Inquiry Hub Secondary School – Confluence and Influence

The following was written to be shared as part of our application to the Cmolik Prize for the Enhancement of Public Education in BC. It is an exploration into the ways in which our model has ‘fit’ nicely with the new BC Curriculum, and to share some of the influence that we have had in our […]

Critical Questions

I was recently at my first ISTE Conference, and more than any session that I attended, what I really loved was connecting face-to-face with amazing educators that I only ever get to connect with online. These are amazing people! Some I’ve met once or twice before, but others, like Kathleen McClaskey, Barbara Bray and Shelly […]

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 […]

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 Inquiry Hub – Bright Ideas Gallery

On his personal blog, Greg Miyanaga wrote this on a post about innovation: For the last eighteen months, I have been investigating innovation in my school district. I interview teachers who are trying interesting things in their classrooms. Greg is losing this part-time position due to some budget cuts that, in my opinion, have completely […]

Inquiry Hub – Rethink Learning

Here is the slide presentation from our Inquiry Hub Information Session on January 22nd, 2013. Inquiry Hub – Rethink Learning from David Truss My favourite part of the presentation was the Question period when I was able to defer questions to our students that presented with us. It speaks volumes when you think that these […]

DM101-Footprint

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 […]

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 […]

Blurred Identity Lines

*My principle, Stephen Whiffin, often refers to the “Blurring of lines between living and learning,” and it is from this quote that the title of this post comes from. If I were to sum this post up on Twitter I’d say, (in 140 characters), “Although we share different things in different places, we are who […]