TED Talk: Stefana Broadbent & The Democratization of Intimacy

I couldn’t rightly follow the last mournful post concerning the demise of Vancouver’s Duthie Books with anything less than this heartwarming – and slightly political in inspiration – look at what technology has lent to what Stefana Broadbent calls the “democratization of intimacy.” As someone with a texting, emailing, (soon-to-be) video chatting mother, who lives […]

Sentence Diagramming & Grammar Resources

We began sentence diagramming today (truly, that is; we have been studying grammar in the TALONS class now for almost two weeks, but that was all groundwork for today). Hopefully this driest of units (grammar) will eventually become a competitive and illuminating investigation of language that will help frame our spring-push through the English 9, […]

Is Social Media a Fad?

I tend to side with bloggers like Dave Truss and Shelly Blake Plock, who see the advent of social media as a revolution in authorship that is transforming the way the world exchanges information. Whether politically, academically, or economically, information and access to it, and the ability to process it meaningfully – never mind the […]

Field Trip: Urban Geography & the Canadian Identity

Our students are faced with planning cultural outings over the course of the year that occasionally turn into full-fledged field trips. While other events are attended by handfuls of students – it is expected that each TALONS class member attends three cultural events – others take on such a pertinent range of learning opportunities, as […]

My students giggle during quizzes

Yesterday I gave my class a brief quiz to assess their knowledge of the parts of speech, as well as sentence parts. Twenty questions, multiple choice, during the grammar unit. This is not, they tell me, fun stuff. And I’ll admit that putting together their quiz the night before, trying to come up with examples […]

Blogosphere turns Fifty (posts)!

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 […]

A New Year (…and my love of teaching grammar)

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 […]

Don’t Stop Believing (in Santa Claus): Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept it

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 […]

Don't Stop Believing (in Santa Claus)

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 […]

David W. Orr's "Goal of Education"

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 […]

Simplicity of Cause

Musings on Modern Learning

education