Getting to know us! (Mark & Josh)



Catching a bit of snow at Cradle Mountain!
Originally hailing from the UK where I taught Maths at a Senior Secondary College in Salford, I am now an Australian Citizen and have been living and working in Tasmania since arriving in January 2012.
I spent several very happy and productive years at Don College as a Maths Teacher, Area Leader and AST - before moving to Curriculum Services as Principal Education Officer: Curriculum and Standards.

I have spent the last 18 months developing new processes and protocols for Years 11&12 moderation, embedding formative assessment into Virtual Learning Environments, working with the DoE, Catholic and Independent sectors and the Office of TASC to help develop and quality assure around sixty new Years 11&12 courses for use in 2017 and 2018 and have provided professional learning to more than 300 Tasmanian teachers, ASTs, APs and Principals in the areas of moderation, quality assessment practices, audit and formative assessment.
I am married to a native Tasmanian (hence the move in 2012!) and have three wonderful children (Henry 7, Alice 6 and William 1.) I play squash, watch films, record music and enjoy travelling and exploring the state of Tasmania and the world beyond whenever possible.

I have a keen interest in the power of formative assessment to transform teaching, engage students and raise outcomes - and in the power of blended learning to enable us to reach and engage Tasmanian learners anytime, anywhere. I am very excited about the opportunity that the Hardie fellowship is providing me to investigate these two areas further in the USA this year!

Mark

Josh with family at Melbourne Zoo
I have been a Mathematics/Science teacher in a diverse range of schools for 15 years, including 5 years in remote Northern Territory locations.  I returned to Tasmania in 2013 and commenced teaching Senior Secondary subjects at Don College in the State’s NW.  I am currently based at Launceston College, leading the Mathematics Learning Area.
It was in the NT, who have a long history with ‘schools of the air’ and ‘open education’ that I developed a keen interest in online learning.   I found Learning Management Systems fascinating, along with the use of videos, interactive objects/animations, quizzes and collaborative activities to engage the online student and direct learning processes.  ‘Flipping’ and ‘blending’ the classroom were also intriguing concepts.  Anytime/anywhere access and adjusting the mix of synchronous with asynchronous delivery, autonomous/self-paced with teacher-directed learning.  Alongside all of this – and of critical importance - was the user-experience and instructional design principles.
Ever since my time in the Territory I have sought to develop online resources of one kind or another to complement and augment the delivery of my live lessons.  I have led others to do likewise and encouraged the use of Learning Management Systems and online tools to achieve various teaching and learning goals.
There is a lot to learn about online learning.  How do you build connectedness in the online space – with the teacher and with other students?  How does a student know what to do next?  How do you motivate students to learn?  What role could the emerging technology of Virtual Reality play?  How do you harness the power of online tools to create online learning spaces and sequences that have ‘app like’ ease-of-use, clean aesthetics and are measurably effective? 

I hope to explore these questions and more as I begin this inquiry, seeing and experiencing best-practice in this field, consulting with experts and feeding back findings – with the overarching intent of improving student outcomes.  Looking forward to what I might learn!

Josh

Comments

  1. Hi Mark,
    Enjoy your travels. I will look forward to reading about your discoveries and learnings.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks very much Grant - looking forward to it very much - appreciate the support!

    ReplyDelete

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