Kelly Christopherson has put out an invitation to join a book club. For those of you who have not visited Kelly yet, his blog Educational Discourse is a blog from the trenches. He is a Principal who also teaches and coaches. Kelly’s blog posts are not only thoughtful and insightful, they are written with a […]
Category: pairadimes
Promoting a Spirit of Inquiry
Introduction I have just spent my 2nd of 3 days with Bruce Wellman of Mira Via in a Pro-D session tittled Developing & Facilitating Collaborative Groups. The first session had a focus on facilitating groups and my personal learning focus centered around two main ideas: 1. Being deliberate about when we use Discussion and when […]
Share:
ASK [for help] and Ye Shall Receive, SEEK [the right questions] and Ye Shall Find [the right answers].
On Tuesday I got to hear Chris Kennedy speak. He is a principal, teacher and somewhat of an unofficial district technology guru. His main message: “It isn’t about the Technology!” Good teaching practice transcends the use of technology. What technology can do is: create new ways to use and improve your skills as a teacher; […]
Share:
“The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids”
How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise. A Feature in the The New York Times, By Po Bronson. Thanks to Kris from Wandering Ink who sent me this link. I will let the article speak for itself: Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-grade classrooms. The researchers […]
Share:
Online Connectivism Conference: Healthy Discord
I have been participating in this on-line conference for the last few days (or rather nights!) This is the introduction to the conference that convinced me to participate: “The evolution of teaching and learning is accelerated with technology. After several decades of duplicating classroom functionality with technology, new opportunities now exist to alter the spaces […]
Share:
School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto
When I enter our learning space I will be prepared to learn, to participate, to engage, to discover, to play, to inquire, to create. We are all different. Our opinions are different. We all learn differently. Our learning will be differentiated. Respect makes all the difference. We are not all equal, but we must all […]
Share:
Learning Conversations
Learning Conversation_ Part I It was refreshing to hear Maureen Dockendorf, our staff development co-ordinator, (Director of Instruction), speak at our Building Leadership Capacity (BLC*) series introduction. She encouraged us to become ‘intellectual companions’ that enter into ‘learning conversations’. The part I liked most about her talk was the direction of the conversation. She spoke […]
Share:
Articulate Your Thinking… (an e-mail correspondence)
In my last post about my Numeracy Tasks Pro-D session with Peter Liljedahl, I mentioned an e-mail I wrote almost 3 years ago. I dug up that e-mail and found an interesting ‘conversation’ between Gary Kern and I. My comments are after the e-mails. – – – – – From:David Sent:May 10, 2004 9:55 PM […]
Share:
Numeracy & Problem Solving: Process Producibles
Math Professional Development day with Peter Liljedahl: Two sessions 1. Exploring Producibles: Getting the Genie Back in the Bottle. 2. Assessing Numeracy: How do you Photograph the Wind? One of my goals for this year is to make Professional Development Days more useful. Too often I gather great information from a session and then ‘file’ […]
Share:
Sharing and Engaging: Web 2-point-0h-Yeah!
An antithesis to my last post, “Acceptance of Mediocrity, Web 2-point-oh-oh!” Well, actually more of an ‘alternate spin’ on web2.0 than an ‘antithesis’. I must admit to seeing an element of accepting mediocrity in some students that concerns me. An example of this is the quality of work that students believe is satisfactory to hand […]
