Luckily enough, I was able to meet this author, Liz Arney, when I was on a research trip in San Francisco visiting innovative schools up and down the Bay Area. Liz made time to meet with both Justin Medved and I to explain her organization’s approach to finding schools that are innovative and finding ways to…
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I’m already thinking about coming back in January, and continuing to cultivate growth mindsets throughout my school. I’ve talked about my school being a Learning Organization, and how many of us have adopted Twitter to help grow our thinking and PLN (#BVGLearns). In fact, it was a colleague, Matt Clark, who posted on Twitter (@mattclark…
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One of the most provocative things I was told was to “sell your Smartboards, and buy 3D printers!” (Richard Byrne at the ECOO conference keynote address), and I’ve been exploring this idea ever since…big time! Reading, researching, attending the Toronto Maker-Faire, and visiting MakeLab in Toronto. I’ve discovered some incredible things about 3D printing: 1) The…
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How can I help? What do you need? Where do your students need support? These are the questions I ask my teachers, and myself, everyday. A technology coach is part leader, part follower, part IT, part EdT, but certainly all “learner”. In a recent White Paper, entitled “Technology, Coaching & Community”, the issue of awareness…
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How did my school go from almost ZERO twitter connections, to being part of a CIS Ontario-wide movement to connect on Twitter with other schools across disciplines and grades? What started as zero twitter chatter within my school, grew quickly to over 15 teachers, either starting new with Twitter or repositioning their Tweets to connect…
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After reading the article that Allison Harding pointed us to, I can’t help but think of the invisible refrigerator analogy and subsequent discussion that we had about the role of Edtech in education, schools, and our classroom. The article that Allison posted is entitled “Our tools shape us.” So I wanted to try and square…
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I was thrilled to be the keynote speaker at FIRST Lego League‘s Kick off event – hosted by my school at Bayview Glen – this past Saturday. The project mission this year is to: “create something that will help people learn better.” FIRST Lego League is accomplishing this already by its very strucutre – it…
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I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, reading and exploring about educational leadership over the summer in preparation for my new role as Director of Teaching and Learning. There are some things that I really want to make sure I make habits of mind. The first is to be a Learning Leader. For me,…
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As a history teacher, I love when I can align what I’ve learned about the past with what is happening in today’s world. We call this continuity and change – the ability to tie a thread of an idea, an event, or happening, from then to now. Today, I heard the incredible story of Mozart…
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These past two weeks have been a prime time for Educonferences – there was a great one at St. Clements in Toronto, The Klingenstein Summer program in Lawrenceville, and of course the ISTE 2014. But I was at none of them…or was I? I have colleagues who attended each of these conferences, and we were…
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