A 2nd year teacher that I keep in touch with sent me an email yesterday: “Hey Dave! How do you feel about adding students as friends on Facebook? I use my Facebook mainly as a communication tool. I don’t put anything up that I wouldn’t want people to see. In the evening, my students have […]
Category: Learning Conversations
Openness and Acceptance, Mr Deng and his Allegories of Windows, Flies and Coloured Cats
We just completed a vacation in Xi’an, one of China’s oldest cities and the starting point for the silk road. The silk road was the first gateway to and from the Orient, it was the first real global link to the ‘Eastern’ countries of India and China. Trade of spices and silk, as well as […]
Blogs as Learning Spaces
Sue Waters, a friend who has always stepped up and helped me out with just about every request I have ever made to my PLN, sent me an email a couple nights ago. In it she said: I’ve been asked by some 4th year preservice students to put together a video on the value of […]
Variable Flow
No-Flow: I still don’t have Internet at home after a week. But from using my phone, I know that Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, WordPress blogs, and quite a few more sites are blocked here in Dalian. I think both Facebook and Twitter are newly blocked, this past June, as a pre-emptive move before the 20 year […]
The Rant, I Can’t, The Elephant and the Ant- On SlideShare
“I can do that without technology” -Actually no you can’t! Here is the Slideshare. The Rant, I Can’t, the Elephant, and the Ant View more presentations from David Truss. This was the presentation I first created for BLC08, and I wrote about it here. I’ve finally edited it for the web… a tedious task as […]
Learning in Louisiana
I had the opportunity to join a team from November Learning last week in Louisiana. Our fearless leader Jim Wenzloff, with GPS in hand, brought together Seth Bowers, Lainie Rowell, Howie DeBlasi and I, and set us up to present the world of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, PLN’s and other Web2.0 tools to groups of teachers […]
“Chasing the A”
86% That’s an ‘A’ for us here in my district. But what does it mean? As a Math teacher I’ve boosted an 84% up two points to hand out the often elusive ‘A’, and I’ve also adamantly refused to move an 85% up to that plateau. Because to me the mark should represent a level of comprehension […]
Collaboration, Contributors and a Comment on Classroom2.0
If you haven’t joined Classroom2.0 yet, do so. It is a great network of teachers, of many different technological competencies, all sharing and contributing questions and ideas. I went there this morning to find a link to a Mathcast that was happening, but I ended up reading a discussion thread started by John McCullough, which […]
Hargreaves and the 4th Way [Part 2]
I first wrote about Andy Hargreaves and the 4th Way back in October, (with an important update added to the bottom of the post in early November). The pyramid below is updated from that post, taking feedback from Hargreaves himself. Administrators from our district met and discussed The 4th Way last Thursday and we were […]
Black and White Education
When my grandfather was a teenager in the Ukraine, he played his accordion for the ‘moving pictures’. He was a member of the band that would play scripted music as damsels in distress were first tied to train tracks by villains, then rescued by heroes. The music the band played added life to the moving pictures […]