Sometimes our best moments come from “winging” it. This is another example. We follow the Covey Model at our school. It makes sense for our demographic. What I mean is we focus on student leadership and making good choices. We feel there are no bad kids, just good kids making bad choices because of external […]
I had some great conversation this week around assessment and what the heck that looks like anymore. There is much confusion but seems to be some agreement that the days of large quantities of marks are passed and that testing should not be the be all and end all. As a matter of fact – between #TTOG (Teachers […]
We had our first snowfall here last week in southern Ontario. It was nothing like Buffalo, but enough to make driving problematic. Fortunately, our infamous snowplow folks had the school’s parking lot shovelled by the time staff were arriving so parking wasn’t an issue – kudos to you! However, something looked funny out back. Like really […]
I always argue that we are 14 years into the 21st century so why do we still use that term when describing teachers, students, technology and tools. A great argument as far as I am concerned. Then someone brought to my attention that every grade 8 in our building was born in 2000 or 2001. […]
Today we are learning to: identify and extend patterns use algebra to describe pattern rules represent relationships using a table of values Let me introduce our Minecraft project. I cannot take credit for this. Thanks to my grade 8 student Isaac, we have developed a pretty cool “game”. Using Minecraft students are creating and extending […]
BYOD is cool in my books. The problem arises when we focus solely on the app or device. That is to say I used to live by the best app first, then the curriculum. I’ve grown over the years and realize the curriculum task determines the app – or apps to use – and not […]
What a week. With the exception of a few hours on Friday, I haven’t been home since Tuesday morning. Don’t get me wrong, that isn’t a complaint. My head is spinning though with excitement and inspiration. #bit14 was awesome, like always. Rumours had the total audience at around 1550 teachers from all over the country. […]
Which better describes you as an educator? The Sex Pistols or The Clash. What I mean to ask is, are you a “punk” leader? Do you follow all of the rules and regulations outlined by the powers beyond? Do you still make decisions based on fear? Do you punish the entire group because you found […]
Nkwiry is a social bookmarking website for schools. In its infancy stage, nkwiry provides a safe place for teachers and students to curate the web for the best content and share with each other. It is live now and fully functional, but there is still much work to do. www.nkwiry.com. Collaboration is a 21st century […]
Curriculum, data, marks, feedback or the learning process? I am a firm believer in PBL – Problem or Project Based Learning. It’s a beautiful world down in kindergarten. Students full of joy, full of curiosity. And then it fades. We have conducted a gazillion surveys to students that all say the same – I begin […]
It’s an exciting week! Niagara Falls is about to get bombarded by over a thousand progressive educators who are excited to share their expertise and wisdom with the group. If you have never been before, this conference is a game-changer. It’s like an edcamp on steroids. One of those events where you feel like you […]
Below is just another example of using coding to support numeracy. Two girls, yes I said girls, coded this app to solve some of the repetitive problems required in our 2D Measurement strand. What is great about this process is how the students had to understand and apply the relationships and formulas before they could […]
PhotoMath came across my Zite feed today and I jumped at the chance to read the article with my students, in the moment – they then wrote opinion blogs on the thought of an app doing their ‘homework’. I had a hunch it was the app I have been looking for – and predicted a […]
Evey kid should learn to code because it teaches you how to think. -Steve Jobs Yesterday I had a bit of a flashback. Our VP’s niece is currently studying Physics at Laurentian University whre it is mandatory for her to take a Java programming course. I am happy to hear that ‘real’ computer science is […]
App Smashing: A Definition … The art of imaginatively using multiple apps to create an enhanced project. There are no limitations here peeps … let your mind (and your students minds) soar! I’ve been feeling quite inspired lately. I account some of that to my role on our TLLP project of helping others with technology. […]
Factors and multiples. A very important mathematics concept. Understanding how to determine factors and multiples is a unique skill. There are divisibility rules for numbers ending in 0, 5, 2 etc. There is the sum of the digits rule. This week we took these practices to the next step. When it was evident we (as […]
I first heard of Kahoot from @MmeM27 who teaches French at our school. She was using it to teach French vocabulary in a very engaging manner. I noticed she had placed face images as questions and the students had to determine the appropriate emotion. Impressive. I immediately saw a connection to my math program. Our […]
One of the benefits of an LMS like Google Classroom is that is tracks student progress on your behalf. Yesterday I put this to the test in a little experiment to see if my students were checking our Google Classroom without being prompted. What is interesting about this situation is the assignment I posted was […]
I read a short article this weekend about the possibility of schools letting teachers operate the direction based on consensus of staff. Not just about classroom decisions, but budgets and even hiring. It’s a unique idea and there is a video here from PBS: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/09/what-if-teachers-were-charged-with-setting-school-direction/ I thought about this for a while this weekend. Although […]
Sorry I lied. This post is not a list. People like lists though so I thought I’d piggy back the concept. I have a bizarre sense of humour. To be honest, I didn’t have a title. It’s back to school time as noted by every article in my zite feed. I’ve read countless lists this […]
Are you an educator? Are you a student? Are you constantly on the look for an engaging video to reassure a concept with your students? Are you a student looking for a video clip to help your studies? Using this service, you can search once and get results from multiple sources like teachertube, schooltube, howcast […]
With September just around the corner, I want to share the latest on these tool web tools I have been working on over the last year or so. I’ve been busy adding, editing and debugging…. scrawlar (www.scrawlar.com) is a web based (html5) word processor and whiteboard. What this means is that students can write, edit, […]
