“Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an’ tho’ a cloud’s shape nor hue nor size don’t stay the same, it’s still a cloud an’ so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud’s blowed from or who the soul’ll be ‘morrow? Only Sonmi the east an’ the west an’ the compass an’ the […]
Read more "Emergent Citizenship: Curriculum in the Digital Age"This semester’s Socials 9 curriculum was conceived with an intention to cultivate critical literacy, which I have come to define more and more as an ability to develop a praxis of reflection and action to continually discover and define meaning in an increasingly complex system. In learning from curricula, relationships or experience, individuals and societies […]
Read more "Assessment for Critical Literacy"“…if educators wish to encourage the emergence of meaning in the classroom, then the meanings that emerge in classrooms cannot and should not be pre-determined before the ‘event’ of their emergence.” Deborah Osberg and Gert Biesta A conception of learning I have been exploring and experimenting with in the last year has been attempting to […]
Read more "Emergent Knowledge and Institutional Learning"As I’ve explored at some length here, I think of schools today as guided by our mission statements and legal mandates to pursue an ageless ideal of education along the lines of how John Dewey characterized schooling as the act of “preparing students for the adult vocations needed for society to continue to exist.” The question […]
Read more "On 21st Century Schools"“Design thinking asks students to become investigators in their world, attempt to solve problems, bridge gaps of knowledge independently, collaboratively, and resourcefully.” So decrees Lee-Ann Gray of the ability of Design Thinking to “make school more like real life.” Gray positions her view of schooling’s purpose clearly in her opening paragraphs, where she notes that, […]
Read more "Design Thinking as Critical Literacy"As part of my personal learning project in #TieGrad’s studies I’ve been guided in my efforts to frame my learning – as well as the intentionality of creating my classroom spaces – by delving into educational research surrounding topics of interest this semester. Aligning neatly with my opportunity this term to be teaching Philosophy 12 […]
Read more "Citizenship Learning and the Project of Enlightenment"I started blogging with the TALONS class (since expanded to two) a little more than four years ago. In that time I’ve learned a great deal about the capacity for such digital publishing tools to help realize aspects of the larger purpose of schooling; part of this has come through developing my own informal network […]
Read more "Blogs as Documents of Learning"A few of us from the #Tiegrad group met up on Sunday morning to talk about all sorts of things: project updates, questions, and frustrations, the nature of personalized learning and education in the ‘open,’ and the unique moment each of us finds ourselves in: presently at the intersection between teacher and learner. Even Valerie Irvine, […]
Read more "On Teaching and Learning"Given the way my own learning had unfolded this semester, it’s not surprising, perhaps, that I would be coming to identify (and experiment) with the idea of emergence in my classrooms and the extra-curricular projects I’ve undertaken. My goals of a month ago talked about my intentions: “to create […] space to reflect on this year’s […]
Read more "Social Media and Personalized Learning Project(s) Update"Discussable Object Photo Set on Flickr Today the #Philosophy12 bunch culminated a study of Metaphysics that has emerged slowly out of individual inquiry undertaken by members of the class. The group engaged one another in a discussion that left a recorded physical ‘tail‘ that could be seen, and held onto. Indeed, it was an ‘object‘ […]
Read more "Discussable Object Creation"