I’m not a real fan of using salt. Typically, it’s not needed in Essex County. It could be icy and snowy in the morning but mostly it’s gone by noon (with exceptions of course). This week, we had a pretty good storm by our standards and the patio is actually quite icy. I had shovelled the snow but then it started to melt and back fill. With the winter sun, it doesn’t get much light so I’m thinking I have no alternative. For the rest of you who got much more than us, I know, I know. It’s not a biggy.
Time to share some great blogging from a collection of Ontario Edubloggers. That’s more fun than spreading salt anyway.
I recognize that it’s a challenging time to be in education. Certainly, you don’t have to look very hard to read about the very real challenges.
That’s not the case with Lisa Munro.
We would not expect a family member who just received their beginner’s license to navigate a road trip across Canada in their first week behind the wheel, nor should we expect perfection in the structures and processes we have created with school start up.
Amen.
I love a post that is just full of hope and understanding.
Lisa is looking to connect to continue the discussion. Why not enrich your learning network and do so?
Our path to personal wellbeing in 2020: Insights & offerings
I loved this post from Laura Elliott even though I didn’t completely understand it the first time through. A few subsequent reads and I find something new to hang my hat on each time.
She tells a personal story of self-care and the challenges that she has and uses the word yo-yo to describe her journey that ended up in yoga and pilates.
So, if she’s having difficulties, imagine the teenager whose trying to cope these days. It seems to me that it may largely go unnoticed since there is this sense of bravado that goes with growth and development at that age.
Laura then turns her eye towards the media and how its portrayed women over the years and then to social justice. As Stephen Hurley noted in our live radio broadcast on Wednesday when we took on Laura’s description of a “Food desert” in Toronto, it’s always been more affordable to buy less than healthy food. Laura notes that it’s our privilege that allows us to spend more for healthy.
This is a rich post describing part of what’s happening that might well be overlooked. Read it a couple of times; it’s not an easy read but is so full of ideas.
As noted above, it’s not hard to find stories about negativity and so I kind of expected that tone in this post from James Skidmore. It was his reflection on a story reported by the CBC that
“Pandemic has caused decline in educational quality”
This was pulled from an article from a story conducted by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations and is focused on post-secondary.
James notes that much of the content from the study was overlooked in favour of reporting on the negative statement above. He draws a couple of conclusions at the end that I think are important.
Then there was this … which I hadn’t thought of. In an effort to maintain student interest when working online, educators have switched to little tasks as opposed to big ones with the idea that they would provide better engagement. On the surface, it might appear to make sense but when you think of the high performers in your class, there really are no little tasks. If there’s a mark or assessment, it’s important so the whole notion may have the opposite effect.
It may work well in a face to face classroom but doing it online is a different ballgame.
It was easy to skim this post from Deanna McLennan. After all, it’s two short paragraphs, two pictures, and a link.
But it stuck with me for some reason.
She gave her students a pair of dice, a bingo dabber and then a sheet of numbers in different fonts. The instruction – make a game.
Of course the mathematician in me could think of a number of ways this could turn into a game but then I was disappointed in my thinking. All of my ideas had been done previously so I was just working with my previous learning.
And, am I missing or overlooking the point with the use of different fonts? Then, I started to think with the dabber and the different fonts, the product started to look like those annoying Captchas that drive me crazy. That then, opened my mind to newer things. So, I appreciated the push to my thinking, Deanna. I hope that she follows up with some of the things that these inquisitive minds generated.
Oh, and there’s a link to a document that she created that you could download and use it with your class.
Who hasn’t found the concept of student blogging intriguing? In theory, it should be easy to do. Just get the kids to write about something that interests them. How many times have you seen that logic fall flat on its face. There are so many dead blogs out there that started out with the best intentions.
I’ve long been a fan of what Cameron Steltman does with blogging. He writes the blog post and then his students go to the blog and respond to his prompt. It has been a while and I had wondered if he had given up on the concept. I was pleased to see that he’s back.
Now here’s the challenge, can you write a descriptive paragraph that doesn’t mention what your food is but describes it so well that your classmates can guess what it is?
As I write this, there have been 18 responses. I can’t remember the last time I got 18 responses to a blog post! Have I ever?
Here’s the most recent.
Did you get it?
More importantly, check the time and date stamp on this reply. When was the last time that you had students writing at 5:30 in the morning?
Psychology, Cybersecurity and Collaboration in Educational Technology
I file part of the content of this post from Tim King under “things I hope never happen to me”.
Followers of Tim know that he and his students have been doing some pretty heavy lifting with cybersecurity. While some classes are dragging and dropping blocks to draw geometric figures, this goes way deeper.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s room for both and both should be done.
It’s so easy to sit back and say “this will never happen to me” and I hope that it never does. But, when it does, what do you do? Who do you turn to? It may well be one of Tim’s graduates who have been interested and immersed in the concept of security.
The post describes the activities that students work through and has them using virtual machines. What an experience for them!
Think this will never happen in “real life”, whatever that is these days? It happens more than you would think and my stomach just sinks when I see some of the cases that make the news – typically not because the bad guys were caught but because someone paid the ransom to get their data back.
There comes a certain age when things are passed along from family members to others. It may not have happened to you yet but there will come a time.
It’s most noticeable and most emotional when it happens at “big event times” like birthdays or anniversaries.
In Anna Bartosik’s case, it appears to be happening this Christmas season. She’s on the receiving end of the torch.
“We have to make pierogi this year. I’ll do the fillings and we’ll make them together on the weekend. We can get them finished in one morning. We can make enough to share and take some to your aunts and your grandmother.”
I’ll be damned if I let COVID steal the Christmas pierogi.
There are a lot of Polish things in here that I don’t really understand but I do have memories of my parents owning one of those crocks. We used it for making pickles but not in this case!
It’s a lovely story of family and generations.
Please take the time to click through and enjoy all of these wonderful posts.
Then, make sure that you’re following these bloggers on Twitter.
- Lisa Munro – @LisaMunro11
- Laura Elliott – @lauraelliottPhD
- James M Skidmore – @JamesMSkidmore
- Deanna McLennan – @McLennan1977
- Cameron Steltman – @MrSteltman
- Tim King – @tk1ng
- Anna Bartosik – @ambartosik
This post originates on the blog:
https://dougpete.wordpress.com
If you found it anywhere else without attribution, it’s not the original and that makes me sad.
