With my ears still ringing from one of our program’s cultural outings, this one a benefit concert put on by local bands – including TALONS ’09 alumni Jeff Huggins’ band the Knots – at Centennial Secondary, organized by grade ten student, Kiko, I am compelled to report on a few highlights in the class’ interview […]
Read more "The Interviews Take Flight"As mentioned earlier on this blog, students in our program have traditionally encountered difficulty attaining interviews with experts during our annual autumn Eminent Person study – as well as establishing mentorships in the spring’s In-Depth study. To combat this trend, this year the class enlisted parent volunteers to act as “practice” interview subjects. The topic […]
Read more "It Takes a Village"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 […]
Read more "Two Coquitlam Teachers: Sixty Blogs"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 […]
Read more "Keeping up with the TALONS"Time and again I have confirmed my assumptions that asking kindly generally grants one access to opportunities normally beyond their reach. Stating my intentions clearly, and declaring myself a passionate and self-directed person, I have found repeatedly that people are willing to help out if the request is framed appropriately. An example: A few years […]
Read more "Access and Interviews (a story & some tips)"This week our English & Socials classes begin this year’s effort in networked learning, and have spent the last week co-ordinating and connecting accounts on Delicious, Twitter & Google Reader. Now we begin. We are starting by casting RSS nets to cull and sort information relating to the subjects covered in our class: English 9, […]
Read more "RSS Subscriptions for English & Socials 9/10"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 […]
Read more "A New Blogging Year"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 […]
Read more "Oudoor Networks"The great challenge of the new age of information, where the “total amount of digital information will double every eleven hours,” will be that of sifting through waves of minutia to locate and be in touch with what is relevant to each individual. This affects not only our classrooms — in that web-literacy will enable students […]
Read more "Building a Personal Learning Network"