Last month I was honoured to be interviewed on Corey Engstrom’s Teacher Tech Trails. Near the end of the podcast, I mentioned the ‘greatest’ injustices that we tend to do in more traditional schools and classrooms to three different kinds of students. While I would question my choice of the word ‘greatest’, I think these […]
Category: School2.0
Creating the time and space for self-directed, personalized, inquiry learning.
Background (Part 1 – Purpose) The following image and description were created for an application for an award. ‘Assignments’ like this are great because they force us (teachers John Sarte, Alan Soiseth and myself) to think about what it is we value, and strive towards as we build our program at Inquiry Hub Secondary School. […]
3 Questions Before Supporting Innovation
1. Is this best for students and their learning? 2. Is this scalable? 3. Are you willing to share? In a conversation with my good friend, Dave Sands, we were talking about the challenge of investing in systematic change vs supporting the outliers (and the Lone Wolves). There will always be limited resources to work with, and […]
Relevance Amplifies Learning
Last year two grade 11 students, Josh & Brandon, started creating an app using iBeacon technology to help our teachers take attendance. A year later, that app is not completed, it probably won’t be completed any time soon, and yet this is one of a number of very successful projects that happened last year. The plan […]
Solving Interesting Problems
What interesting problems have you posed to students recently? What interesting problems have students asked you? Yesterday I was listening to Tim Ferriss interview Seth Godin on his 4 Hour Work Week podcast: ‘How Seth Godin Manages His Life — Rules, Principles, and Obsessions’. When I got to this quote, I noted the time on the show […]
Transforming Our Classrooms – Ignite Presentation
Here is an Ignite presentation that I did in Delta on January 2oth, 2016, titled ‘Transforming Our Classrooms’. It is based on the presentation ‘7 Ways to Transform Your Classroom‘, but squeezed into less than 5 minutes, after I describe what our team has been working on at Inquiry Hub Secondary School over the last three and […]
Projects that let students share their talents
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 […]
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 […]
YELL – Young Entrepreneurship Leadership Launchpad Venture Challenge
The Young Entrepreneurship Leadership Launchpad (YELL) Venture Challenge – 2 day finals were held on May 1st and 2nd, 2015. From the Event Brochure: Welcome to the 2nd Annual YELL Venture Challenge! The YELL Venture Challenge is intended to simulate the real-world process of entrepreneurs soliciting start-up funds from early-stage investors and venture capital firms. […]