Mark Christie

Holidays = unsubscribe. But before I do…

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During work time I don’t tend to unsubscribe. Like some digital hoarder, I hope that the sites I have subscribed to in the name of researching, testing or exploring educational sites or tools will deliver me a gem to share with others. Well, halfway through our Taiwan backpacking adventure I have a quiet morning to … Read more

Teacher IT Workshop for One Please

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The best learning takes place when the listening is happening. Sounds easy but many things need to align before that simple statement becomes a reality. When you have one-on-one coaching sessions, that alignment has a greater chance. The other day out at one of the newer primary schools in the Northern Territory, Zuccoli, I enjoyed … Read more

SMOOTHIES 23i2 – Microsoft Education Adobe Podcast and Animate from Audio

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In this week’s episode of Smoothies, I covered the new Podcast Tool from Adobe. It’s still in beta but it is fantastic. It allows you to record a podcast or an audio file in any environment. Through AI it cleans up any background noise and allows you to edit using text because it actually converts … Read more

SMOOTHIES and Learnshifting

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SMOOTHIES stands for Short Multimodal Online Opportunities To Help Interested Educators Succeed These Friday afternoon 15-minute informal online learning opportunities have been running since before the COVID pandemic and were the main reason I ended up running the upskilling training for teachers who potentially had to deliver classes online during the COVID dark days. To … Read more

Reading Parents – count words read to your kids

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Reading Parents – an idea for adapting reading progress to have parents track the number of words they read to their children at home in the same way they might count their steps when they go walking. I don’t work for Microsoft but Reading Progress is a great free tool for use in schools and … Read more

FAIR – Fun, Aspirational, Inspirational, Respect

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When I was reflecting on words I know are crucial to determining purpose, direction and achievement for students, I settled on these four. The fact they formed the word “fair” which in turn is part of the phrase that Australia is famous for, namely giving people a “fair go” made me want to share these four words and why I think they are important for students, teachers, parents, carers and anyone wanting to give the best fair go to someone, to anyone.

It is also obvious that the component words of this acronym are not new as ingredients to creating an opportunity for a child to live their best life, but I do like the fact I have bundled them into a four-letter “F” word that I like.

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