I like when a project allows a student to share their talents. This is my daughter Katie’s project on the Muscular System (in French). I had fun helping her put together the video, but what I really enjoyed was watching her spend days working on the lyrics. I think Katie is the only one doing a […]
Category: Pedegogy
How do you know when students are learning?
Yesterday after school I was in the hallway at Inquiry Hub, talking to a student about an idea he is launching with one of our teachers, iHub Talks. These talks, organized by students, will be presentations on diverse topics aimed to have appeal to a variety of students and community members. During the hallway conversation […]
Getting it right
When you work in a small, innovative school, you are always looking at the things that still need to be done. To use a sailing analogy, you are constantly tacking and maneuvering to adjust to the changing winds. This is easier to do in a ‘small ship’ and is often required to be done more […]
Teaching is dead, long live the teacher!
Teaching is dead, long live the teacher! Technology is creeping into every classroom. I say ‘creeping’ because a large part of a typical student’s day at many schools can still be defined by activities involving paper, a pen or pencils, and worksheets or textbooks… Useful tools that should only have a small role in teaching […]
Community, Relationships and Rhizomatic Learning
I’m at the BC Digital Learning Conference in Burnaby BC. Yesterday I went to the pre-conference session ‘Beyond DL (Part 1) Emerging Models Integrating Distributed Learning in BC Schools’, a panel discussion with: Verena Roberts, Jeff Stewart, Brad Hutchinson, Dean Coder, Bruce Weitzel, Karen Flello, moderated by Randy LaBonte. A common theme inspired by Verena was the […]
The 2015 CEA Ken Spencer Award goes to Inquiry Hub
The Canadian Education Association's 2015 Ken Spencer Award has awarded Inquiry Hub Secondary School with first place. This is a great honour for our school, in just its 3rd year! Special thanks goes to teacher John Sarte who oversaw the application process. Special thanks also goes to our parent community, and of course our students […]
Invisible Technology
Technology should be present but ‘invisible’. When we pick up a pen or pencil, we don’t call it a ‘pencil activity’, the same goes for any other technology. Blogging isn’t blogging, it’s conversing, editing, creative writing, expository writing, journalism, reflection, presenting, and so much more… As I have shared before, it is not the tool, […]
Transforming Our Learning Metaphors #yvrignite
I made a sound recording of the presentation that I did at the Discovery Education YVR Ignite Session yesterday, and then I added the recording to my timed slides. This was an inspiring event, thank you to Dean Shareski for organizing it and providing me with the honour of presenting. I’ll have more to blog […]
Not Yet Blended Learning
There is a lot of talk these days about Blended Learning. However: “Increasing student opportunities to engage with technology — such as teachers using flipped classroom strategies, a school computer lab, and computers using digital curriculum in the classroom – are all steps in the right direction, but don’t meet the full potential of blended […]
Renaissance Revival
A couple weeks ago, I received an invite to a ‘Renaissance Fair‘ at a neighbouring Middle School. It was an honour to be invited, since the reason for the invite was that they based the fair on the model Don Gordon wrote about in the paper I linked to above. It was an even greater […]