Welcome to my weekly wander around the blog posts from Ontario Edubloggers. As always, there’s some terrific reading. For those of you who expected also to hear the Wednesday show on VoiceED Canada, Stephen is currently off the grid. We’ll return when he gets back on the grid in August.
A Mathematics Blueprint: Designing a Comprehensive Mathematics Program
Rochelle Tkach offers a nice post that nicely summarizes so many things about the curriculum designing process.
She ties it so well to Mathematics but certainly the principles apply in all areas.
Do we need to learn how to play?
There’s a great deal to think about in this post from Aviva Dunsiger. She reflects on the experience of people leaving her workshop that was first a post of hers that I talked about last week.
I Packed. I Came. I Shared. And Now I’m Left Wondering.
Both generated some nice discussions.
The big message in all of this is about participants indicating that they were through by leaving a session. I think that we need to respect people’s choices and decisions, even though they may not follow our expectations as to how things should end up.
I have to give Aviva credit for taking her thoughts online; it could have all kinds of different responses from people.
Even more important, in addition to her thoughts, there are a large collection of responses varying with all kinds of messages and support. These thoughts are truly gold and should help Aviva and others design the very best professional experiences.
Map Out Your Online Course
Continuing on the theme of planning and learning, I offer this post from Tracy Sherriff.
Her context is about an online course …
So where do you start? Well, I always tell my clients to start with creating a mind map. A mind map is really just a visual brain dump of all the things that you could teach about. You can create your mind map on paper or use the digital tool of your choice. Use colour and imagery to enhance your map. It’s actually quite fun!
… and that’s certainly her intent and it makes reading the post worthwhile.
But, what if you opened the door to other things?
Wouldn’t the same principles apply to designing professional learning experiences?
Differentiated Instruction: comparing 2 subjects
There’s differentiation, and then there’s differentiation. Are they different?
You may not have thought of it in those terms but Mark Chubb has and does in this post.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to meet the various needs of students in our classrooms lately. If we think about it, we are REALLY good at differentiated instruction in subjects like writing, yet, we struggle to do differentiated instruction well in subjects like math. Why is this???
The rest of the post will hopefully have you thinking differently about differentiation. Does one size truly fit all disciplines?
This is a very interesting post and there’s even more rich content in the replies.
Good Leaders Read…A Lot
Perhaps this is the litmus test to apply to those who would be leaders in your life and especially for yourself …
Sue Dunlop asserts that
Great leaders also always seek to improve. They want to learn and to get better. They’re never satisfied with good enough. Reading is part of that continuous improvement. How else can you explore new ideas and create new schema?
Here’s an idea.
For the first staff meeting at the end of August/first of September, instead of going around the room asking “How did you spend your summer holidays?” you ask the question “What did you read over the summer?”.
Don’t let your principal off the hook either.
What Does an Innovating Leader Look Like?
OK, so we’ve established that leaders read.
I challenged Paul McGuire to expand on his thoughts about leadership in education. And, he delivers in this post.
His perspective is as principal and one of his suggestions surrounds professional learning.
Teachers should be in control of their own learning, just as students need to be in control. Educators need to know that their voice matters and that the running of the school is a collective endeavour.
We’re all familiar with the Annual Learning Plan and hopefully, it’s not become a piece of lip service. Does the ALP allow for the type of growth that Paul describes?
It’s not an easy scenario to manage. On the one hand, you have to respect the wishes for teachers and their personal learning. On the other hand, you have the directives from the Board Office and the Ministry of Education.
How, indeed, does the Innovating Leader make it?
I’m going to continue to challenge Paul on this and have plans to write about my own thoughts. I think that this is a discussion that can only improve things among leaders.
Nudging the OneNote Staff Notebook Permissions
Long time Evernote user here. But, I’m giving OneNote another chance this summer. For me to learn how a new program works, I have to use it exclusively for as many tasks as possible and sometimes struggle when I hit a bump in the road. In addition, I try to read as much about it as possible.
Part of my morning reads include having a section on Flipboard devoted to OneNote and another very important part of my learning is reading Cal Armstrong’s blog when he shares his tips and trick about the software.
I see so many who use OneNote at such a cursory level. That would include me, I guess.
In this post, Cal takes us on a tutorial with Staff OneNotes and sharing workspaces.
The post is a good tutorial for how to set this up. If your school uses OneNote, you might want to take Cal’s post to heart and give it a shot. If it makes everyone more productive, winners all around!
Please take the time to click through and read all of these posts in their entirety. There’s great learning to be had.
Did you start or restart a blog this summer? Please add it to the Livebinder of Ontario Edublogs.
