Just reflecting on how essential Wikipedia is for teachers and students in today’s world.

The Catholic church elected a new Pope yesterday. Wikipedia already has an extensive article about the new pope. How long will it take for print publications to catch up? And why would you bother with consulting a print publication when the information is so easily accessible online?

The Ultimate Guide To Using Twitter In Education – Edudemic.

There are about a dozen other books I wanted to read on my holiday (I plan to do a lot of reading), some for sheer pleasure and a couple to prepare for an event I will be attending soon after I return to work. Some of these books I already own in p-book format, some are a bit esoteric, and some others are ‘classics’. Unfortunately none of the books on my list was in the iTunes or Kindle catalogue. So I went searching. Several of the titles were easy to find on Project Gutenberg. I downloaded them as text, saved then as PDF and slid them into the iBook reader. One book that I already owned, which I had purchased for $40, was available in a private e-book store to download for $125! Another was downloadable from a similar store for $3.99, and a third was $0.99. I bought the one that was $0.99, and all the other books on my list (even the $125 one) I managed to find eventually and download for free from a variety of sources.

I am all set for my holiday reading now. And I guess the message of this is that just about everything you want is available on the internet, and if you know where and how to search you can probably find it for free.

The quote which made me nearly put down the book in the first place was this. In reference to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius which stands in the Piazza Venezia:

It is by far the greatest and, indeed, the only surviving example of a type of sculpture that was widely known and made in the ancient pagan world: the hero, the authority figure, the demigod on horseback …
…
It may be that Australia had some equestrian bronzes in it – war memorials, perhaps – but if it did, I do not remember them. It probably didn’t, because the fabrication of a life size bronze man on a bronze horse consumes a great deal of metal and is prohibitively expensive in a country that had no tradition of public sculpture. It also requires a special foundry with special skills to work in it, neither of which could have been available in my homeland. (pp. 11-12)

Now of course, as everyone who has ever travelled anywhere in Australia knows, bronze equestrian statues abound in Australia – it almost seems as though every town and every suburb has them. Most are memorials from the Boer war or the First World War. Melbourne has equestrian memorials to Sir John Monash, Commander in Chief of the Australian Forces during World War 1, and also to Lord Hopetoun, the first Governor-General of Australia. Adelaide has an equestrian statue commemorating George V, and Sydney has one commemorating Edward VII. To name but a few.

At the other end of the book, after regaling us with nearly 500 pages about the art, history, art, personalities, art, history and art of Rome, Hughes writes

Italian popular culture in general – is crap, always has been, and will never be anything else. It may not be the absolute worst in the world, but it is certainly way down there. (pp 477-8)

Hughes has tried hard to support this thesis in his book, but in my opinion he has not succeeded. Rome is one of my favourite places in the world for a whole host of reasons, but mainly because history, religion, food and wine are amongst my favourite things, and Rome has all of them in abundance and in excellence. Hughes book touches on all these, but I found it ultimately unsatisfying.

Teaching about it is being opposed by the same people, for the same reasons, using the same tactics.

Except for Ian Plimer, of course, who has changed sides for reasons which defy logic, common sense or anything resembling scientific justification.

Education Advocates Enter the Climate Tempest – ScienceInsider.

Today our Prime Minister announced with a fanfare that she was going to break one of the promises which brought her to power in the 2010 election. She had promised Tasmanian independent MP Andrew Wilkie that her government would implement real and effective reform of the poker machine industry. Now the political landscape has changed, so she has announced that she will not keep that promise, and Wilkie has withdrawn his support from the government. No-one should be surprised at this – it is what our politicians do. But is is sad. It will ensure a larger war chest of funds for the ALP in the next election, but those funds will be at the expense of considerable misery for many Australian families.

Strangely, no prominent ALP figures have spoken publicly about the need for Australian politicians to make promises which they later decide not to keep. Liberal party politicians have been much more honest about this, with former Prime Minister John Howard admitting frankly after the 1996 election that politicians make ‘core’ promises (which they intend to keep) and ‘non’core’ promises (which they don’t), and current Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s surprisingly honest admission that not everything he says should be taken as ‘gospel truth’.

No-one in Australia would want the manifestly corrupt US system of government to be imposed on us here, but surely we can somehow find a better way that this? I believe that the only answer is for us to elect more independent and minor party members of parliament. Whether they are from the right, left or centre, they will ensure that our political leaders are held accountable, and not surrounded by sycophants who will agree with whatever they say or do, not matter how corrupt or dishonest it may be.

Electing independents and minor party members of parliament to the house of representatives and the senate will give us the opportunity to have greater scrutiny of the political decision making process. It will be ugly, and the apparatchiks and rusted-on supporters of the major parties will hate it, but it give us a more accountable than what we have now. And maybe, just maybe, it will give us politicians who keep their promises slightly more often than we have now.

Animation by James Hutson at Bridge8

The animation fits nicely with  this piece from BBC news online which outlines 10 predictions in 1900 that came true … and a few that didn’t.

There are few things we can be very confident about in the future. We can be sure that our communication technologies will continue to get smaller, faster, more powerful, and more widely accessible. But there are so many uncertainties about international trade, transport, the economy, climate, and even the nature of our society that we cannot be sure of what the world will look like in even a couple of decades, let alone another century. And the one thing that just about everyone agrees on is that the rate of change is accelerating.

The consequences of this for educators are widespread. The one thing that we cannot and must not do is put our heads in the ground and pretend that technological change is not happening, or worse, that we know exactly what the world will be like for the students currently in our care. It is incumbent upon us to use the technologies that are available to us now, and to assist our students in developing the skills that they will need to adapt and benefit from the future. Flexibility, collaboration, the ability to research and evaluate information from a wide range of sources, and an openness to exponential change – these are among the most important skills the citizens of the future will require.

We cannot be sure what challenges and opportunities the middle decades of the 21st century will offer up to the young people who are currently in our schools. But we can be certain that they not be the same challenges and opportunities that we and our parents faced in the latter decades of the 20th. It might not be “utility fog“, but then, is that really any more outlandish than Maxwell Smart’s shoe phone in 1969?

The last 24 hours have seen a great example of how social media can bring about change.

Early in the day, news broke that weight loss brand Jenny Craig was sponsoring the Kyle and Jackie O show. Kyle Sandilands, the co-host of the show, is notorious for his sexist and abusive comments about women, most famously referring on air to a female journalist as a ‘fat slag’ and a ‘piece of shit’. Many people were surprised that Jenny Craig would choose to sponsor such a person, and to have him and his show as part of their advertising strategy.

Over the course of the day posts on the American and Aust/NZ Facebook pages showed the reaction of Jenny Craig customers and other members of the community. The comments were about 90% negative towards the sponsorship decision, with the remainder being equivocal, eirenic (‘can’t we just all be nice about this’), or finding some ironic humour in the situation. A similar reaction was seen on Twitter, using the hashtag #jennycraig and addressed to the @jennycraig and @jennycraigAusNZ accounts..

The Jenny Craig Aust/NZ people  spent most of the afternoon defending the decision, with such specious arguments as “we are not supporting Kyle, we are advertising dawn to dusk on Austereo and his program is just part of the schedule”, but respondents were having none of it. They also tried to deflect the arguments with “What would you say to Kyle if you had the chance”, but that also fell in a hole.

Mid afternoon I proposed that the whole thing might be a publicity stunt, and that early in the evening (in time to make the morning papers) the management of Jenny Craig would see sense (and rediscover their integrity) and withdraw the sponsorship. That is exactly what happened. I wondered at the time if I was being too cynical, and there are others asking questions today about whether the whole thing was a publicity stunt. If it was, I doubt that it was worth it – the positive publicity from reversing it hardly outweighs the negative publicity generated by the decision in the first place.

The outcome from this was most satisfactory, and it shows the power of social media to bring about change for good.

This Xtranormal cartoon contains some of the best quotes from the #pencilchat

Thanks to MiddleLevelEd for creating this cartoon