What Did You Learn at School Today – Parent Presentation

Here is the ‘Parent’ version of my #RSCON presentation: Shifting Learning – What Did You Learn at School Today? I did this presentation just a couple days before the Reform Symposium and it really is similar… Shorter, and with questions at the end geared more to parents than teachers, but essentially the same presentation. You […]

Shifting-Learning-What-Did-You-Learn-4-Educators-Cover-Image

Shifting Learning – Presentation for RSCON4

Shifting Learning  – What Did You Learn At School Today? We hear a lot these days about project based learning, inquiry based learning, etc… What does that mean? What does it look like when schools shift away from “drill and kill” learning towards big ideas, questions, and “no right answer” kind of learning? And what […]

Learning and Failure

  Failure can be very unproductive. It can stem from a lack of effort, resources, support, knowledge, and reflection. Failure can also be an amazing tool for learning, and perhaps one that every student should experience before graduation. Stephen Whiffin, who conceptualized the Inquiry Hub, suggested that every student should have ‘My Epic Failure’ as […]

The Points of Inquiry_ A Framework for Information Literacy and the 21st-Century Learner - Barbara Stripling - BCTLA

A framework for inquiry

On Monday at the Inquiry Hub, when students come to school this Points of Inquiry image is going to be in all classrooms and learning spaces. Here is where the image comes from: The Points of Inquiry – A Framework for Information Literacy and the 21st-Century Learner – BCTLA. In year two at the iHub, […]

Classroom Management Cartoon

Behaviour Modification

Last year I wrote Classes of Donkeys, about a tool called ‘Class Dojo’. Just recently Karen Langdon wrote Thinking About Classroom Dojo – Why Not Just Tase Your Kids Instead? It basically approaches the same concerns I have, but from a different angle… and it adds further value by suggesting alternative approaches to dealing with […]

Perpetual Beta

A while back, I wrote that best practice is still just practice. Teaching is a practice. We practice teaching. We have an obligation to do our best, but that will ultimately change as we… practice. If we want to apply ‘best practice’ to teaching, then we need to look at ourselves as role model learners. […]

Risk and Reward

I've been reading Seth Godin's Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, and he wrote this: How to be Wrong: “The secret of being wrong isn’t to avoid being wrong! The secret is being willing to be wrong. The secret is realizing that wrong isn’t fatal. The only thing that makes people and organizations great […]

Positively Memidemic

Dean Shareski started it! (And that's a good thing.) In his post It’s Not Really PD, Dean says about the (mis)use of the term 'Professional Development' ('PD') to describe an event: “I guess we butcher our language all the time. Using the word “awesome” to describe a great sandwich as well as the beauty of […]

Looking Back

It’s just after 6am on my last day of work before summer, and I’m in a Starbucks having a coffee. I had to drop my daughter to her synchronized swimming practice and decided to just wake up a little early and head to school. Only after getting my coffee did I realize that the school […]

What's falling of the back of your truck?

Leadership and Capacity

“I’ve come to realize that I’m not the only one that wishes I had more capacity to do the things I really want to do as a leader.” I said that on a post about Leadership and Management back in October. Two weeks ago, as my school year for the Inquiry Hub was coming to […]