Dear Fraser Institute, You SUCK! In fairness I am telling you this on the basis of a single observation. One salient point. That’s all I need. I am basing this judgement on my own narrow area of interest, but it is one that is important to me, and it is one that is way too […]
Category: learning
Hargreaves and the 4th Way
After reading The Fourth Way article in Educational Leadership/October 2008, by Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, I’ve been trying to apply personal meaning to this new way. The 4th Way has five Pillars of Purpose, three Principals of Professionalism and four Catalysts of Coherence. But I think The 4th way rests firmly on just one […]
Get Off Your Butt
Is your computer being used to teach, to distract, or to promote learning? If you are reading this while you have a class in session, get off your buttocks. If you are e-mailing while you have a class in session, move your rump. If you are planning your next lesson and you have a class […]
Facing Facebook
Some people say ‘kids will be kids’… Some adults have never forgotten what it felt like to be a victim. What happens when adults are not present? Sometimes kids do things they shouldn’t do. Sometimes kids make choices based on what their friends do rather than on what they know is the right thing to […]
A Brave New World-Wide-Web! (The video version)
It is finally done! I had planned on first showing my video version of A Brave New World-Wide-Web Slideshow in Boston at BLC08. I did it on Mac Powerpoint and it did not convert easily to video… it wouldn’t even convert to PC Powerpoint without the timing messing up! I spent hours on this! I […]
1-to-1 presentation
A year ago I went to see my friends Dave Sands and Brian Kuhn presenting to parents that were part of a 1-1 (one laptop per child) pilot program at a Middle School. Little did I know that I’d be moved to that same school as the Vice Principal in February, and that I’d be […]
By Design: Please keep the toilet seat in the upright position!
[This post is about questioning why we do what we do, so that we can do things in new, better ways. It specifically looks at design, differentiated instruction and assessment.] I’m going to flush out an idea here and maybe even start a movement! 😉 If you want to sit on a dry toilet seat, […]
Lessons from 100 Weddings
Yesterday I photographed my 100th wedding. Fourteen years ago I photographed a friend’s wedding and my cousin saw the photos. He asked me to take his wedding pictures and with two wedding under my belt, I had an album to show around. I never advertised, and got all my referrals from weddings I photographed and […]
Great Expectations
Yesterday I had coffee with Heidi Hass Gable, our new District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) President, and blogger at “I was thinking…“. I suggested to her that she watch Lost Generation while we were discussing some well thought out ideas she shared with me about nothing less than the purpose of education. Here is the […]
Are You a Catalyst for Change?
It is now a month after BLC08 and a recent comment has stirred up some thoughts that sent me back to a blog draft I wrote months ago. On Defragging my brain after BLC08, Angela Kerns mentioned that of my nine ‘take-aways’, #3 and #4 resonated with her: 3. Face-to-face meetings with your network are […]