Yesterday doing the voicEd Radio show was fun. Ramona Meharg joined Stephen and me live to do the show. She shared a number of things that I think Stephen and I would have overlooked. It was great.
Great, as well, was all the new equipment that Stephen had. Instead of my clip on headset with condenser mic, we had real radio quality stuff. So new and fresh, that he and Derek Rhodenizer were unpacking them for the first time. Everything worked out well. As always, it was a fun show and we chatted about these blog posts from great Ontario Edubloggers.
Cyber Dissonance: The Struggle for Access, Privacy & Control in our Networked World
From Tim King, a not-so-quick-and-easy post to read. He unloads his thoughts about everything dealing with this topic.
I have a theory about why it’s an increasing issue important to teachers and students and others in education.
Unless you’re teaching this stuff and staying up to date like Tim does (he takes courses), you don’t worry about it. Why? Because there’s nothing you can do about it.
Networks and computers in schools tend to be locked down and managed by others so you couldn’t make healthy decisions about setup even if you had the inclination. This leads to a mindset that carries on to home and personal setups. Think about it!
I wanted to attend Tim’s workshop but it was on at the same time as the voicEd broadcast. I found it telling that Tim had a packed house but when he asked how many were teachers, there were none. They were all IT professionals.
I felt like Tina Zita wrote this post with me in mind. It’s all about the power of the Sketchnote and she goes kind of deep into the concept. The big message, as all Sketchnote posts seem to be, is that anyone can do it.
I’ve tried; I’ve failed.
Miserably.
Ramona chimed in with an interesting observation when I asked her if you should Sketchnote along with the topic being presented or should you wait until later and draw something from your notes.
She felt that people were in the former camp. I think that puts me even further behind because my attention is focused on the message and I don’t handle distractions real well.
I have great admiration for people that are indeed able to pull it off. If you’re interested, Tina summarises her plan that she had to indoctrinate others.
Walking in a New Way – the Ottawa Indigenous Walk
This is a very powerful and insightful post from Paul McGuire. He’s pulling all the stops out on opportunities for his teacher-candidate class.
In this case, he took them on a walking tour of Ottawa. What a rich setting for Canadiana and Canadian history. He’s done it many times.
But, this time, he had a indigenous community member lead the walk. What a concept.
We can all walk and look at and read the plaques but having someone who knows the story behind the story would be priceless.
Is such an opportunity available in your community?
Why not reach out and see if it is?
Autumn is such a beautiful season. Everything is in the process of change. Things that were great in the summer and preparing for winter. Things to come in winter are just around the corner.
What better way to inspire inquiring with students than going outside and checking things out.
That’s what Deanna McLennan did with her young students.
Young kids learning about the Fibonacci sequence?
Why not! It occurs in nature. Somehow, I feel cheated. I didn’t learn the concept until much later in my educational career. Wouldn’t it have been nice to understand that there was this thing in nature – as opposed to the here’s something else about mathematics that you need to know approach that I and so many others have traditionally done.
Of course, there’s more than that. Living in Essex County, we have this wonderful opportunity to see the Monarch butterfly migration. See everything that her students explored in this post.
How To Self Engineer A Learning Community?
For the population who think that kids just show up at school, sit in rows, absorb content and then graduate, they need to read the thoughts from Rola Ribshirani.
Written back in August, she shares with us feedback from last year’s students. Of course, everyone could do this. But you they? Do you?
It seems to me that this is a terrific opportunity if you truly believe that you’re growing as an educator and that you want to understand those faces in front of you. It’s also worth noting that what they see and feel may not be 100% accurate when held to the actual standard. More importantly, it’s IS true in their mind. When the two don’t meld, I would suggest the second concept is more important.
Rola also takes a bit of space to talk about bias. That’s an area that we can all appreciate and learn from.
30 Days of Gratitude: Day 26 – The Perfection in Imperfection
As a Clinton boy, I took a little pain from reading about Heidi Solway’s trip to Goderich with her husband. Goderich? Really?
You have to smile at the little things that were supposed to happen but didn’t on this getaway. It happens to all of us.
But what a nice description of a getaway to celebrate 25 years. I loved the list of the things that they did not do. And, of course, they did…
- enjoying conversation over dinner at a quaint and quiet pub
- hiking along a decommissioned railway under a canopy of trees
- studying the activity at the salt mine as a barge made entry, then exit the next day
- driving along the beach at night listening to the power of the waves, feeling immense presence in the moment
- sleeping in perfect silence with no thought of waking to the wonderful racket of kiddos
- browsing through books in the most perfect independent book store which seemed planted there awaiting my arrival
- reminiscing, even just a little, over crazy and comical things from the past
I’ll be honest; when we return to Huron County, we do go to Goderich. It really is a delightful and beautiful place to visit.
And Heidi and Paul – congratulations on 25 years.
This post closes on a rather sad note from Diana Maliszewski.
Her husband and son were struck by a car in a crosswalk. She even reconstructs the accident scene for us.
Diana does go into great detail and I would encourage you to read this post to get the complete story.
For all of us, pedestrians or drivers, there’s a powerful message about paying attention and being alert at all times. It’s easy to get lulled into a sense that nothing will happen – until it does.
I’m sure that there will be more details from Diana in the future but if I could make one plea – put down that damn phone and pay attention.
Please take the time to click through and read these terrific blog posts. As always, there’s great learning to be had.
And, make sure that you’re following on Twitter…
- @tk1ng
- @tina_zita
- @mcguirp
- @McLennan1977
- @rolat
- @HSolway
- @MzMollyTL
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doug -- off the record 
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