Choose your position: Are you a gatekeeper, policemen, guard… or teacher? All these jobs are necessary, but which one belongs in schools? Choose your battle: Filters that also filter learning -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Banning POD’s -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Teaching without technology -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Make no mistake, having […]
Author: David Truss
A Culture of Caring
At our school we have a little rhyme that we say to remember three big ideas that make a school a great place to be. The saying is simply: Care, Share, Dare. So what does this mean to us? To Care – In a school we need to care first for ourselves, our well-being and […]
Great things in the classroom
Here is a little tribute I shared with my staff at our staff meeting today. I took 3 or 4 of the photos last week, and then yesterday I visited classes and took the rest. It seems that whenever I talk to my staff the conversation is always about the things we need to do […]
iPads are for iConsumers
I’ve been thinking about writing about the iPad since I saw this image a few months back: Today I commented on a great post by Ira Socol ‘Welcome iPad and Web 1.5‘ and I said, “I’m a huge Mac fan, but I have no interest in a bigger version of my iPhone that isn’t a […]
My 4th blogiversary – Reflections and Appreciation
Wow – 4 years! At the time of publishing this: 171 Post (including this one), 627 Comments (since moving my blog to davidtruss.com 2 years ago), 736 RSS Subscribers, and over 28,000 Visits (in my 4th year). To me the numbers are staggering in that I really started this just for me. But the sharing […]
Shifting Learning
When I wrote Shifting Education, I had already outlined this post in my head. It was going to be a diatribe on how learning needs to shift away from the front of the room, the teacher, and into the hands and the minds of the learner. But I’ve written time & again & again about […]
The Role of a Principal
(You probably won’t find these in a job description, though you should!) – Hand-holder – Zipper-fixer – Tear-wiper – Peace-maker – Pants-buttoner – Ball-retriever – Nose-wiper – First-aider – Firm-talker – Cheer-leader – Toy-mender – Toy-confiscator – Mouth-wiper – Rule-implementer – Ice-provider – Argument-settler – Wrapper-opener – Photo-taker – Hallway-monitor – Coat-zipper – Skip-rope-holder – […]
Product You
I won’t bore you with the stats, we all know that we are bombarded with advertising everywhere we look. We also know that we are being targeted better and better by advertisers wanting to part us from our money. When I was on Yahoo Mail, I was always targeted by my last name: Truss… So, […]
Teachers as Lead Learners
One of my favourite sayings these days is: ‘Teachers should be the lead learners in the classroom.’ I think that if a teacher goes into a class believing first and foremost that they are ‘model learners’ and that they will learn with their students, then that teacher will create a meaningful and engaging learning environment […]
Warning! We Filter Websites at School
I’m at a Canadian School in China. At a staff meeting I shared a thoughtful blog post by a student reporter for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. It’s a great post by a student that went and visited ‘Tent City’, built to house the city’s homeless during the Olympics: Olympic Games Side Effects on Vancouver. My […]