mindfully thinking about learning
I’m lucky to have had a big screen added in my kitchen, and while I enjoy my cooking I often travel vicariously along with the experience and antics of Rick Steves on his YouTube channel. Recently, I found out that even before the Covid 19 epidemic, he had edited many of his longer travel documentaries…
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During the teaching of the AQ Course – Integration of Information and Computer Technology in Instruction, I often introduce students to the work of Ron Ritchhart and Project Zero from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. I’ve written more comprehensively about collaboration with colleagues that started my learning, the book Making Thinking Visible and an especially…
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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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Dear Mr. Ford, You are a lucky man to have inherited, through no effort of your own, a world-class education system. Through your reactive, reductionist and hasty action around math, sex ed and Indigenous Ed curriculum, one wonders if you actually realize what awaits you in September when our learning communities in schools reconvene –…
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One of my favourite Ontario events is the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program (#TLLP) . This program, supported by a partnership between the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Ontario Teachers’ Federation, has just celebrated its 10th cohort of educators engaged in teacher-driven learning and leadership projects–an option available to every school district in the…
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It’s always great to go back to the science of learning to underpin everything we do as educators. A fascination for how people learn led me to an undergraduate degree in Psychology, and this has served me so well as a prerequisite to teaching, but I realize that many other educators may not have had…
Read MoreIt was great to visit the York School this week to attend #MakerEdTo. This was a fantastic opportunity to connect the #iicti AQ course members to a network of educators interested in constructivist and constructionist uses of technology. An added bonus was that they got to hear all about Seymour Papert from the Keynote Speaker…
Read MoreCreative Commons is not a new concept, and many people have been aware of its existence for some time, as well as the need to credit the work of generous people who offer to share their creations with us. It’s also great when something comes along that makes it a little easier for media…
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Many school administrators are aware that some parents are feeling the tension of change in Ontario’s Health and Physical Education (HPE) Revision for 2015. Concern that kids need more current information (the last curriculum was released 17 years ago), and a more comprehensive understanding of all the aspects of healthy living, has led to this…
Read MoreInvent to Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom by Sylvia Libow Martinez and Gary Stager, Ph.D One of the greatest joys of being a connected learner is the fact that I’m meeting so many friends from all over the world who are also people from whom I learn so much. Meeting them virtually sometimes leads…
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Learning Zone 