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 […]

SUPER TAGS and TAG WEEDERS: It’s time for blog tags to grow up!

SUPER TAGS Call them Super Tags, Übertags, meta tags, tagging tags, umbrella tags, call them what you will but I WANT THEM! I did a little search on Technorati, so is it K-12_Online, K-12Online, K12Online, or K12OnlineConference? I haven’t even considered the year yet k12Online06… The fact is that some of these searches are similar, […]

Portal Needed to Connect Classrooms to the World: Global Citizens can Share Talents and Skills with Students

Originally posted: February 21st, 2007 [Update: Fieldfindr on Ning-October 3rd, 2007] Here is an idea that has been brewing in my mind for a while: FieldFindr A space where teachers can meet global citizens who have skills that they are willing to contribute to a class. Teachers can find people in a field of interest […]

Promoting a Spirit of Inquiry

Introduction I have just spent my 2nd of 3 days with Bruce Wellman of Mira Via in a Pro-D session tittled Developing & Facilitating Collaborative Groups. The first session had a focus on facilitating groups and my personal learning focus centered around two main ideas: 1. Being deliberate about when we use Discussion and when […]

ASK [for help] and Ye Shall Receive, SEEK [the right questions] and Ye Shall Find [the right answers].

On Tuesday I got to hear Chris Kennedy speak. He is a principal, teacher and somewhat of an unofficial district technology guru. His main message: “It isn’t about the Technology!” Good teaching practice transcends the use of technology. What technology can do is: create new ways to use and improve your skills as a teacher; […]

Online Connectivism Conference: Healthy Discord

I have been participating in this on-line conference for the last few days (or rather nights!) This is the introduction to the conference that convinced me to participate: “The evolution of teaching and learning is accelerated with technology. After several decades of duplicating classroom functionality with technology, new opportunities now exist to alter the spaces […]