“… 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"The TALONS have spent the last year with students – and teachers – adopting the use of individual student blogs, publishing writing and other media for projects and self-initiated posts to the public web in growing leaps and bounds. What at first was not without its tough-sell moments – encouraging young learners over the barrier […]
Read more "TALONS Launch class blog, continue Defying Normality"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 […]
Read more "This American Life"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"I told one of my friends’ parents about TED about a year and a half ago, and have since heard him tell various groups of people that “if you participate in no other mental exercise during the course of a week, spend twenty minutes to watch these things called TED Talks…” Regardless of whether or […]
Read more "Five TED Talks I watched during Spring Break"On Tuesday afternoon, a group of TALONS students had the opportunity to visit a classroom at the University of Regina. Professor of Educational Technology Dr. Alec Couros extended an opportunity for classrooms to connect to his, via Skype, so that his class of student-teachers could gain first hand responses to their questions about the use […]
Read more "The TALONS meet Alec Couros, via Skype"Ksan, British Columbia One of the surprises of last year’s socials units was the TALONS class‘ foray into publishing with Wikibooks. After more than a year spent within the confines of our district’s SharePoint Wikis and discussion boards, Wikibooks offered our first opportunity to publish and participate in a global dialogue of meaning, history, and […]
Read more "WikiBooks Publishing Project"The class’ blog feed swelled this weekend with a range of posts (and comments) on everything from our city buses, to the recent Olympics, to novel study reflections and in-depth updates. At a concert Friday night and skiing Saturday, it wasn’t until Sunday (after a late breakfast over which a friend and I (correctly) picked […]
Read more "A Rash of Ravishing Student Blog Posts"A few weeks ago Jan Smith invited me to participate in Dr. Alec Couros‘ presentation to British Columbia School District #71’s pro-d session. Figuring a trip up island would be a long shot on the first weekend of a new semester, I told her I would surely join the proceedings however I might be able, […]
Read more "Alec Couros in Comox"Brian Kuhn has shared an opportunity with me that offers another means of our class – and others who might find this post – entering into the discourse on shaping the future of education. To echo Andrew B. Watt’s call for students to enter the EduBlogosphere and tell us how we’re doing, this project – […]
Read more "Ten Big Questions for Education"