Technology

Two Coquitlam Teachers: Sixty Blogs

This year I have been entering the classroom-blogosphere alongside Paul Aitken, who as a district middle school humanities teacher had a hand in bringing along a few of the students who found their way into the high school gifted program I teach. Through Twitter, our blogs, and even – occaisionally, when nothing else will seem […]

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Classroom Doors, Open to the World

In keeping an ongoing record of our class’ experiment in becoming globally connected and networking learners (teachers most humbly included), I will be occasionally sharing examples of student blogs along the lines of various assignments as a means of both celebrating and sharing exemplars of student blogs and writing, as well as inviting the reaches […]

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Keeping up with the TALONS

And these paintings are not landscape paintings. Because there aren’t any landscapes up there, not in the old, tidy European sense, with a gentle hill, a curving river, a cottage, a mountain in the background, a golden evening sky. Instead there’s a tangle, a receding maze, in which you can become lost almost as soon […]

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The Ethic of the Link

Hyperlinked writing is the most powerful form of writing. So begins Wesley Fryer’s excellent (linked) post in defense of the importance of learning to write using hyperlinks. Citing Shelly Blake-Plock’s hosting of the talk by Jay Rosen, entitled The Ethic of the Link. Check it out: When I first started using Wikis in my classes […]

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A New Blogging Year

In an effort to more fully implement the philosophy of our two-year gifted program (grade nine & ten) and its discovery-based interdisciplinary appraoch to study, I began thinking – months ago, even – about ways to integrate Personal Learning Networks and social media into the English and Socials curriculum. With a history textbook that is more than […]

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The Human Problem with Elevators

Last week I was in an elevator with a young couple, and was thinking about the nature of human interaction in confined spaces. Evidently I’m not the only one who is given to such thoughts, as the following can attest: Elevators are relatively recent inventions, but the social challenges they pose are nothing new. Close proximity […]

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Oudoor Networks

I spent the better part of last week in the woods. With my teaching partner and our 27 students – one left behind to combat continued health issues – and my youngest sister in tow, we left school just after 6:30 Thursday morning and made our way with the help of assorted parent-drivers and a U-Haul to the […]

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