Rob Sbaglia's Blog (24)

I'm embarrassed sometimes by the attitude some Australians have to our neighbours, New Zealand. Frankly, I'm a bit of a fan of the kiwis. They've given the world plenty, but for mine, their finest contribution has to be the Finn brothers...

One of the more mundane challenges of global learning, as I'm quickly discovering, is the lack of coordination in…

I'm often asked what the point of the Writers' Club is if you are already blogging. Surely having a global audience is not exactly revolutionary - all you need to do is to start a blog, and theoretically, you have a global audience, right?

Well, yes and no. The big problem I have found with blogging in the classroom is (a) finding the blogs of others, and (b) having your blog found by…

I was preparing a presentation for differentiating mathematics using technology recently, and ended up editing a TED talk by Salman Khan.

What struck me was Khan's idea that technology can humanise the classroom - which, as Khan acknowledges, is in some ways counterintuitive. Indeed, when I talk to teachers about technology in the classroom, they have visions of a very inhuman scenario, where students have their eyes glued to the screens, interacting…

Since learning to speak a language myself, I've valued the role of languages in schools. One of the most life-changing periods of my life was when I went to live in the city of Perugia as a part of my PhD studies in 2000-2001. Immersed in Italian language, I went from knowing a few words to becoming close to fluent in three months. It was an astonishing transformation, one…

What could these three diverse places, a small town in country Australia, a large international city in China, and a mountainous state the US, possibly have in common?

I must say, when I started dipping my toes into the global education water, I had my doubts. It’s not that I thought global education wasn’t worthwhile… I thought of it as a “nice to have” rather than an essential part of my classroom. Like the best discoveries in life, the benefits of connecting globally have revealed…

This photo is of my brother and I in 1994. This is our first car, which we shared ownership over. If you can believe it, I'm the guy on the left! The colour of the car, if you're interested, is "Cypress Metallic Green".

If there's one thing I've been acutely aware of since working with teachers, it's making sure I don't rob teachers of a sense of ownership. I think this is because I know how I…

Right, if this doesn't convince you, nothing will!

100 reasons to join the Writers Club

1. It's free!

2. All the legwork is done for you, by me

3. It gives your students an authentic audience

4. It's an already functioning community, not just an idea

5. It's secure - only community members can comment on…

Reposted from sbaglia.com

If you could teach your students one lesson from outside the curriculum, what would it be?

For mine, it would be that old chestnut, "It's not what you know, it's who you know".

I used to think this phrase was a synonym for nepotism, but either I had it wrong all along or, with the advent of social media, it…

One of the most beautiful things about having a child is how it reconnects you with your own childhood. Over the holidays, with Georgina spending more time at my mother's place, her grandmother went scurrying into the bedroom and dug out some of my old books so I could read them to my daughter. One that caught my eye was one I have vivid memories of, 'Fish is Fish'. The illustration above particularly sticks in my mind.

The storyline goes along the lines of two…

It isn’t often my whole conception of how I teach shifts, but it did yesterday. I had one of the most powerful conversations around education of my career yesterday. And the people who shifted my thinking were thirty-eight students between the ages of ten and twelve.

You may have picked up from my writing lately that the idea of gaming in education has been swirling around in my head since the Teaching and Learning with Vision conference. These two TED talks have also shaped my ideas…

I really couldn't be happier with the way the Writers' club is shaping up. Check out this conversation on one of the student writer's blogs....

An author from Drysdale in Victoria, Australia is encouraged in his writing, and receives feedback from, students at Castlemaine North in Victoria, Australia and a student in Lahore, Pakistan. This occurred without prompting from the teacher, and…

What do these three places have in common? At first glance, almost nothing - situated on three different continents, a small town and two large cities, three languages, two religions (at least)... yet all three schools share our Writers' club, and this week we at Castlemaine North Skyped with Lahore and Guadalajara as a way of introduction.…

The point is that we…