It’s been another great week of reading the thoughts and sharing of Ontario Edubloggers. Here’s a part of what I caught.
Are Educators Talking to Themselves?
I was monitoring my Twitter feed when Paul McGuire announced this blog post. My immediate reaction was
Of course we are. Who the hell else understands Edu-babble?
His message goes much further than talking to others in the education bubble that is all too frequent online.
What about the other aspect of the well-rounded educator? You know, knowing what’s going on in the world around them. If you follow Paul, you’ll see that he’s sharing information about what’s happening in the entire world and not just education.
It’s worth a thought; how do you read and share?
Have You Participated in a TLLP Project? Please Share Your Experience(s) with Technology!
Colleen Rose is going to be addressing this year’s class of TLLP folks. Having her present is a good choice. She goes beyond the edu-babble and speaks to the heart of educators.
She also is looking to ground herself in the success of other TLLP alumni and is asking for assistance.
When did you begin your TLLP?
What was the experience like?
How did technology help you share your learning?
What worked well, and what didn’t?
What advice can you give to new TLLP participants, re: technology?
At present, she has no takers through the comments. If you’ve been involved in a TLLP, why not help a sister out and share some thoughts?
This may be a tough re-think for some people but Jim Cash puts it out there for you to ponder.
We all got into education knowing that we were going to be the sage in the classroom. We knew the stuff and those others are there to learn from our experiences and knowledge, right?
In a day of voice and choice, have the tables turned?
If you believe so, check out the four questions at the bottom of Jim’s post. The only suggestion that I would add is to include the word “truly” in the questions. Saying yes is easy enough to do. Saying yes and really doing it can make all the difference.
The answer:
The question, as originally posed by Will Gourley was a twist of the question that we’ve all asked “What are you going to do with your life?”
In this case, the question was posed to a group of Grade 1 students and was “what they wanted to buy when they were adults and could spend their own money”.
It’s a much better question and gives some insight that the traditional one doesn’t.
TEACH WRITING WITH A WEB DESIGN PROJECT
As long as I’ve known language teachers, they’ve talked about authentic writing for an audience. In a lot of cases, it involves writing something for marks or for taking home to mom and dad.
From the TESL Ontario blog, here’s a terrific suggestion.
Why not make that writing a project in web design? There are so many really good tools available these days – why not make use of them? In this case, you’re writing for potentially every connected person on the internet. What an audience!
The project topics included:
- Library services
- Learning Commons
- Recreation
- Student Life
- Individual Academic departments (example: Health Sciences or Engineering)
- Information Technology Support
- Student Counselling
- MOOCS/ off campus Online resources
- Public Library system
The author uses Winksite as the authoring tool.
Battle of the Books EDU: The Short List Revealed
VoicEd Radio is sponsoring a summer book reading club. In this post, Stephen Hurley shares with us the “short list” of titles for consideration.
The challenge now is to narrow down the titles.
VoicEd Radio will be having a competition of fans of one title or another and will broadcast their reasons that their book of choice should be selected. This starts on April 29.
What struck me as really interesting reading this post from Ramona Meharg is that this topic was probably never covered at the Faculty of Education.
If we’re to believe the reports of current students there (and why wouldn’t you?), even something as simple as having a Twitter account and using social media can be a challenge in some places.
This post is a wonderful description of the process in her class and to summarize it here would do it an injustice.
Instead, I think of what would lead Ramona to do this in the first place. If you’re not studying about it and getting the inspiration from the traditional route, where then?
I’d heard about these Passion Projects through course work, colleagues and Twitter. I did a bit of reading over the summer on them.
Please take the time to click through and enjoy these posts in their original entirety. You’ll be glad you did.
Then, make sure that you’re following these inspirational educators.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.