Learning in Playful Environments

Friends and family of Mo mourn his recent passing. Mo suffered one close shave too many. He leaves behind a stiff upper lip and a tear in the eye. Mo will be remembered for his important contribution to the cause of men’s health.

In a quiet moment Between classes I look out the window Of my 5 th storey classroom And see a sea eagle Circling. Not effortless; rather,   Some rights reserved  by  Corpus Rex A spring wound up. A poised potential that Could release itself at any Time to plunge into the Tree canopy below. ... I’m reminded of A moment in childhood. Looking out the window Of the family car. Speed and dust and the Momentum of passing trees. Beside the road A rabbit came into view And, in the same moment, A Wedge Tail, glorious And terrifying, Plunged into the frame. What I saw Was like a photograph: Rabbit, Eagle, Framed by a window. Gone. ... I wonder, now as I watch  This new bird circling,  What he sees? Is his world just a rhythm Of trees punctuated by  Irregular kills? Or, occasionally, Does he look Through windows And catch glimpses Of something profound and glorious?

Image from Wikimedia commons The first film I directed starred Emmy Award winner  Guy Pearce . To be fair, my friends Ben and Phil might also have some claim to the role of director but it was my Dad's camera, so I have always felt entitled to take credit. We shot the film in Super 8 in the back yard of my family home. Apart from Guy, this epic also starred our aging family dog, an overweight, corgi-beagle cross with limited mobility and no obedience training. The film was called "Killer Dog" and followed the complex relationship between man and dog as it was developed over the 2 minutes shooting time that our pocket money allowed. Guy ran from the dog. The dog chased him (after a fashion). Close shot of the dog salivating. Wide shot of dog attacking Guy. Close shot of Guy on the ground with arm buried in a hole we had dug in the lawn (mother not impressed). Further close shot of previous night's roast lamb shank protruding from Guy's sleeve with considerable quan...

The bus Singapore Ian Tymms On a school excursion to "The Cement Works" Drove down the Sides of an open-cut Mine to the Bottom Where we found ancient Shark's teeth. Now I live in a Concrete tower looking Down on the trees and Earth below. Cranes on every horizon Are emblems Of a desire to rise Above the complex History of this Place. But there are still Shark's teeth in the walls.

Most of my posts to-date have focused on blogging and teaching. This post takes a very different direction; it’s the potatoes to add a little variety to my overly meat-rich diet. The United World College movement has just turned 50. The power and pervasiveness of Kurt Hahn’ s original vision constantly surprises me as it finds expression in unexpected places. One recent voice to contribute to this conversation is Mikhail Gorbachev , a figure who, in my mind, stands in significance with the likes of fellow Nobel Prize winner Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Ghandi for the positive impact he has made on 20 th Century politics. It is thus humbling and surprising to find Gorbachev taking the time to address the UWC community directly. In his letter to the UWC movement , Gorbachev writes: Dear friends, Please accept my congratulations on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of United World Colleges. During the years of its existence your movement has been able to considerably influence sev...

Thoughts, like water, are essential to sustaining life but they are similarly difficult to shape. Writers must always struggle with the possibility - no the probability - that the texts they pour their ideas into will take a different shape in the minds of their readers. For me, as a writer, this is my greatest struggle: to find forms for my ideas which have enough structure and integrity to sustain their approximate shape as they pass into the minds of others. The significance of this struggle has been foremost in my mind as I have reflected on whether to publish the post I wrote last week. What I wrote responds to the sentiments of Mikhail Gorbachev published last month in a letter ofcongratulations  (p.26) to the United World College movement on the occasion of the movement’s 50 th anniversary. Gorbachev writes about how little he feels has been achieved since the end of the cold war; he argues that, instead of striving to make the world a better place, the last twenty ye...

I’ve been reading a lot about the good and the bad of blogging this week. Jeff Plaman shared these two articles from The Atlantic : Why American students can’t write and How Self-Expression Damaged my Students . Both articles present a general position about the dangers of a learning environment in which there is too much freedom for students and too little direct instruction from teachers. These articles are in contrast with Jeff’s own writing about our digital identity and that of my colleagues Paula Guinto and Jabiz Raisdana . If I can grossly simplify the collective position of Jeff, Paula and Jabiz, I think it is that blogs provide a space for students to explore and develop their sense of themselves as writers and that a certain amount of “freedom” is absolutely necessary for this to occur. Central to this discussion is the concept of “freedom”. For Peg Tyre and Robert Pondiscio, the two writers from The Atlantic , freedom seems to represent an abdication of responsibil...