Parenting in the digital age

Three weeks ago I did a couple presentations to parents about Parenting In the Digital Age: This FREE workshop is for parents, both the tech savvy and the less technically inclined, who would like to develop family expectations around the use of technology to play, learn and connect. For this presentation I created a wiki: […]

Bring Your Own Laptop to School

Background In the past two weeks I’ve moved from a school with just 3 projectors in a 4 floor, (no wireless), school to a school with: • Projectors in every classroom (that we will be using next school year). • Netbooks for every teacher. • Wireless in key rooms and common areas. AND… • Beginning […]

Math can be beautiful!

It can also be oversimplified and boring and taught very poorly. A boy rides his bicycle for 30 minutes and he travels 7.5 kilometers. How far can he travel in 3 hours? If you do the (simple) math, with the three basic pieces of information given- an oversimplified strategy many math books employ, you’ll see […]

Shifting Attitudes

Have you made the Shift? Are you an agent of change? Where do you fit? This is Part III of a 3 part series. When I started this series I had an outline that I only vaguely ended up following, but I knew from the start that what I wanted to say was too much […]

Choose Your Battle

Choose your position: Are you a gatekeeper, policemen, guard… or teacher? All these jobs are necessary, but which one belongs in schools? Choose your battle: Filters that also filter learning -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Banning POD’s -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Teaching without technology -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Make no mistake, having […]

Great things in the classroom

Here is a little tribute I shared with my staff at our staff meeting today. I took 3 or 4 of the photos last week, and then yesterday I visited classes and took the rest. It seems that whenever I talk to my staff the conversation is always about the things we need to do […]

Shifting Learning

When I wrote Shifting Education, I had already outlined this post in my head. It was going to be a diatribe on how learning needs to shift away from the front of the room, the teacher, and into the hands and the minds of the learner. But I’ve written time & again & again about […]

Teachers as Lead Learners

One of my favourite sayings these days is: ‘Teachers should be the lead learners in the classroom.’ I think that if a teacher goes into a class believing first and foremost that they are ‘model learners’ and that they will learn with their students, then that teacher will create a meaningful and engaging learning environment […]

Warning! We Filter Websites at School

I’m at a Canadian School in China. At a staff meeting I shared a thoughtful blog post by a student reporter for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. It’s a great post by a student that went and visited ‘Tent City’, built to house the city’s homeless during the Olympics: Olympic Games Side Effects on Vancouver. My […]

Google Buzz and George Costanza – Worlds Collide

In his weekly email newsletter, George Siemens wrote/quoted: This is one of the more insightful statements I’ve come across recently – What Google Could Learning From Goffman: “When we merge social groups together, we are challenged to manage our disclosures across these groups, which have different norms of propriety.” The social software I use regularly […]