TIGblogs - Simon Moss's TIGBlog

Eye on You

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EDT

For me, the future aspirations and concerns about education centre around how education and learning are tailored to indivduals. There are no one size fits all educational models - each and every student will be different, each and every student will see things in their own way.

In the perfect class

Sun, 10 Apr 2005 10:06:00 EDT

Maybe It's real, maybe it's not, but in the perfect class it feels as though you could be anywhere

Learning ... laid back

Mon, 28 Mar 2005 23:18:00 EST

Learning is a collaborative process. It's messy, it's fun, it's graphical. This is a picture I took in a Workshop at Microsoft's Information Worker Board of the Future last year. It was an amazing learnign space because the 15 of us came from such diverse backgrounds, but were able to share ideas in a welcoming, creative space that utilised technology and old-fashioned textas and pipe cleaners to help us express our ideas.

Control?

Tue, 22 Mar 2005 22:00:00 EST

This is my office. 2 computers, 2 mobiles, 2 printers.

Technology is central to my study, work and leisure, but in playing such a key part, I sometimes wonder who is in control? Do I control my technology use, or does it control me? Does it help me get my work done better and quicker, or does it just mean I take on ever more work?

The Path Less Traveled

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 00:00:00 EST

This photo captures the journey upon which many of the young people around me are embarking. The world around is an amazing place, full of opportunities, ideas, and possibilities. But, we're stuck on the rutted path, often looking hopefully out to what is possible, but just beyond our grasp. A key part of education in my community, and the part of education in which I work and study is all about helping the young people who'd like to step off the path, heading through the uncertain, but exciting terrain of the bush.

This is the path less traveled - the one that sees University as a tool rather than a necessity for success. This is the path less traveled - where young people create their own opportunities, organisations and projects.

The Neo-con Agenda?

Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:57:00 EDT

Following a crazy month of work, study and well, more work, I thought I'd post a link to an article I wrote over Easter on the problems (as I see them) with neo-conservative thinking in US foreign policy.

http://www.vibewire.net/articles.php?id=2646

Would love to get anyone's thoughts - especially those outside Australia.

Cheers
Mossy

End of the World

Fri, 06 Feb 2004 20:17:00 EST

Very funny flash movie.

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end.php

Oh, and a couple of warnings. There's a whole heap of swearing and some pretty ordinary cultural stereotypes - but, as a satire, it's a good laugh.

US/Australia FTA

Tue, 03 Feb 2004 03:59:00 EST

The wonders of international trade never cease to amaze.

The FTA that's been on the table between Australia and the US for the last 5 years appears about to collapse as, from all reports in Australia indicate, the US refuses to budge on agricultural protection.

Strange that a free-marketeering country like the US is so keen to open markets in other countries, yet so hesitant to open its own. Oh, to the power of lobby groups and industry!

And, to top it all off, World Bank President James Wolfensohn came out today and commented that he didn't like bilateral trade agreements, as they fragmented the world's economy and reinforced structural inequalities (don't quote me on the exact words though).

Oh well, at least the US media is caught up in something meaningful - like Janet Jackson's breast.

peace, Mossy

Bash the Penguin

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 17:54:00 EST

http://www.yonkis.com/mediaflash/batea_batea.htm

So very, very, addictive. My current best is 322.7

Awesome Aussies

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 02:21:00 EST

Following on from the last update (on everyone's favourite S.R. Waugh), it's not surprising that I should point out that Steve's just been named Australian of the Year by the Prime Minister.

But, much cooler is that Hugh Evans, founder of the Oaktree, was named Young Australian of the Year.

Speaking to Hugh last week (before he knew), I can say it's fantastic to know that someone who has been recognised for their work is using the publicity to promote their cause, not just bask in their own good deeds. What's more, he held 60 high school students in rapture for 30 minutes at a seminar session we were running - an amazing feat for a group that took to singing in their breaks.

So, it's not "well done" to Steve and Hugh - but "keep working, keep showing others what is possible."

Peace, Mossy

S.R. Waugh

Tue, 06 Jan 2004 03:49:00 EST

This, undoubtedly, will mean nothing the majority the world, let alone TIG users ... but hey.

Steve Waugh, captain of the Australian cricket team played his last international innings today, a solid knock of 80 in one of the most gripping test matches ever played. He captained Australia to World Cup glory, to the be the number one test team in the world, departing the game with the greatest ever captain's record.

Well done Tugger

*****

Well, in completely unrelated news, I'd quite like a holiday as I've been working through the summer on VCEnet, editing and collating all the content for 2004. I almost fell off my chair today doing some math. We cover roughly 15 subjects, with about 30 articles per subject, and each article being about 800 words long. 360 000 words. Or roughly 750 A4 pages. No bloody wonder I feel like a break (I'm a little over half way through). Although, it does make me feel a little industrious. Speaking of which, follow the link above to download a cool little guide that I compiled on successful study skills.

Finally, seeing I don't where else to write it, well done to the team an awesome theme for January, on reaching 30 000 members, and on surviving what I hear was a fantastic first stage of the WSIS summit.

Peace
Mossy

Building Up, Tearing Down

Sat, 29 Nov 2003 23:07:00 EST

No, not the fat Boy Slim track from You've come a long way, Baby ... although that is a good CD.

Rather, it's a question

How, so often, can a group of people come together to do amazing things and share awesome experiences, build a huge head of energy, then go away and watch it dissipate into nothing?

Last week I was facilitating on an awesome personal development program with an average bunch of 13 and 14 year olds. The energy in the room was palpable, here were a group of who were willing to stand in front of each other and talk about everything, guys who were ok with crying in front of their mates, and know they wouldn't cop shit for it.

But then, on the bus home on Friday, bang, it's gone. People with arms out the windows, chanting "wanker" at the bus driver, some kid breaking a seat. And yet, just an hour earlier they'd got up and danced alone in front of 150 others (to bad music).

Hmm ...

Self-indulgent Rant

Mon, 03 Nov 2003 02:39:00 EST

Why can't I change my header picture?

Why won't the Australian government do the right thing for once?

Why is almost all my assessment due within the space of 5 days?

Why does all my research indicate that recent changes in development policy by the World Bank and IMF are only tokenistic and that ideologically driven neo-liberal policy will continue to shaft the developing world?

Why do the Americans insist on pursuing a mulititude of bilateral free trade agreements at the expense of the the multilateral system?

and finally,

How do people distort evidence so ruthlessly to pursue a partisan political cause that achieves nothing?

Cartharsis. I feel much better now. Not that I was feeling that irritated in the first place - that outburst was more related to not being able to change my header image than any political antagonism I may hold to the incumbent Aussie government.

Coz hey, the world's looking pretty cool at the moment, as far as I'm concerned. Been back two weeks since a brief trieste to Germany for the SIFE World Cup, an amazing 10 days in which we made the final against all expectations, met some amazing people from business and around the world, partied hard and just generally had fun and exchanged ideas. Even got to hear one of Canada's finest, Stuart Knight .

Apart from the thrills of an all-expenses paid (and free suit) trip to Germany, Uni's been cruising along up until I got back, when reality hit and I noticed that I had a semester's assessment to do in about 4 weeks. VCEnet has been rolling along nicely, as I've now started on the fun process of editing next years content - about 50 down, 550 to go.

On the upside, I'm speaking on a panel at Plan's Children as Partners conference in a few weeks, on the topic of Young people in Business. Should be a hoot, with heaps of people involved in the youth and community sectors in attendence for 2 days of post-exam excitement. And, I may even get some ideas for the University, who are in the process of redesigning their key student leadership programs, SALP (Student Ambassador Leadership Program). I could hope that they'd send along some of the senior Uni staff ... Melbourne Uni is currently embrioled in a major fiasco over the role of the Student Union, the Uni having frozen the Union's $12 million funding agreement after claims of corruption, incompetence and probably lots more I don't know about.

I'm rambling ... which is what happens when I should be writing an assignment on Young People's Perceptions of Citizenship, or one on something to do with Learning and Language acquisition. Oh well, until the next time I attempt to change my header image when meaning to write an assigment.

Mossy

Street Art

Sat, 25 Oct 2003 05:02:00 EDT

Heidelberg, Germany, 16/10/03

Disconnected

Mon, 06 Oct 2003 08:04:00 EDT

My hard drive crashed last Wednesday morning. 1:46am to be precise, just as I was putting the finishing touches to the video I was editing for the meeting starting at 8am. The computer refused to restart, flashing blankly at me, waiting for instruction. In despair, I went to bed.

Step forward to Saturday. 3.5 days without a computer was infuriating me, even more due to the lovely people fixing the machine putting back the quotation time from 3pm Thursday to 10 am Friday, to 4 pm Friday, then to Saturday sometime, until finally they settled on Monday, 9am.

Monday rolls around. 5 days. I call them up. It's ready. How long did it take to fix? 1 hour.

I sighed.

Well, at least it's working again.

mmm

Wed, 24 Sep 2003 09:41:00 EDT

Coming or going?

Sun, 21 Sep 2003 01:21:00 EDT

Capitalism 101

Wed, 27 Aug 2003 10:10:00 EDT

I never thought I'd be someone who would teach others about capitalism - I'm constantly whining about its excesses, the failings of the market and the triumphalist tripe that is sprouted by many business gurus.

But there I was today at a suburban Melbourne school, teaching a class of Grade 5 6s about money - entrepreneurship in particular. As part of the Students In Free Enterprise World Cup I'm heading to in Germany in October, our team decided to get some hands on teaching with students in our focus community.

It was awesome fun - Scott, I can see why you enjoy teaching! Although myself and the opther techie, Steffan, were supposed to be there filimng and recording, we soon jumped in on the presentation (1 1/2 hours never went so quick) to talk about how these kids made money, if profit was good or bad (apparently Bill Gates is too greedy), supply and demand, marketing, and the consolidation of McDonald's property assets.

Yay! Perfect addition to last week's Year 9 Outdoor Programme on which I worked - 6 days of cruising through the bush, hiking, rock-climbing, abseiling and rafting with an amazing nice group of 15 year old guys! Wonders never cease to amaze

:d Mossy

Talking ... but to whom?

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 06:59:00 EDT

I've done a whole heap of talking over the past few weeks. From Soccer Club trivia to Uni, ipisi to VCEnet and beyond, it seems as though I'm spending most of the day with my mouth moving. Which leads me to wonder; am I saying anything worth listening to?

The answer is ... I hope so. But I'm not sure.

The question was brought up by a couple of great opportunities that have been presented to me over the past week or so. On Wednesday, I went on Radio 3AK in Melbourne for 30 minutes to talk about how young people are using the internet (and gave TIG a plug :p), which was fantastic, and the three of us in the studio had a great time. But listening to the couple of talk back callers that we had, I was struck by the thought that people are more interested in talking about their lives, ideas and interests than listening to others. They appear to listen only so that they may have their turn in the sun.

Maybe it's being overly cynical about how people in my area behave, but it was driven home again by the second amazing opportunity I was given this week. I've been asked to join the University of Melbourne's SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) team, who as national champions are heading off to Mainz, Germany to compete in the world championships in October. The program is amazing, as it empowers university and college students to become socially responsible entrepreneurs and teachers through corporate upskilling (excuse the jargon). It's high calibre, it's exciting, but it's also self-congratulatory ... it appears to me that people are constructing these projects primarily to win kudos and the world championships, only seeing their social benefit as an added bonus. Which is conflicting, as the program is brilliant, generates great PR and interest in the sector, and does have meaningful outcomes for disadvantaged groups and the students involved. But it all seems just a little kitsch and artifical.

I think I'll reserve judgement on the state of humanity though (at least until October :p) and leave the readers and listeners, the hardy souls such as yourself, to tell me I'm wrong.

Mossy

Trivial?

Mon, 28 Jul 2003 07:36:00 EDT

It's been a hectic few weeks, the experience of which could prolly best be summed up by last night - the annual GASS trivia night.

We'd (Mailie and I) spent 6 weeks sort-of organising it, followed by 2 weeks frantically organising prizes, questions, people, food, games and the like. And, much to our relief, it all came together brilliantly, as we managed to prise more than $2000 out of 122 fellow young people in exchange for a great night of entertainment and the warm fuzzy feeling of helping others.

Which, for us, is great, as it means that with 2 months to spare, we've reached our annual fundraising target of $4000, such that GASS can fund a reciprocal scholarship. Yay.

And a big thanks to Scott for coming along, even if I did only get to talk to him for 30 seconds!

Cheers
Mossy

GASS camp

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 20:19:00 EDT

quite an eventful 48 hours.

Not only did I spend two days up at the annual GASS (german australian students' society) Winter Camp, held on Lake Hume near Albury, I read all of the 5th Harry Potter book.

Both were fantastic. GASS camp may have been tarred by the 4 hour long national committee meeting, but the balance was restored by the annual GASS footy match, where, running around in bear feet (forgot shoes, thongs are no good), I scored the winning goal and marked on the line with a minute to go to the the dark team victory! And there were a few solid hits, a couple of the girls ripped into the guys; all up an exciting game.

Incidentally, the photo is of trav, one of the GASSies, running after the car, as we drive off. He'd just been to the bus to say byes to a few people, and check that the person we'd just ferried to the bus (going a little faster than we should have, with chase music courtesy of Run Lola Run booming) was ok. We couldn't be bothered waiting, so drove off. Got a good laugh.

And Harry Potter. I may not have able to convince everyone it's an allegory of mythic Greek and Roman standards, but it was certainly a good read. If only I can now find someone who thinks it was bad, that'd be a be great conversation. Any takers?

Mossy

wreaking havoc

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 08:57:00 EDT

Hehe.

GASS had it's annual Melbourne Day yesterday, as we introduced this year's batch of German exchange students and Australian hosts to Melbourne ... after having made the pilgrimage out to the airport for 5:45am on Monday morning to meet them, with our spunky new banner.

Altough the day was poorly attended by older GASSies (I blame Mailie, the other Social Coordinator, as it obviously couldn't have been my fault :D), it was a hoot as we sent the hosts and Stipis around Melbourne's CBD taking photos and doing crazy things. Some of the highlights included:
- being given a real signed statutory declaration informing me that the police approved our scav hunters to "look out for crooks"
- getting the above people thrown out of Coles for balancing pizzas on their heads (they were supposedly a security threat).
- meeting "Todd," a random stranger that one group brought to meet me to get extra points
- having people shave their arms for Tim Tams
- Getting photos of groups protesting for Kangaroo rights on the steps of Parliament
- Being given a job offer as a Mannequin by a clothing store.

And then of course, the footy was great - the Hawks thumped the Western Bulldogs by 71 points, the Germans' looked confused while watching their first game of AFL live, and the crowd dushed up the usual array of "white maggot" related comments (about the umpiring).

Quite a fun day, all in all. Just a pity I can't join them all in Albury this week for the annual Winter Camp, instead i'll be busily working on getting the VCEnet site up and ready for the launch in the next few weeks.

Peace, Mossy

Creating Conversation

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 09:28:00 EDT

As part of Drug Action Week here in Australia, Boroondara City Council teamed up with other local councils and the Victorian Education Department to develop a series of fora on Young People, Alcohol and Parents.

The focus for tonights forum was on youth action; the session was facilitated by the Boroondara Youth Reference Group as a series of workshop style activites that aimed to engage to parents on issues of awareness, communication and harm minimisation.

It was a fantastic demonstration that young people can be involved in such events not as token participants, but as active leaders.

And gee, what a poorly written update. I must be tired.

... and relax!

Sat, 21 Jun 2003 07:05:00 EDT

Fantastic. Exams are over.

The essays on Global Inequalities and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy I didn't mind, they were quite interesting in fact. The 3 hour statistics exam where I forgot my calculator, hadn't been to half the lectures and didn't have the textbooks ... let's just say I'm glad it's over and I'm condfident of a pass. And the two hour exam for Behavioural Neuroscience that capped it all off yesterday, what a buzz! 120 multiple choice questions, all of them hard.

So now it's all over for another semester, what's left? What to do for the next seven weeks?

Catching up I think. Doing all the things I meant to do in April, but never quite got around to. And, of course, committing. Seven weeks should give me plenty of time to find yet more people doing yet more amazing stuff to get interested in; I'm pumped already.

In fact, it's started.

- Meeting on monday with the founder of VCEnet, Daniel Dobos. VCEnet is an amazing FREE service for disadvantaged senior secondary students in Victoria to get advice and tutoring on matters year 12. He's got some heavyweight local backers (the Age newspaper, Monash and RMIT universities), and in two years has actively serviced over 8000 students.

- Part of a team running an Expo/Fourm on Drug Alcohol issues on Thursday. It's a young-person driven event, run by the Boroondara Youth Reference Group for the parents in the local area, giving some first hand perspectives on drug and alcohol issues and harm minimisation.

- Went to an interesting forum run by YACvic on Wednesday (when I should have been studying). Called 'Bringing in the Bacon' it was a chacne for young people and the youth sector to hear frist hand from some of the main funding bodies for youth initiatives in the state. Representatives from the Reichstein Foundation, Telstra Foundation, Foundation for Young Australians and the Myer Foundation addressed a packed out room of over 200 at the Melbourne Town Hall. (type any of their names into google to get the addresses)

- GASS has a new logo ... or at least it will once we've sorted out the paperwork. It's likely to look like the image shown above. And, if I get everything done as I'm supposed to, we'll have a 2 x 0.8 m banner made up with the new logo in time for the arrival of this year's batch of exchange students on June 30.

- The trials and tribulations of the OTG soccer club continue. Partly, I reckon, because I got dropped to the seconds after having a bad game and takign a week off to head down to Anglesea to go on a leadership camp. Oh well. The seniors continue their up-and-down form, performing well against the top team last week, but still losing 4-0, and playing only relatively well against the bottom team the week before and caning them 18-0. The big win was helpful though, it distracted everyone from the mistakes I made in catering for the post-game function.

At this point, I realise I've probably written a lot, (not as much as Jedimike though), so it's best to come to a close with the words of NSW Premier Bob Carr on the international linkup between 11 countries on "What the World Thinks of America", regarding his hypothetical 15 seconds with George W Bush

"Slash America's use of fossil fuels and sign the Kyoto. Go down in history as the world's greatest conservationist"

Peace, Mossy

Still not studying

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 09:39:00 EDT

Hehe ... in the latest atttempt to avoid studying the hippocampal system or writing an essay on temporal lobe epilepsy, I've done a bit of interior redecoration on the page.

I was looking to juxtapose the environmental theme for June with the harsh realities of my biting (what, I'll leave up to you) commentary and updates, leaving the reader relaxed yet at the same time intruiged by the innocent words in white.

Or maybe I just like the colour Oxfam have on their walls at their offices in Fitzroy.

And, in yet another round of self-glorifcation I changed my header picture, so I can now feature four of my fave photos snapped in the past months; although this does mean that the mysterious sunglasses image has vanished, leaving the TIG community, bar Scott and a few others, no idea what I look like!

Well, that's been a productive hour or so, must be time for bed ... plenty of time to study tomorrow

Mossy