Wide Open School @ Common Sense

Wow! Many of you will already know the amazing work of Common Sense Media in the world of Media Literacy. They’ve put their heads together with 25 other companies to curate some resources for families and educators and are calling it Wide Open School. It’s laid out beautifully, check it out! https://wideopenschool.org/

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Whose Land: Acknowledging Land, Communities and Treaties

Let’s Get Creative! Exploring the Whose Land App from TakingITGlobal  This workshop was originally created for ECOO Camp Peterborough and this is also posted on Teach Ontario. We were ambitious in thinking about what we could accomplish in 50 minutes and ended up with some really valuable discussion about how the interactive map and the…

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Here’s hoping it’s like riding a bike…

The new school year has started, and I’m in a new school as a vice principal. My role at the Ministry of Education has come to a close and I’m grateful for the amazing learning and the wonderful colleagues that I worked with there in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Branch and the Incubation and…

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GO Station Library – Book Sharing

When I first started commuting, I ended up at the Barrie Go Station to find this great innovative idea for book sharing that was setup close to the train tracks. The definition of innovation is to improve on something, and if you’re a lover of public libraries, like me, you’ll love this idea.

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YMCA/YWCA Women of Distinction Awards 2014

It was such an honour this month to attend a celebration of many of the wonderful, courageous or accomplished women in Guelph who contribute to the development of youth and the community! It was an exciting night, so well organized by they YMCA/YWCA, and contributing to a fantastic program that I’d never heard about called…

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Connecting with kids in new ways

I’m always looking for ways we can use technology to amplify current practices to make them more powerful or to become more innovative – to do things we couldn’t do before.   While working on a PD session for some teachers last week, I came across this video of a first year teacher who used Google…

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Thanking our Minds on Media Presenters!

Thanks to Facilitators for Excellent Minds On Media at ECOO12 We want to thank, and to celebrate, the facilitators at Educational Computing Organization of Ontario’s Minds On Media event held on Wednesday, October 24th. This year we had a full house of 120 participants and 9 centres! It was a hive of activity and the…

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Seriously Folks, Can We Just Get On With It?

Most days, I’m really upbeat. I go into schools, I give workshops, I help kids and teachers, and at the end of the day I feel that I’ve been successful in helping someone shift their practice and perhaps try some new things that will ultimately give students a wider variety of learning experiences. Most of…

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Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century Conference

Whew!  I’ve returned from a whirlwind of 3 days of learning at OTF’s latest conference: Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century and as usual, my brain is full of new learning, not only from the keynote presenters, Will Richardson and Garfield Gini-Newman,  but from my own network.  I’m a little late getting to this…

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Critical Thinking and Elementary Media Literacy

In October I was taking part in OTF’s Critical Thinking Conference with teachers of all subject areas and grades who are new to the Critical Thinking Framework as defined by the Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2).  Garfield Gini-Newman was the lead presenter, along with some other TC2 folk, and my colleague Peter Skillen and I are…

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