This post marks the fiftieth such publication on this blog, a milestone I couldn’t conceive of almost ten months ago when I awkwardly began this endeavor by compiling a (far-too) exhaustive best-of-web installment and publishing it against an all-black backdrop that infuriated many of my early readers. Since then my posts have ranged from the […]
Read more "Blogosphere turns Fifty (posts)!"With a handful of our grade tens offering thoughtful reflective posts on the turning of a new year, I have been thinking the last few days about the dawn of 2010. It seems as though I have been headed here in my mind for some time. I can remember standing on the pool deck at […]
Read more "A New Year (…and my love of teaching grammar)"Today is the first true day of my holiday, as I lay in bed until ten before slowly preparing coffee and a light breakfast before settling down to lazily catch up with my digital goings on. There are still presents to make, or piece together from stops at the mall or other local shops, and […]
Read more "Holiday Reflections"A huge thanks to Jeff Utecht, Dave Truss, Dean Shareski and Yoon Soo Lim for helping at various times to help crystalize this process. We’re getting there! The following was much simplified and stated in this form by Jeff Utecht, who also supplied the mp3 below. The Mission: Here’s an idea for a wave: In […]
Read more "Don’t Stop Believing (in Santa Claus): Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it"International Musical Collaboration, Anyone? I continually find it interesting which songs become “the Songs” in my Intro to Guitar course. Composed of grades nine-through-eleven students, the class of thirty students represents every walk of life in our suburban highschool: choir and band kids adding to their repotoire of musical genius, athletes and academic high achievers […]
Read more "Don't Stop Believing (in Santa Claus)"My sister showed me a quote from David W. Orr she came across during an Environmental Education course this summer. When study is meaningful, the subject is often not what is learned. The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but mastery of one’s person. Subject matter is simply a tool. Much as […]
Read more "David W. Orr's "Goal of Education""Friends of mine, Ian MacKenzie and Sean Aiken, have put their lack of direction to good use – and a good cause – with their One Week Job project. One Week Job: The Documentary from Ian MacKenzie on Vimeo. “Instead of take the first job that came along, he found a unique way of figuring […]
Read more "One Week Job"Apparently when one is X-rayed while swollen – as one might be within 24 hours of being struck with an eruption of propane tank – the additional soft tissue can cloud the clarity of the image. And so we have this new panorex, taken Friday morning in Kitselano, which prompted my dentist to say something […]
Read more "The Life & Hard Times of My Lower Jaw"After a busy weekend I finally have a minute to share an experience with the sheer logistical aid offered by social networks – chiefly blogs and Twitter – during one student’s journey in writing her eminent person speech on Margret Rey, author of the Curious George books. During our conference last week concerning her plans […]
Read more "If a student asks a question in a classroom, how many people hear it?"It’s taken a while for me to begin to see the extent of what Mr. Dave Truss is getting at here, but it’s beginning to happen.
Read more ""Why I Blog. Why Blog with Students?""