What a school year! Congratulations to everyone for making it through one series of challenges after another. A special congratulations to those people who will be turning in their keys for the last time today. Enjoy the start to your vacation.
Don’t forget to enjoy the thinking from this collection of Ontario Edubloggers.
Move to Online Learning: 12 Key Ideas
Here is a reflection collection and sharing about moving from face to face to online learning from Dave Cormier. I suppose now it’s a now bit of a reflection for every educator but this should also serve as a starting point for thinking about September. Dave identifies and elaborates on a dozen ideas.
- Moving to teaching on the internet is not a technology problem (unless you make it one)
- Moving to the internet is about understanding information abundance
- Complicated vs. complex concepts on the internet
- Learning to evaluate good/bad information on the internet is a core skill in any field.
- Pedagogies of care (for students and teachers)
- Think of ‘content’ as ‘teacher presence’
- Keep it simple
- Keep it equitable and accessible
- Keep it engaging
- Design activities for what the web can do for you.
- Gather resources together… together
- Last note: If you’re helping someone else
Inspirational and insightful are two words that come to mind as I read and thought about this post.
Using Post -it Notes for Memorable Moments not Mistakes
One of the steps of the report card production process is the proofreading of the documents by principal and vice-principal. I always thought of it as drudgery and yet it is a necessary task in order to send the best messages home to parents. It also gives the principal and vice-principal an opportunity to learn insights about the students in their school that they might otherwise miss.
There’s nothing worse than working for hours and hours on a report card only to have it returned to you with all kinds of errors found. So, teachers do spend considerable time making it the best that it can be.
Sue Bruyns shares her process of doing report cards for the end of the year and her tools include post-it notes!
This year’s work had her noticing that the teachers were submitting reports that we pretty well written and she noticed various things about the comments that were given to the students.
Click through and find how she was pleased with what she read.
From Diana Maliszewski, a warming story of visiting with a distant sister and a mother. Of course, visiting these days can take on different modes and this was no different.
A video visit for 2.5 hours! Wow. She’s got more stick-to-it-ive-ness than I have and I’m sure that it was appreciated all around. To make it go well, she had dropped off some cookies in advance. During the Wednesday morning voicEd radio show, I recognized the cookies immediately but couldn’t name them. Fortunately, Diana let me know afterwards they were Peak Freens.
The big takeaway are the three tips that she shares for a successful visit. To the naive, it could be just talking to the camera of the device in front of you. For real success though, consider…
- Prepare people
- Practice presenting
- Don’t do it alone
What’s the Point of Being a Leader?
When I saw the title of this post from Sue Dunlop, I had a pre-conceived notion of what it might be. I was completely wrong after taking a long read.
I might be feeling complacent about my privileged life and then a check comes to my thinking. It can be small – a friend challenges me on what I wrote in a blog post; or it can be monstrous – a racist murder spurs a cataclysm
Of course, the message is appropriate given what’s happening to the south of us and here at home.
The notion of systemic racism is easily recognized from the outside looking in. It’s far easier to criticize others. But true leadership includes the ability to look inward and see what’s happening within your own system.
Recent events have reinforced the importance of this. I think all should read Sue’s post for her wisdom and then turn your gaze toward yourself and your system.
That’s where true change in your world will happen.
The Long Spring: Humidity and Humility
Heather Swail has been documenting some of the events in her last year of teaching. To say that this is how anyone wants to end a professional life would just be so wrong.
Yet, good teachers have persevered and Heather is no exception. The coup de grâce in any career is cleaning out your workspace and handing in your key.
I supposed in the business environment, you borrow the company shredder and put it beside your desk/filing cabinet and run things through there.
Heather’s story tells us so much about how education is different from business!
Onto the ancient “craft and game cupboard”. Good God. I should have had a tetanus shot. Rusty compasses. Plasticene, sweating in the heat, dating back to Roman times, broken pencils and Scrabble tiles everywhere.
Despite the heat, this cleaning task was done and she’s ready for her next challenge. This time, it’s virtually climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
This was an interesting post from Deanna McLennan. It was actually written before the stay at home orders.
At the post, she’s writing about wondering when classes would resume, how long the stay away would be, how personal plans had been changed and more.
What she did leave for anyone who happened to drop by her blog were ideas for mathematics in the kindergarten classroom. She called it “Spring Math” but certainly the ideas and concepts of the 21 examples given are appropriate at any time.
Maybe the fall?
Bookmark this one.
COVID Journal # 5 Breaking up is hard to do
This post from Paul McGuire is an interesting turn of thinking. It’s easy to write about the power of the PLN, how you need to get connections, how you leverage the power of others to your professional advantage.
This post isn’t about that.
What happens when that network falls apart or otherwise isn’t providing the support that you need?
There may be many reasons why things change; I think that we know that. We also know that effective participation in any community requires effort and commitment. There may well come the time that leaving that community is the best move. In this post, Paul describes two cases where he’s taken that tact.
I’ve gone through that personally and I don’t think I could express the sentiment better than Paul does.
Sometimes, you just have to cut loose those things that are dragging you down.
It’s been another terrific week of reflecting on the writings of Ontario Edubloggers for me. I’m so happy to be able to pass them along and hope that you click through and enjoy the writings as much as I did.
Then, follow these folks on Twitter…
- Dave Cormier – @davecormier
- Sue Bruyns – @sbruyns
- Diana Maliszewski – @MzMollyTL
- Sue Dunlop – @DunlopSue
- Heather Swail – @hbswail
- Deanna McLennan – @McLennan1977
- Paul McGuire – @mcguirp
This post comes from:
https://dougpete.wordpress.com
If you read it anywhere else, it’s not the original.
doug -- off the record 
Please share your thoughts here. I’d enjoy reading them.