Critical Thinking Defined

Critical thinking is something that we are striving for in ourselves as educators, and as a goal for our students, but it can be a complex concept to grasp. I am liking this definition from The Foundation For Critical Thinking because it’s one that could be used as is, or paraphrased, for students of a variety…

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The Nature of Learning – OECD

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…

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Knowledge WITH technology: A case for intelligent learning

I came across this post today where Donna Fry mentions thinking about twitter as a library. This reminded me of some related thinking I had been doing back in 2005 when I was considering the role of technology with the analogy of the ‘library’. I thought it might be fun to dig it up and…

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PBL Experts Are Among Us

Originally Posted by Brenda Sherry on Feb 8, 2013 in Voices From the Learning Revolution,  Voices For a long time I’ve watched my husband Steve, a drama teacher, work his magic in his classes and dramatic productions. Lately, I’ve been reading posts from core subject teachers (e.g., science, math, history) who are beginning to move…

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Starting Day 1: Happy Classrooms – Successful Kids

I’ve always been a teacher who wants students to be happy in the classroom.  I want them to like coming to school and to like learning for the pleasure of learning itself.  As a result, a lot of my energy went into creating engaging, personally enjoyable learning environments for students.  Don’t get me wrong, I…

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ISTE 2012 – Day 2 and Beyond

Finally getting to some reflections after a busy start to summer! 🙂 By Day 2 at ISTE the conference hadn’t even started yet, but folks were busy with pre-conference events.  I attended the ISTE Affiliate Day with another ECOO Colleague and ISTE Ambassador, Peter Skillen.  It’s a great time to hear from other affiliates who…

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Day 1 at ISTE12

On Thursday my ISTE12 connections started at Pearson International Airport before the trip to the conference even started. On the same flight were @peterskillen @rgrignon and @janesmith! We got caught up and were enthusiastically talking about teacher stuff, when we discovered we were sitting with Sarah Dwyer and 2 of her colleagues from Bishop Strachan…

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Measuring What We Value

This tweet came through my twitter stream this morning and I was immediately taken back to a keynote that I’d heard delivered 2 years ago by Sir Ken Robinson for CODE. Sir Ken mentioned how good we are at measuring things…it’s just that we haven’t figured out how to measure the most important stuff. That…

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Is Knowing When to Cocoon a 21st Century Skill?

Connecting, collaborating, creating, and critical thinking are the 21st century ‘C’ words we hear a lot about these days.  I’m wondering if we need to add cocoon to that list — is it as important a part of transformation as our connectedness? I guess it’s not a surprise that the longer I delve into understanding…

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Digifest 2011

Our 4th Digifest celebration at UGDSB has just come and gone – amazing how quickly time passes!    This year was incredible once again, and while all of the submissions are worthy of acclaim  two things really stood out for me this year.   First, it was really noticeable was how capacity has built over the past…

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