Things certainly have heated up in Ontario this week. Weather-wise and blogging-wise. Here’s some of the reading I enjoyed this past week.
The Diefenbunker: Canada’s Cold War Museum
The Diefenbunker was certainly something that we discussed in school. It was part of Canada’s concern about the Cold War. I did not know that it was a public museum where you could get a sense of the fear and paranoia that was a part of the day. Andy Forgrave and son took a trip there and posted pictures and his reflections on the visit. This is a very interesting read for me.
Why Children Misbehave —- Under Construction
You know, if you could bottle the answer to this question, you could sell millions to educators. FlyOnTheClassroomWall (not her real name, of course, but she’s not public with it on the blog so I won’t mention it here) takes a look at a number of reasons from the book Theory and Practice with Adolescents and shares some of her insights. Towards the end, she concludes with a list of accommodations…a good list.
Step 8 in Going Green: Remain Calm! Remember Al Gore: ‘Despair is not an option’!
Hill of Greens was a new blog discovery for me this week. Written by Julie Johnson, this is a documentary of her work in “going green”.
At present, there are eight posts to the blog but they’re very personal and certainly has inspired this reader to reflect on my own habits. I’ve followed Julie on Twitter for some time now, but didn’t know this blog existed. I’m glad that I found it.
This post is a wonderful poem written by Dr. Muriel Corbierre.
The content is a reminder that those faces in front of you all bring different skills to the classroom. It’s also a reminder to students that not everything is as equally “easy” for everyone.
I’ll bet you can find a lot of uses for this poem.
Holistic approaches for Learning with Technology
This post, from Deborah McCallum was a refreshing break from some of the mindless posts about SAMR that you see so often these days. She takes a reasoned approach about teaching in general. It’s a reminder that analyzing the use of technology isolated from everything else really is a disservice. Teaching and learning is a complicated eco system. Big reminder here “Who owns the learning?”
This is something that we all can do. I can take sunset pictures from the end of the driveway any day that I want. Sheila Stewart shares here thoughts, not only on the beauty of the sunsets that she enjoys in NorthWest Ontario but what they symbolize to her.
It’s a good reminder to us all that we need to take more pictures.
In case you missed it, I recently had the opportunity to interview Tom D’Amico, superintendent from the Ottawa Catholic School Board. Tom actively models what I believe educational leaders should. For me, it was a great chance to ask some questions that I had about what he does and why he does it.
Doug: From my perspective, you’re “leading by leading” in this field and I really admire that. Do you ever get questioned by colleagues for being so open about your learning and sharing?
In addition to the content that Tom generates and shares, he also shares many of the links to resources that he uses regularly. There’s a great deal there for you and you might just want to pass the link along to your own leaders. What more could they be doing to support the cause of learning? Are they modelling the sort of thing that you need them to?
Thanks, everyone for continuing to blog and lead the charge for Ontario Educators. Please check out their blog posts at the links provided and the complete list of Ontario Edubloggers here.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.