It will come as no surprise to those that know me that I have been swallowed whole by the vortex of not only Jim Groom‘s Digital Storytelling 106 course, but its off-shoot creation, #DS106radio: …a free form live streaming station that has been setup for this course, and it is being used as a platform […]
Read more "#DS106Radio, 4Life"As TALONS facilitators, Ms. Mulder and I try not to make teacher-centered lectures and lessons too often the focus of our daily use of class time, preferring instead to use our common time and space for shared communication and collaborative problem solving based around many aspects of the class’ current learning. Especially in the spring […]
Read more "Talons' "Focus Time""My sister saw this poem scrawled on a wall in Saskatoon in the summer of 2010, and shared it with us when she got back. I copied it down and carried it around in a journal for a few months before turning it into this song: Graffiti Grafitti by Bryanjack
Read more "Saskatchewan Street Poetry"In brainstorming a way to synthesize the myriad tangents and threads being pursued in our recent study of rebellion and revolution in Egypt, as well as 1860s Manitoba, I wound up writing what began as a challenge to myself, and the Talons, to boil down the human affinity for stories of power, rebellion and freedom, […]
Read more "Tell this story."I know teachers tend to throw out mixed messages, “Be open, share. Be careful, be scared.” This could be an authentic real world experience to create something beautiful with a larger group of people than those within our immediate community. (I invite other teachers to share this Flickr set and this post to see where […]
Read more "Sharing in whim"A few weeks ago, I wrote: I would also be interested in establishing a school learning community that values face-to-face dialogue, debate, and experiential, first-hand learning for students and teachers alike. If we are to ask that our students are committed to the present moment of their current learning, why shouldn’t we expect the same […]
Read more "A Week without Technology"Busking captured by cellphone. As even the devil might need an advocate from time to time, I thought I’d offer a few points in support of delaying the rounding up of the school’s cell phones and putting the kids who use them in camps where they might better concentrate. An unfortunate wordplay that evokes a […]
Read more "Essay as Blogpost: Cellphones in the Classroom"“… a creature that seemed more at home in a myth or fairy tale: a spruce tree with golden needles.” The TALONS classes have been beginning their study of English, Socials and Science with the Governor General Award Winning Golden Spruce, by John Vaillant, and begun their blogging year with a host of introductory blog […]
Read more "The TALONS meet the Golden Spruce"As a means of dusting off the blog after a long summer’s nap, I’ve embedded a collection of my Flickr photos from the last few months spent kayaking, concert-going, camping, hiking, and otherwise enjoying the peaks of a Pacific Coast summer. Above you’ll find the fruits of trips paddling in Port Moody’s Burrard Inlet, camping […]
Read more "A Summer in Pictures"After a few days of waiting to see what all the fuss was about, I finally saw Google’s Superbowl commercial. I had read Ira’s account of the narrative based in a series of Google searches, and was intrigued by the charm of the commercial is in its brisk, simple rendering of narrative through the universal […]
Read more "Parisian Love"