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A fierce conversation with self
As I start another year, I again ask myself what I want to achieve (personally and professionally), how I'm going to measure it and what I may have to change in order to get there."Reflection is the...
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ICT: The potential to transform learning
Technology such as a "smart phone" has transformed our access to information and the ways we communicate with others. Smart phones are simply a part of our lives, for better and worse.Technology has...
View ArticleChange me?
Even when I’m all by myself, my mind is keeping me company, constantly chattering away about one thing or another, a constant stream of positive and negative chatter. It is hard to be alone. Even when...
View ArticleLasting Impressions
(I've joined Digital Writing Month and intend to create a text for each day of November. I'll start with written words only...)When students start complaining about another teacher I ask them what they...
View ArticleBuilding Innovation Capacity
We need a culture where "Why am I learning this?" and "When am I ever going to use this?" are seldom heard. Instead, we should be hearing, "I wonder if I could...?" and "What would happen if I...?" and...
View ArticleFrom Teacher to Learner and Learner to Teacher
#157204335 / gettyimages.comIn the first year of exploring student-initiated, interest-based learning, one student in particular stood out. He was a student who struggled to make it to grade 10. He...
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A Moment in a Day of The Learning Project
Here is a glimpse of what a moment in The Learning Project looks like during part of my day. Always interesting.
View ArticleChallenging Learning
I had a conversation with two "A" grade 11 students last week about learning. I was inquiring about their current interests and future plans. Once again, I was confronted with a typical narrative.The...
View ArticleDetermining the self for the benefit of others
If I'm to lead students in a self-determining learning environment, then I too, as an educator, must have a self-determining mindset.What does that mean? To be self-determining is to view learning as a...
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To grade or to degrade, it shouldn't be a question
Having just watched this video and learned that 2 > 4 (pause and watch it), it made me think about how we need to listen to what students say about grades. In the video, I saw a snippet of how the...
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Why the try-one-new-thing-in-your-classroom is not enough
“Fundamental change, or incremental improvement; the question is not so much which is right, but rather why has there been so little discussion about the question?” Semour PapertAn educator goes to a...
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Meeting a Good Soul on St. Patrick's Day
I had an awesome first-time conversation with a colleague today who has worked in the same division, in another school fifteen minutes from my school. There are those special moments in life when you...
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My students keep teaching me how to learn
I'm a big fan of learning. Not recipe, linear learning, like here are a bunch of things you should know even if you don't want to and here is the order to learn them in, I like the learning that starts...
View ArticleA new learning story of growth
I’ve always had a strong desire to make learning relevant to my students. When I lectured about a novel for almost an hour, I clearly failed, but I learned and I got better at teaching. I was the...
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Gearing up for #rhizo15
Dave Cormier posted this comment on Facebook, which got a good chat going:The concern, is that last year there were some tensions, some feelings of exclusion or lack of inclusion, conflicts I was...
View ArticleYou don't know what you don't know
Ignorance is underrated. Too often we can feel threatened when we are in the presence of others who know things that we don't know that we perhaps wish we knew or think that we should have known.So we...
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Making collaborative learning waves
Our small, rural 7-12 school (220 students) has gotten serious about shifting the way we teach and the way students learn. We met as a staff last Friday to share and discuss our questions about the...
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Why I became a teacher
Inspired to reflect on why I became a teacher from #EDUin30W5 started by George Couros on Twitter, I am revisiting a grad address I gave in 2005.In my second year at the high school, the grade 12 class...
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Yup. Let's stop pretending.
I'm taking up Scott Mcleod's challenge to #makeschooldifferent in collaboration with a grade 10 student, Adam. We believe that when it comes to education, we need to stop pretendingthat we need classes...
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Rhizomatic incitations
Context: #rhizo15 From Dave Cormier: How do we design our own or others' learning when we don’t know where we are going? How does that free us up? What can we get done with subjectives that can’t be...
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