Ido-Portal-Teacher-Quote-On-Pairadimes

Teaching comes with great power

Many attribute the quote: “With great power comes great responsibility” to Spiderman or more specifically his Uncle Ben. Stan Lee wrote the comic, and originally it showed up in a narrative caption. Actually before that, Winston Churchill said, “Where there is great power there is great responsibility…” and even before that: In 1817, member of British parliament […]

Podcasting Pair-a-Dimes 1 – With Wes Fryer at Unplugd12

  Description: The very first Podcasting Pair-a-Dimes with Wes Fryer, recorded at #Unplugd12. In this episode, Wes shares some great podcasting tools, then we discuss digital media and digital design, badges, and creating those ‘Ah-ha’ moments in classrooms out of the interaction and creation of openly shared content. Show notes: (Listen Now!) • Wes Fryer: […]

Standards and Standardization

This image was inspired by Janet Abercrombie’s post Are We Confusing Standards with Standardization? Specifically the section: Clarification 3 If we agree that instructional standardization is unnecessary, we can maintain creativity and passion in a standards-based classroom. But we need to make a few paradigm shifts. Specifically, Look at the standards before we look textbooks or think […]

Caring across the curriculum

Caring across the curriculum Sometimes I get tired of seeing the school day broken into subject-matter based courses. We don’t teach subjects we teach students, and students of all ages engage in a real life that matters across individual fields of study. Watch the video* Miniature Earth: How many different ‘subjects’ can we teach with […]

The Pedagogy of Play

Dumbfounded by the trite and appalling approach, I did not keep a link to an article I read last week where some American schools were taking away the toys in primary classrooms until test scores improved. Are we in the buiseness of ‘measuring’ or ‘learning‘? Last week I went to a Professional Development session on […]

Digital immigrants or digital natives? A discussion of digital competence… A spectrum, not a dichotomy!

Amy Capelle has started a very interesting discussion in Ning’s Classroom2.0 She asks, “Are they really digital natives?” The discussion there is great! Here is my response: – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – […]

Marking What Counts and Reporting on Report Cards

“Just because something can be counted, doesn’t mean it counts, and just because something is difficult to count, doesn’t mean it doesn’t count.” Subbaraman Iyer In my first year of teaching, another first year teacher on my team, Ken Andrews, designed a marking system for Humanities (English and Social Studies combined). In his system students […]