paraphrase that thundering 19th-century prophet Thomas Carlyle, "This successful industry of ours, with its plethoric wealth, which of us has it enriched? We have sumptuous garnitures for our life, but we have forgotten to live in the middle of them. Are people better, stronger, braver? Are they even what they call 'happier'? Do they look with satisfaction on more things and human faces in this God's Earth? No, for we have profoundly forgotten everywhere that cash-payment is not the sole relation of human beings."

Environmental arguments against consumer capitalism will fuse with a horror at the vulnerability of capital markets. There will be a new climate of scepticism about the market system - one which will defy old labels of left and right. Expect to see ex-bankers finding unexpected points of agreement with environmental activists, poets and fashion designers. Ultimately, the question will be: are our economies delivering on their promises? It'll again be pointed out that our outer success is masking deep-seated inner disturbances. Western society has always been an uneasy amalgamation of the values of the old Roman Empire - success, wealth and individual glory - and the values of the Judeo-Christian world, with its emphasis on charity, serenity and love. After 20 years of success, the values of the Roman lion will go into abeyance and the more compassionate lamb will take centre stage again.
Theis will have consequences. Greed and superficiality will be out. Television executives will have to raise their game and stop giving us bread and circuses when we need facts and consolation. During a deep recession in the construction sector, we'll ask whether buildings should ever have been in the business of making money. Wise minds will stress that the quality of our houses, streets and cities is ultimately part of the mental health industry - and should not be seen as commodities without public responsibility.
The sensitive and educated readers of Monocle will know not to give up al interest in the aesthetic side of life, but nevertheless be smart enough to raise questions about enterprises that use beauty as a superficial lure, rather than as a way to herald inner transformation.
Over all, we'll become a lot richer, but not in a way we had planned. Here's where John Ruskin comes in. He was interested in wealth - obsessed by it even. However, it was wealth of an unusual kind that this great art critic had in mind, for he emphasised repeatedly that he wished to grow wealthy in kindness, curiosity, sensitivity, humility and intelligence - set of virtues he referred to as "life".
In his great text, Unto This Last, he entreated us to set aside our monetary conceptions of wealth in order to take up "life"-based view, in which the wealthiest people would not be the bankers and the ladnowners, but those who most keenly felt wonder beneath the stars at night or were best able to interpret and alleviate the sufferings of others. After the greatest stock market crash in living memory, there will be no end to questions about what being wealthy really means.

My festival

A holiday recap

I wrote earlier about the great week in Montpellier with Dino and BJ, after that I spent most of July in Sweden with the main focus being swimming. The group I help out with was in the final stages of preparing for Swedish Nationals and the Olympics (for 4 of the guys). All in all everyone swam well in most of their events so it was a good end to a long season. The boys who went to the Olympics also swam well, although I think we were all taken by surprise by how fast everyone else swam. PBs and Swedish records, even times under the WR before the Olympics were often not good enough for medals. The swim club has been in the Swedish news this week for all the wrong reasons - due to economic troubles they've made redundant 2 coaches. The worst of it was that Johan who has been coaching Therese Alshammar for the past 4 years under an agreement with the club was told a month before the Olympics - not the best psychological help a month before the Games. And the other coach has been at the club for something like 20 years and was told around the time of Nationals, just before his holidays... so it is all a bit messy there. But I just help out on my own terms so if it all goes to chaos then I'll step away and find something else.

After Nationals, at the end of July, I headed off to London to catch up with friends and go to Larry and Martyn's 30th anniversary party which was a great night, followed by a very early morning trek out to Heathrow to catch a flight to DC to visit Dad and spend a week on the beach in Mexico... see the pic from last post!

I'm back in the swing of things at school, as well as the swimming coaching (slowly building up for next season), and I'm also doing some online study - a subject as part of a Masters from Melbourne uni as well as a subject from a uni in Sweden. Both are to do with the use of IT in education, so this means Sundays on the laptop doing work... which is what I'm supposed to be doing now. Instead I'm sitting in Paolo's cafe writing this!

I will now try to do a little bit of work...

thinking slowly,
rich.

the brats are back...

Yep, the darlings of West Beverly High are back in school. Well only the newbies today... ahhh, so fresh faced and nervous. Slowly getting myself into gear for the new year, think I have the first lesson planned?!
'spose a trip summary might be due... but not tonight - have spend the last hour or so reading online posts, blogs and wiki entries for an online course I'm doing... teachers being nerdy - love it!

And all the while I try to keep this image in mind...

holidays...

ahhh...

Margaritas... beach... Isla Mujeres... (check a map!) life is really tough... so tough the internet connection is being driven by an iguana on a treadmill, that's one letter per minute - so appreciate this sentence!

chilled,

rich.

(A pensioned iguana, after 50MB of good service)

Time for an update

Yes, as was kindly pointed out, it is about time for an update:

I'm on summer holidays, and if you're the sort of person who is particularly jealous of the extensive holidays that teachers have you should probably stop reading. That said, I am having a great time. A few days after school finished it was time for "midsummer" here in Sweden which usually involves hanging out with family and/or friends, lunch in the sun with accompanying shots of Swedish snaps, followed by a lazy weekend... that's exactly what I did this year (after missing last year's edition due to a week in Lisbon). At the end of that weekend I took myself out to the airport, managed to talk my way to the front of first the bag-drop queue and then the security queue so that I was able to make my flight to Paris. Once there I had a nervous wait for Dino who was delayed flying in from London (what a surprise for Heathrow!), she ran from baggage collection to the TGV station and we thankfully made our train to Montpellier by about 9 minutes. This was to be the most stressful part of my 6 days in France/Montpellier... the other stressful moments were limited to deciding whether to buy a baguette or fruit loaf for breakfast - usually solved by buying one of each. The weather was great and Montpellier beautiful, the old town is predominantly pedestrian with lots of small laneways winding around and leading to tiny squares with cool cafés and bars. A mate of Dino's from Canberra, BJ, was also there for the week so the 3 of us took it very easy... bakery, cafe, beach, bar... you get the picture. BJ is on his way through Stockholm next week so hopefully the sun will still be shining - this week has been fantastic by Stockholm standards: 20-25°C, generally blue skies and light breezes... it's hard not to love it when it's like this.

Since the last post I've also been to the very north of Sweden - trooped off with 40 odd students and 3 other teachers for a 4 day trip to the northern most ski resort in Sweden (literally on the border with Norway - one of the runs takes you across the border and back again!). Skiing at the end of May, with almost 24 hour daylight was a very cool experience. And thankfully the cherubs were neither too spoilt nor too bratty so the experience was altogether different from last year's debacle. After that there were about 3 weeks of school left and it passed by very quickly in a rush of marking and setting final grades, at the end of which I was happy to say "enjoy your summer" to the kids and (surprisingly?!) even happier to say "see you in August" to colleagues... after 10 months it is nice to have a break from school and everything that goes with it.

The rest of summer is looking as good as the start... the next 2 weeks or so I'll be in Sweden coaching the group I've been working with at the swimming club - we've got nationals in a week and a half, and 4 of the 8 are off to Beijing for the Olympics straight after that. So that's giving me a bit of structure to most days! After that I'm heading to London to catch up with friends, including Larry & Martyn's 30th anniversary party which I'm really looking forward to. Then (yes, there's more!) I fly to Washington D.C. to visit Dad, and I think there is going to be a side trip to a beach for a week with them. After all my globe-trotting I arrive back in Stockholm at about 6pm the day before I go back to work... just the way I like it.

Think that's enough for now.
Chilled, rich.