03. April 2017

Working in education and writing about a lot of innovative approaches to teaching, I often meet the ones who always find excuses rather than ways to implement innovation. The so-called naysayers. You will find a lot of them, especially in Austria. Being frustrated with the educational system or the funding of it, they will always be reluctant to find ways to implement innovation in the classroom. And it is almost always the same excuse: money. Granted, things are tough at times and a lot of...

13. März 2017

Working in education, we are bound to see the potential rather than what could go wrong. We see room for improvements and not the political battles to get there. We do not understand why anything that could enhance the pedagogical interaction would be too pricy. In a word, we are idealists as we should be. And idealism is needed more than anything right now. Especially in education. There are a lot of trends and new features which could and should be integrated in class and every respectable...

27. Februar 2017

A major challenge in education is the proper assessment of students. What do we assess and how? Do we focus on the students’ strengths or faults? Should we focus on motivation or weaknesses? Isn’t it funny: When a student gets the results back from a test, he or she seldom hears the teacher saying <<Congrats, you have 16 answers correct!>>. The teacher probably might be saying something like <<What a shame, you have four answers wrong!>> We are so focussed on...

08. Februar 2017

When talking about the digitalization in school, the voices of the skeptics are the loudest. Quite often, I bump into an article, a post or a personal conversation in which the voices of the doubters are very loud and the level of disbelief that technology is able to elevate education is high. To elevate the quality of education to be exact. They say, technology did not help at all in previous decades. Why is that and under which circumstances could technological evolutions succeed? A short...

30. Januar 2017

Every new technology led to the belief that the paradigm of education would shift entirely. Be it the radio, the television, recording material (e.g. video cassettes or the CD) and now the raise of ICT and the internet. But interestingly enough, educational approaches did not change as expected. Today, I would like to talk about the reasons for that and under which circumstances technical innovation could change education altogether.

01. Dezember 2016

How do we inspire young people to get into science? While its importance increases permanently, the popularity of science is still low. Mainly, due to the unawareness, young people do not know about the career opportunities in science. Science still has that geeky image that appeals to nerds most of the time. The societal role of science is immense as it provides answers to question we raise all the time. Every little invention, every great product we use, goes back to scientific discoveries....

10. Oktober 2016

Remember that crazy Austrian daredevil who jumped out of a high tech balloon at 38.969,8 meters of altitude? Four years ago that -main jump- took place. At the time, it was spectacular. Baumgartner made a sporting event out of that adventure. The longest base jump so to speak. Last week, a grammar school close to Vienna reproduced that jump. This time, no human being jumped out of the weather ballon, but the results were just as staggering. Students of the 4D class realized a project that they...

04. Oktober 2016

First of all, this article does not aim to criticize teachers. They do the best they can in educating our children. But people who work in education relate to this dilemma! We work our behinds off and try to make a positive impact on the students’ lives, yet we all feel that there is something missing. Fundamentally. We do not know what it is, but it seems like that the society we live in is changing so rapidly that it is hard to keep up. For political decision makers, for parents, for...