This Week in Ontario Edublogs

Welcome to Friday and a chance to do some great blog reading and look forward to Spring Break for most of you.

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When the chips are down (#163)

• Doug McDowall
• https://dougzone22.ca/2024/03/04/when-the-chips-are-down-163/

There was a strange moment that made me feel compelled to include Doug’s post this week.

I happened to be in Windsor stuck in traffic behind a Lays Potato Chip mini-van. I’ve seen potato chip trucks before but this was different – a minivan! The two of us got out of our vehicles to wait for the long, long train to pass and had a chat. After the potato chip discussion, I just had to read this.

My first response was to see just how far the Potato Chip Company was from the famous Hartland Covered Bridge. That, inspired by Doug’s post took me down a real rabbit hole discovering articles, historical acknowledgement and a whack of pictures.

• Hartland Covered Bridge National Historic Site of Canada
• Hartland Covered Bridge
• Hartland Covered Bridge
• The Bridge

You can even go through it looking around using Google Streetview.

That rabbit hole includes seeing a couple of things that might have made Doug’s post like the Moonshine Creek Distillery (munchies) and Old Dutch Foods (conspiracy theory). I did wander away from and spent some time looking at the Bridge. I still don’t know how you navigate it since it’s a single lane bridge. Carefully, and with grace, I guess.

The CSTA came back in memory as well. I always said that I would bring uniquely Canadian snacks to planning meetings and conferences. Things like Aero chocolate bars and ketchup-flavoured potato chips for my friend Alfred whose local store does get them periodically. It’s nice to think that there are things that are uniquely Canadian and I’ve got to believe Covered Bridge Potato Chips fall into that category.

I had to smile at Doug’s observation of the smell of burned potatoes. That would have been too tempting for me if they were doing Dill Pickle chips that day.

It’s a really sad story to read of such a big employer in the community having the problem but Doug managed to put a nice spin to it, as only he can.

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How I Learned Canadian History #SOL24 4/31

• Amanda Potts
• https://persistenceandpedagogy.com/2024/03/04/how-i-learned-canadian-history/

Silly me. I sat in classes in elementary school and took the bare minimum in high school.

Amanda gives us a year by year summary of her learnings.

What makes this interesting is that I had the advantage of learning Canadian History that she didn’t. I am Canadian; she isn’t. It would be an interesting analysis to see if, as a Canadian student, I know more about American History than she did in school about Canadian History.

Somehow, it did weave its way through the curriculum of my youth.

I did get a smile reading her stories and a mish-mash of things that entered her life as a teacher and a mother. I will confess; I know so much more about the War of 1812 since moving to Essex County. We have statues, cannons, forts, parades, plaques, and the Duff-Baby House with fascinating story tellers.

I took this picture last week at the Navy Yard Park in town.

The cannon is actually aimed at Boblo Island but with a little elevation, it might clear that and land in her native land.

Last year, we stopped at the Tecumseh monument outside Thamesville.

But, there’s nothing like having to teach something to make you learn it. Every teacher will attest to that.

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My Custom GPTs

• Peter Beens
• https://www.beens.ca/custom-gpts/

For those of you who have paid for ChatGPT, this would definitely be worth your time to explore. I haven’t purchased an AI service yet as noted previously. I have known Peter long enough to know that he’ll have tested these and is proud of his efforts so it would be worth your while.

ChatGPT allows you to create personalized GPTs based on its engine and your inspiration.

Peter was inspired to create:

• Alt-text Creator 
• Critical Thinking Questions for Educators 
• Find Keywords 
• Ontario ICS Assessment 
• Prompt Wizard 
• Python Assistant 🐍 
• Social Media Content Creator 
• Transcript Analyser 
• Writing Assistant 

There are some interesting suggestions here.

Give it a shot if you have the paid version of ChatGPT.

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Easy St. Patrick’s Day Math Ideas

• Deanna McLennan
• https://mrsmclennan.blogspot.com/2024/03/shamrock-math.html

Just in time for the upcoming festivities. Many people love to have all kinds of green and Irish activities in their classroom. In this post, Deanna shares with us a list of 8 along with a short description and picture for these.

• Shamrock Subitizing
• Estimation/Counting Jars
• Rainbow Numbers
• Colour and Coin Sorting
• Roll and Record
• Which One Doesn’t Belong?
• Gold Coin Count
• Find the Gold Coding

The “Which One Doesn’t Belong?” seemed like an easy enough one for AI to take on so I asked Bing Create to “draw me a picture that has 10 shamrocks all the same with one different”. Here’s what it returned.

Well, I guess we’re not quite there yet. 10 is such a vague concept, I guess. Until AI gets its act together, follow the link in Deanna’s post to get your own printable shamrocks.

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Micro Presses: Unveiling Literary Treasures from Unconventional Sources

• Iyanuoluwa Akinrinola
• https://heartandart.ca/micro-presses-unveiling-literary-treasures-from-unconventional-sources/

OK, I’ll confess – Iyanuoluwa had me at “unconventional”.

She had an interesting discussion about the difference between “mainstream presses” and “micro presses”. You’ve got to think that money is a big driver behind the differences that she describes in her post. I found myself asking if a big publishing house would actually take on a little author these days.

So much money, time, and effort would go into the publication of something and a return on that investment would be expected.

I think she nails it here…

Not constrained by high sales pressures, these independent publishers embrace risk-taking, boundary-pushing, and unconventional storytelling techniques. From hybrid genres to multimedia formats, micro presses encourage writers to explore new creative possibilities and challenge traditional notions of what constitutes literature.

I had to smile just a bit – she describes so many bloggers that I’ve interacted with over the years. They’re not in it for the money but for the opportunity to take risks and conform to their vision and not a corporate direction.

But then again, they’re not rich either.

At the bottom of the list, she shares a listing of micro presses in Ontario to explore. They do seem to be Toronto-ish.

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I hope that you can find some time before going on Break to check these posts out. Drop them off a comment at the blog or on Social Media if you’re inspired.

This is a regular Friday morning post around here and has been so for years. There is great writing that appears on the blogs of Ontario Educators. Check them out and all the previous posts can be found here.