This actually happened “Five years and a few days ago”, (not 6 like I say in the video). And I got my answer in 8 minutes, not 12… But other than those minor errors, here is my ‘True Story of Connectedness‘: Why did I make a video to tell this story when it was already […]
Category: technology
Badges, Gaming, and Digital Media
I’ve been outspoken on the topic of adding rewards & incentives or ‘carrots‘ to courses and classroom management, and so it is rather unusual for me to be thinking about things like implementing badges. However, I’m very interested in using gaming strategies in education and I’m also interested in providing students with opportunities to […]
Applications of Digital Literacy
Applications of Digital Literacy is a course that I helped create for the Inquiry Hub. It is one of two courses principal Stephen Whiffin and I decided to develop as local board approved courses*, the other course is Foundations of Inquiry. Stephen humourously calls these ‘mandatory electives’ since we decided that these would be requisite […]
Challenging the status quo
Educational bloggers blogging about things that need to be changed… This isn’t a post to read from start to finish. Instead, pick a topic that may challenge the status quo in your school or district and dig in. Read, tweet, share, write your own post, comment… it is fodder for YOU to challenge the status […]
Classes of Donkeys
I read an article in Mind/Shift recently that really bothered me. It was the title that drew me in: “What Works in Tech Tools: Spotlight on ClassDojo“. I had already seen that ClassDojo was a behaviour management tool and thought, ‘Really? This is a tech tool that works?’ From the article: HOW IT WORKS Each […]
Leadership and Management
Part 1 I drew a rough draft of the image above in a leadership meeting with Tom Grant. Tom shared this quote on his blog, shortly after the meeting. “I can think of nothing so conspicuously missing in the effort to improve our schools as the continuous engagement of teachers and principals in constructing visions […]
7 Ways to Transform Your Classroom
I’m honoured to have been invited as a guest on Classroom 2.0 Live this Saturday morning, September 29th, 2012. I joined the Classroom2.0 Ning back in 2007, and I think it is a wonderful network to help new and seasoned teachers engage in a meaningful social network. [UPDATE: Here are audio & video recordings of […]
Digital Literacy, toothpaste and the Inquiry Hub
In February I got to help write a course called Applications of Digital Literacy. As Jill, from Staff development, and I sat down to get things started, we discussed the fact that really we were developing a course that would hopefully be redundant in 5 years… because students by then would be coming out of […]
Personalization and Responsibility
George Siemens wrote the Duplication theory of educational value about higher education, but I am going to share a quote from this with a couple adaptations for K-12 public education: “Let me posit a duplication theory of education value: if something can be duplicated with limited costs, it can’t serve as a value point for [public […]
Still sold on Laptops over iPads
I know that I’ve already expressed this view in my BYOL vs BYOD post, but here are two more reasons why I think laptops are the better way to go… I find that I’m using my iPad more and more, but for consuming information, not creating it. Reason (1) comes from a student, while reason […]