I’ve been writing this series of posts for a long time now. Check the URL above to see how many times it’s been duplicated. I never get tired of doing it so here goes – some great content from Ontario Edubloggers this past week.
The Fabulous World of Mr. Fred
No matter how much I read, I still get excited when I find another new, excellent blog post to read. I’ve been asked – how do you find these blogs?
Certainly, in a multitude of ways – there’s no easy algorithm. I found this blog with a usual dose of serendipity. In this case, Helen Kubiw had retweeted a Twitter message that I had posted. I checked her bio, saw the link to her blog, and the rest as they say is history.
The blog title really says it all. “CanLit for LittleCanadians”. The blog is devoted to reviews and promotion of Canadian authors so that’s a natural for me to gravitate to.
If you haven’t already, share the link with your literacy and teacher-librarian friends. Check out her list of recent entries – this isn’t a fly by night blog. It’s a definite bookmark for Canadian literature.
This might not be an easy post to read if you’ve sipped the juice from the big cloud providing services. Tim King points out that there was a time when companies had to pay for advertising. Now with distinguished, certified, exemplary handles, teachers are doing the advertising for them. Tim shares his thoughts about the other side of cloud computing in schools. You probably won’t agree with it all but I’ll bet you say “hmmmmm”.
Jocelyn Schmidt describes a game she’s using in her Full Day Kindergarten class. The mathematician in me loves it. Of course, everything is purposeful.
For students to build upon their subitizing (the ability to recognize the number of objects at a glance, without having to count all the objects), one-to-one correspondence (each object being counted must be given one count and only one count. The number word spoken and the object counted must match up), and conservation (the count of the object stays the same whether spread out or close together) skills in a hands-on and engaging way!
Complete instructions about the game, including some wonderful pictures of the activity (and not of the students) are contained in the post. Any activity that is inspiration in mathematics and allows students to gain confidence in their abilities is great. If this applies to you, check out her post.
Seymour Papert – 1972 – MIT Mathematician, Computer Scientist, and Educator
These days a lot of people have discovered Seymour Papert. Brian Aspinall ends his short post with this question…
Why did it take so long to become “trendy” today?
That’s generated quite a bit of discussion and I might write a blog post about it sometime in the future.
I’m not sure that “trendy” is the best word to use to describe his efforts. It seems to me that it is all dependent upon the circles that one keeps her/himself in. There have been a lot of people doing a lot of great things for years now.
Mindstorms: Children, Computers, And Powerful Ideas should be in every school’s professional library and required reading for the modern day prophets…
My daily shot of inspiration comes from the morning posts from Paul Cornies. He constantly outdoes himself. Today’s quote was terrific although I had to MT it because of length before resharing.
Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. ~Lou Holtz
This is one of those quotes that apply to everyone.
What a way to start the day. I can’t say it enough – thanks, Paul.
From Heather Durnin, a story that makes you appreciate the special things that teachers do. It was a snow day but a student got delivered to school for a day of learning.
We all know that this can be a precious time of 1:1 or small group learning. In Heather’s room, not only was it a chance to get caught up, but to build some self-esteem. Read Heather’s full post to see how a student goes from “I suck at computers” to a day that Heather describes as a gift.
What another nice collection of works to extend our professional thinking. Please follow the links to the original posts and check them out. A little blogging love like a “+1”, “like”, “thumbs up”, “comment”, “share” goes a long way to show your appreciation for the efforts and thoughts that go into the production of these posts. Check out these and all of the great Ontario Edubloggers I’ve found so far – here.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.