The dream

• a flexible education system that adapts the needs of each student
• an education system that ensures each student not only achieves their potential ability, but may even extend their potential ability
• an education system that builds rock solid core skills as a foundation for future lifelong learning
• an education system that fosters the development of learning skills
• an education environment that nurtures a life-long love of inquiry and the learning that comes as a result of it.

We have the science. We have the technology. We have the goals and the commitment.

What’s stopping us?

Background

I’ve always been interested in how to obtain that exciting holy grail of education – an education system in which students learn effectively and enjoy the experience. I’m not a qualified teacher, though I am part-way through a post-graduate education diploma. I thought it was high-time I started to learn more about our current education system from “the inside”.

Since I also really enjoy messing around on the computer, putting together a site on education seemed an obvious way to combine the two interests. Please let me know what you think!

I live near Brisbane, Australia, so information on curriculum will be Australian based.

That’s it!  The rest is general background stuff and probably boring.

The lifelong interest in education now spans quite a period of time. When I started school all students used a slate to write on for the first two years, which could be cleaned with a small damp sponge – no paper or excercise pads until grade three. I’ve been a volunteer classroom helper while my children were in their early school years, and am now a volunteer helper at the local high school. Since I enjoy maths and science, the students I work with now are usually ones requiring help in that area.

Obviously I’ve seen some changes over the years, yet compared with the rate almost every other aspect of our lives is changing, our education system often seems weighed down by its own gigantic momentum. It seems many of the differences between “now” and “then” are more  cosmetic differences rather than significant ones. Despite what it says in the  currently training teachers’ textbooks the “bad old days” really weren’t that bad. I was there – I know.

That may soon change. Easy access to to a wealth of information,  computer technology, and an increasingly sophisticated understanding of how we learn,  may soon make a significant impact on education as we now know it. Theoretically, education could soon become a very exciting field!