This Week in Ontario Edublogs

This is the last school Friday of 2012.  Ontario Educators will be taking a well deserved break – it’s been a long fall with plenty of challenges.  Thankfully, the blogging continued.

Non-Extreme Makeover. Blog Edition.

I enjoy reading people’s sharing of their technology problem solving.  It helps me understand the problem solving and steps that they took to try and fix things.  It’s this sort of transparent sharing that’s so helpful for others who might be experiencing the same things.

This week Colin Jagoe wrote a couple of posts about his experiences upgrading his self-hosted WordPress blog.  It’s a good read.  I have my own self-hosted blog but it was done more for the experience of setting it up.  I use the free WordPress version for my own for a number of reasons.  I may make the other one home some day and it’s help like this that’s so helpful.  Thanks, Colin.

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WRDSB Student Voice

You hear so often claims about listening to student voice.  You need to ask the questions – are you legitimately listening?  – are you going to change practice because of it?

Mark Carbone, in a recent post, described the listening process put in place in Waterloo.  He describes a good interaction with the student trustee group.

Even more importantly, there’s a section about What’s Next?  That’s an important followup to this.  Nicely done.

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How I Lesson Plan

I had to smile at the content of Scott Kemp’s recent post.  He described his thinking about “The Bus Syndrome”.

I had a superintendent once that asked the same question of me.  How would we carry on if you got hit by a bus?  I assumed that it wasn’t just hope on his part but that he was concerned about continuity.  It reaffirms the need for documenting everything which I’ve always done.  Actually, probably overdone.  Sometimes it’s difficult to find anything.

Scott outlines nine questions that would be good for any teacher to ask of her/himself.

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The Power of Hand-Writing

Another post that struck just a little too close to me.  When I was in secondary school, I had beautiful handwriting.  At university, it turned to scribble.  As a computer science teacher, I would print on a chalkboard or overhead as we developed solutions to make it student-readable.  Later, I became the master of word processing, desktop publishing, electronics – presentations, blogs, Twitter, etc.  I’m reminded annually when it comes time to do the Christmas Cards and I have to figure out which end of the pen is up, that I don’t write all that often and when I do, it’s horrible.

Rodd Lucier shared an interesting Vlog about his own thoughts.

Now, having beat myself up with this, my favourite notetaking pen is my LiveScribe device so I do take manual notes at times.  I just opened a notebook for a peek.  Uh oh.  I print my notes.  It does beg the question though – is it important that I don’t handwrite much anymore?

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Our 21st Century Classroom

Mind Share Learning supports the use of electronics with its Video Challenge and Aviva Dunsiger’s students created an entry.

The video knocks down the school walls and gives us a look at what her students consider to be their 21st Century Classroom.  The kids are great and they’re using the technical terms correctly.  The video is worth viewing at least twice.  First time through, focus on the kids and the message.  The second time through, pay attention to just the technology.  There doesn’t seem to be a shortage of opportunities for the students.

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Great offerings this week, folks.  Thanks for sharing them.  You can read the individual blog posts at the links above or the entire Ontario Edublog collection at the LiveBinder site or the Scoopit! site.

If you’re an Ontario Edublogger and your blog is not listed there, please consider adding it using the form.  Even if you’re not blogging, use the form to add your Twitter handle to the list of Ontario Educators.  Your thoughts just might end up in “The Best of Ontario Educators Daily“.

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