I’m a big fan of BYOL – Bring Your Own Laptop to school. The laptop is the new pencil… a tool necessary for an effective education today. I also think that a district-provided laptop, in public education, is not financially feasible. However, supporting families that can not afford to send their child to school with […]
Category: digital native
Drinking from a fire hose
The Setting I’ve been very unplugged for a few months. First I was busy with my move from China back to BC, Canada. Then I was truly unplugged on a trip to England and France, then I started work immediately upon return. I love my job as Vice Principal of Open Learning with the Learning Innovations […]
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Who are your friends? Digitally vs face-to-face.
“…this ‘friend as co-learner’ role is not an automatic thing for students… It is a learned thing, and something we need to help students with. Schools are ideal places for this!” Many friends have inspired me to write blog posts in the last year. I’d guess that if you went back over any given year’s […]
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Transformative or just flashy educational tools?
There are a couple tools out now that I see bantered around in educational circles that I just hate! And there are some pretty awesome tools out there that are being used in rather old and traditional ways, and I don’t hate the tool, but I hate the use of them. With any tool, I’m […]
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First Day of School 2010 – a Google Search Story
I had some fun this morning creating a Google Search Story. The tag line (description) for this video is, “If you are just looking for activity worksheets, then you are missing the point!” I took advantage of my own high search-ability to do a little self-promotion in the search results, but the link that shows […]
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Parenting in the digital age
Three weeks ago I did a couple presentations to parents about Parenting In the Digital Age: This FREE workshop is for parents, both the tech savvy and the less technically inclined, who would like to develop family expectations around the use of technology to play, learn and connect. For this presentation I created a wiki: […]
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Leadership in the digital age
This was sent to me by a good friend and mentor, (and a leader in his district). It refers to news about my school moving to a BYO Laptop program. The humour in it is that he lives in Canada and I’m in China… beyond that it speaks volumes about how important school level leadership […]
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Bring Your Own Laptop to School
Background In the past two weeks I’ve moved from a school with just 3 projectors in a 4 floor, (no wireless), school to a school with: • Projectors in every classroom (that we will be using next school year). • Netbooks for every teacher. • Wireless in key rooms and common areas. AND… • Beginning […]
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Choose Your Battle
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 […]
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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 […]
