Another Friday and I struggle to come up with yet another way to say “Great Reading”. Writer’s block – so just read on.
If you need to read one “feel good” blog post this week, then this is the one from Eva Thompson.
I remember my first job and my principal pulling me aside periodically and checking to see how things were going. I’ll never forget one of his pieces of advice “Choose your colleagues wisely – they’ll make or break your career”.
Check out this excerpt from Eva’s post.
Eva shares a wonderful personal story about a relationship in her professional career. Read her post and see if you can’t recognize that colleague on your staff. Or, even better, go out of your way to be that person for someone else.
Inquiry Overload – Ideas, Resources and Tips to Start Your Own Classroom Inquiry
Kristen Wideen is a big supporter of the Inquiry Process and has obviously thought long and hard about what it might look like and how it will play out in her classroom. In this rather lengthy post, she talks about how she plays out inquiry in her classroom. Of particular interest to me was the blend of technology and non-technology activities for the students.
I thought the reminder of ways to get answers to questions was great and could see it taking a prominent place in her classroom. The comparison between then and now was great. You can almost hear the brainstorming and ideas flowing!
From a technology point of view, I was pleased to see her students using Padlet, one of my favourite easy to use, easy to leverage tools.
There’s no “what if” to this post. It’s packed with real examples and images from her classroom. This is a great post to share with teachers at your school.
An Educational Debate: 10 Progressive vs. Traditional Teaching Ideas by @mraspinall
OK, so a traditional debate has at least two combatants. Brian Aspinall debates himself over the questions “Am I A Progressive Teacher” and “Am I A Traditional Teacher”?
He identifies the following as traditional traits.
and then goes on to counter each of the points in what he calls progressive traits. I won’t spoil the post for you. Challenge each of these points and see where he lands.
IMO, I don’t think that you can be all-in on either side of things. Check out Brian’s post to see where he thinks he fits.
I think it would be an interesting exercise for him to align himself with a true peer coach to help him with the answers.
David Fife takes the time to review Brian Aspinall’s Scrawlar HTML5 application. I reviewed it myself in this post. “A First Look at Scrawlar“.
In today’s world of “there’s an app for everything”, Scrawlar sits on the web, does not require student emails for access, and as I’ve said before, offers just enough features to make it attractive for student use. We’ve all experienced life when you have way too many options available to confuse the writing process. Siiiiiirrrrrr. (You really can’t do a diphthong in print)
Read David’s post for his thoughts.
In a true BYOD environment, my personal opinion is that you can’t go far wrong if you elect to use Scrawlar for word processing, collaboration, brainstorming, notetaking, outlining, you name it.
Check out these posts at the links given above and all of the great Ontario Edublogs at the Livebinder here.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.