The Thirty Person Rock Band

Among the more ambitious spontaneous projects I’ve attempted as a teacher, the 30 Person Rock Band project came out of a conversation with my guitar class about what our next endeavour should be: songwriting, another recording of individual or group progress, a performance, or… something a little bigger. Something we’ll discover as we go, together. […]

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Poetry is Nothing

A few weeks ago I saw a post by my “Internet-twin” Jabiz Raisdana that included a few photos and a poem beginning, Poetry is Nothing… Poetry is nothing… – Based on a poem by Jabiz Raisdana by Bryanjack As I’ve had inspiration to do a few times before, I took Jabiz’ lines and picked up […]

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Consensus in the Classroom

One of the interesting aspects of the #Occupy movement for me is the General Assembly driving the decision-making and ideology of the groups gathering in cities around the world. Modeled on non-violent means of protest as old as civil disobedience itself, the General Assembly operates on an egalitarian process of generating consensus that I can’t […]

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TALONS Class Blogging 2011 – 2012

Linked from the TALONS Blogging page on this site. As a personal professional development and learning tool, I began this blog during the spring of 2009 as a means of connecting to the web and the world in the most personalized manner possible. After experimenting with Twitter, Delicious, and an English Department blog at work, […]

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Liam’s English Final as documentary film: On Education

Though almost two months old, Liam’s English 11 Final Project – any substantial meditation and communication of a unique theme of the learner’s choice – is a compelling contribution of ‘student-voice’ in the conversation of education reform. Liam’s skills of research and storytelling, as well as argument and presentation are particularly on display throughout, as […]

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This American Life

Sitting down to recast an updated listing of the RSS feeds, Twitter favourites, and podcasts I make a habit of perusing on a daily weekly monthly basis, I would be remiss to not isolate one of these sources of infotainment above the others — the unparallelled public radio institution that in all honesty, I cannot […]

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