Earlier this week, I was participating in the #csforstudents tutorial (we were flipping a coin and keeping stats) and I got a notification that someone had send me a message. It was from Donna Fry who had posted this to Twitter.
Who r your favourite #onted bloggers? @royanlee@bgrasley@avivaloca@dougpete@Dunlop_Sue@msjweir@HTheijsmeijer@jacbalen#eLearnONT
— Donna Miller Fry (@fryed) March 24, 2015
That generated a bit of discussion
Thanks Donna.Need to post soon and more often. 🙂 @fryed @royanlee @bgrasley @avivaloca @dougpete @Dunlop_Sue @msjweir @HTheijsmeijer
— Julie Balen (@jacbalen) March 25, 2015
@jacbalen @royanlee @bgrasley @avivaloca @dougpete @Dunlop_Sue @msjweir @HTheijsmeijer … Don’t we all! 🙂 — Donna Miller Fry (@fryed) March 25, 2015
@fryed @royanlee @bgrasley @avivaloca @dougpete @Dunlop_Sue @msjweir @HTheijsmeijer @jacbalen gotta pop @mraspinall and @MmeM27 for me!
— Lisa Noble (@nobleknits2) March 25, 2015
@fryed I read @dougpete just about every day 🙂 — Brandon Grasley (@bgrasley) March 25, 2015
I was going to jump in and share the link to my collection of Ontario Edubloggers but only had one eye on Donna’s conversations which she had tagged #eLearnONT. (Sorry, Donna) As I look through the collection that came through in the conversation, I don’t think you can go wrong following any of these blogs. Here’s what they’ve each written recently along with a link to those I’ve interviewed on this blog.
- @royanlee – Talkin’ ‘Bout Our Origins as Bloggers – my interview with Royan
- @bgrasley – eBooks product or service
- @avivaloca – Hugs … And The Words That Follow Them! – my interview with Aviva
- @Dunlop_Sue – When Empathy Isn’t Easy
- @msjweir – Oral Presentation Descriptive Feedback
- @HTheijsmeijer – I Hate the Pyramid
- @jacbalen – @OneWord
- @mraspinall – Kids Learn Computer Code in Class to Help With Problem Solving – my interview with Brian
- @MmeM27 – Showing Understanding of Where things are Located #fsl
What a wonderfully diverse and rich collection of posts! No wonder they were identified. If you haven’t read them, they’re all worth the click to inspire your thinking and learning.
And, Donna throws together a pretty mean blog herself….
I apologize if there were any additional Twitter messages that I missed. I was otherwise engaged at the time and went through Donna’s timeline to see if I could capture them all.
Talkin’ ‘Bout Our Origins as Bloggers
Even before Donna’s post, I had tagged Royan Lee’s blog post as something that I wanted to highlight here. In this post, he shares an interview with Joanne Babalis.
The conversation digs into their thoughts about their own blogs. I love this stuff. It’s like a blogging version of “Inside the Actor’s Studio”.
Save the Elementary TLs in TCDSB
I have always had trouble commenting on blogs written in Blogger. After reading Diana Maliszewski’s post, I felt compelled to comment. It turned out to be rather longish so I made sure that I made a copy of it in case it didn’t “take”. It didn’t; I messaged Diana who checked that it wasn’t on her system even through I had tried posting with my Google account and my WordPress account. It’s got to be one of the extensions that I use acting badly. Anyway, I’m reproducing it here to tack on to Diana’s wonderfully passionate original post.
This is a well crafted post and letter, Diana. Hopefully, it will be read in the spirit that you wrote it; not wanting to erode the educational experience for students and blaming it on funding.
I had to smile at your comment that I wasn’t a teacher-librarian. You’re absolutely correct with that. Going through elementary school, we didn’t have a teacher-librarian at all. The library was just a book exchange room. We didn’t know any difference. It was just like the public library downtown that my mother took my brother and me to weekly to get our limit of two books.
At secondary school, I did have the benefit of a librarian. She was wonderful at pointing us in the right direction.
The tipping point for me was as a young teacher, having just a terrific teacher-librarian. He did a terrific job. We were always receiving memos of new resources and he would clip articles from the newspapers and put them in our mailboxes. He constantly stirred the pot and was integral in bringing all forms of media to the classroom. He was like the colleague teaching the same material which is important to a Computer Science teacher, the loneliest teacher in any school. When I would have my students in the Resource Centre for research, he truly was a partner in the classroom. He made my class so much relevant to students.
Later, as a teacher-consultant, I got to go from school to school and did a whack of workshops that always was attended by teacher-librarians. They were always interested in what was new and would always be pushing for understanding the latest and greatest in the realm of technology. What so impressed me was the global perspective of their school that they brought to the conversation. They knew who was teaching what and how they could support their colleagues. They were always the extra mind in classrooms and, usually, the first person to be consulted over curriculum issues. I had a computer contact from every school and many of them were teacher-librarians. I had the honour of presenting a couple of sessions at the OLA Superconference, always in partnership with one of these marvellous people. The ones I worked with were just such natural partners. They take content and push it past the academic into the relevance.
Decision makers need to visit libraries/resource centres/learning commons and really understand the dynamics of that most important area of the school. I know that it’s tough for trustees to do so but they really need to do so to understand what will go missing if they make the cuts.
I’ve got to file Rusul Alrubail’s post under the category “I had no idea”. It was a tough post for me to read.
I always had the benefit of being a member of OSSTF. Yes, there were dues but there was collegiality, professional learning, newsletters, insights, connections, and security. I’m sure that there will be a great deal more as this unfolds.
Do you know someone who’s interested in finding out about Social Media and all the networks that are common conversations these days? Or, perhaps they’ve noticed that television shows now show Twitter handles or Facebook pages or Instagram accounts for more detailed comment?
Send them over to this slideshow from Joan Vinall Cox.
She’s got you covered!
As I wrap up this post, I just marvel at the insights that are shared by Ontario Educators all the time.
Please take the time to read the excellent commentaries. And, why not share the links with your connections so that others can enjoy as well?!
doug --- off the record 