Another week and another opportunity to share some of the great reading that I did from Ontario Edubloggers.
The first is actually a Scoopit! collection from Andy Forgrave. Last weekend, about 50 educators gathered in Toronto for a one day social media event at the Pearson offices. The event invoked strong emotions from those in attendance and those who were not. Thoughts surrounded the company itself, the choice of hashtag for the event, just who was on the invitee list and more. Jared Bennett even summarized it as “(it was like someone had collected up everyone who @dougpete had ever #FF’ed and then put them in the same room)” I’m not sure if that’s a good comment or a bad one.
Anyway, Andy does share a nice collection of thoughts that folks had taken the time to blog about. I found the tone interesting when compared to some of the Twitter messages surrounding the same topic.
Surefire Ways to Improve Your Schools EQAO Scores
Andrew Campbell does some simple mathematics on last year’s EQAO test results and draws the above conclusion. The post is part serious, part humorous, and I do think part unfortunate with some of the conclusions drawn.
It is true that EQAO results were never meant to compare schools (at least they say) but I know that it’s big-time fodder here in SouthWest Ontario where the local newspaper uses the Fraser Report as a news source and identifies schools at both ends of the spectrum. My concern has always been schools at the lower end of the spectrum in any given year. (See my post Public Embarrassment)
What Andrew does capture perfectly is the amount of time that is devoted to preparing students to write the test.
I’ve often wondered if all of this is so pronounced in media centric centres like the GTA. Does it make the headlines in rural Ontario far removed from locations with media that has a daily quota?
If you’re a regular reader of Royan’s Spicy Learning Blog, you’ll want to adjust your feed. His new blog is now self-hosted – he claims that he wants to do some things that WordPress won’t allow.
And, he’s got a new logo.
Good luck buddy in your new digs. Let’s see some of that fancy stuff you’ve promised.
When you want to see the real essence of anything, take the advice of a kindergartner or from a kindergarten class. The temperature here today was 25 and I’m blogging late into the evening with sun burned fingers. Talk about your first world problems.
From Jocelyn Schmidt, here’s a list of 30 things to do in the spring.
Why not take some time to kick back this weekend and enjoy the spring that was late in coming but seems to be here now. (except in Thunder Bay where it’s -2 and snowing)
The list should be a wonderful kickstart to anyone’s weekend.
Once again, a wonderful collection of blog entries from Ontario Edubloggers. Please take some time to visit the links above or hit the motherload here.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.