Josey De Rossi

Hello, I’m Dr Josey De Rossi. I’m the director of Fantastic Learning Systems which I’ve based on my work for the past twenty years as a curriculum writer and researcher. In that time, I’ve written seven textbooks and countless curriculum resources, including official curriculum framework documents at a State and National level. As a result of all that hands-on experience, I believe that writing curriculum materials online holds a special challenge for busy school leaders and teachers. Not only do principals and their staff today have to deal with the usual complexities of language and grammar, now they have to understand that communicating through multimedia on the internet is critically important too. Consequently, I began investigating the role of a school-based curriculum writer ‘in residence’ service through which I wanted to help schools build confidence in using educational media with pedagogical flair. My ideas are the result of three years of visiting a school with an international reputation for curriculum reform. In that time, I was able to see, for instance, how much the school’s ‘pedagogical stories’ through the principal’s writing about the school reforms, together with interviews of classroom teachers and conversations with students were essential to the well-being of the whole school community to continue in its important work.