It’s Friday and time for my weekly wrapup of some of the blog reading that I did this week for inspiration. Great stuff from Ontario Educators yet again. Please read on.
Professional Reading Favourites
It’s a brave educator that can clean out their bookshelf. After all, you never know when you’re going to need such and such. At least, that’s the excuse that I’ve always used. I’ve yet to find an educator who doesn’t have a bookshelf that has a mind of its own and just continues to grow. David Fife took on his bookshelf and shared with us some of the resources that have influenced his practice. Some interesting titles to check out.
Continuing on the theme of professional reading, Brenda Sherry shared some initial thoughts about the Ministry of Education’s Pedagogical Documentation document, a good read by itself. I liked the questions that she asked of her readers.
I immediately zeroed in on the “digital documentation” bit. I think that it’s worthy of real consideration. Without digital documentation, observations are open to interpretation of what you see at that precise moment. With digital documentation, you have exact precision of observation. Would you have a different interpretation at a different time during the day or in a different frame of mind? Using something as simple as a telephone and adding a short movie to document what you’re observing allows for a revisit at a later taste. I think it could also be used in an interview with the student where she/he sees her/his actions in the third person. The key, it seems to me, is to use it regularly so that it’s not a novel intrusion but just the way we do business.
There has been a great deal of discussion about MOOCs now that #etmooc has taken off. Some folks are even diving in and blogging about their experiences.
Steve Wilson was one of those who are sharing his learning and certainly there’s no better place or forum to do so than on your blog. It’s a place to take the overwhelming amounts of information and try to make personal sense of it.
In this post, Steve shares his thoughts about how he uses tools like Twitter to interact with others. I really liked the concept of using Twitter to “farm stuff out”. Interesting approach
You know, I have memories of being sick when I was in school. With my parents, I really had to amplify the symptoms lest I be encouraged to suck it up and get back to class.
When I was home, the last thing that was on my mind was staying up to date on school work. I don’t think I ever recalled wondering what was happening in class!
Not so in Aviva Dunsiger’s class. They’re broadcasting their learning on 105TheHive and Aviva shares a story of a student emailing her wondering when the class would be broadcasting so that the student could join in.
How’s that for motivation and a real audience?! Way to go Grade 6.
OK, I know this is one of my posts. I took a walk down memory lane back to 1983 when Bits and Bytes was broadcast on TVOntario. I remember it as a highlight in my learning about the Commodore 8032 computer. I used to book time to watch Luba Goy and Bill Van.
The significant part of the post, for me, wasn’t actually the post. It was Andy Forgrave’s comment where he itemized a number of other ways that TVOntario has been so helpful in Ontario education.
Thanks, Andy!
Please take the time to visit the blogs at the link about and view all the Ontario Edublogs for great content. There’s a never ending flow of great thoughts and reflections. If you’re an Ontario Edublogger and you haven’t been added to the list, visit the Ontario Edublogs Livebinder and complete the form.
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