by Donna Miller Fry (@fryed)
In our online world, increasingly dominated by social media, feelings are more important than facts. This is the assertion of Hossein Derakhshan, an idea that I first encountered on Screened Off: The Dangers of the Insular Web. As an online teacher, I always considered video to be an excellent tool to engage learners. But do we […]
[In 2014, I wrote a post on technology and pedagogy that was recently circulated on Twitter. It reminded me that it is time to update the thinking in that post.] Simon Breakspear asked the question, “What is an Education That’s Worth Having?” at #uLead15 three months ago. The answer is complex, and context driven, but, […]
We talk a lot about the importance of openly sharing and curating resources. One pushback I often hear is, “I just don’t have time”. I get that. The job of an educator never ends. There are always more opportunities to look for that next practice that we could adapt for a particular student need. […]
Earlier today, I read a post on the importance of the language we use when we talk about education. It made me think about some of the listening I have done this year when I ask educators why they are not using social media for their professional learning. At the OPC/CPCO/ADFO Symposium in November, many school […]
I wanted to tell a funny story on this Labour Day. I will share this entertaining piece instead: Teachers Don’t Sleep on Labour Day by @albertfong I have plenty of my own crazy tales, of course, having spent nearly 30 years of Labour Days ignoring my family in spite of it being my daughter’s birthday, our wedding anniversary, a […]
Why would we want to exclude other educators from our professional learning network? Stephen Katz, in his book Intentional Interruptions, discusses the problem of confirmation bias when it comes to professional learning. It is our tendency to “only look for things that confirm rather than challenge our beliefs and practices“. We need to make […]
There is a vast amount of information online, and digging into it can sometimes feel too overwhelming to even begin. Yet our students will need to be quite adept at this process as they navigate the new realities of a digitally-connected world. What best practices do we need to model as leaders to ensure our […]
While negotiating the lunch hour traffic yesterday, I caught a piece of a conversation on the radio and thought, “That person has read Danah Boyd’s book”. As the conversation went on, I realized the speaker was Danah Boyd, and that she was a guest on the Ontario Today call-in program on CBC Radio. The program […]
** Update! We now know that Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) watched our video on the ISS! How exciting for our students. Commander Hadfield understands the importance of connections for learning. His song with Ed Robertson is all about how the world is one place, all interconnected, and the video shows how this is so true. Student […]
