Category: Learning
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Learning (or should we call it connecting?) Online in Troubled Times
Yes. Especially at this tumultuous (yet, for some lucky people, incredibly boring) point in time, we need to be talking about connection when it comes to learning. (When I say connect, I mean primarily as in human connection but also as in infrastructure.) There have been a whole new slew of online meeting and learning […]
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On unlearning or the summer slide.
I am listening to CBC while waiting for Jack to finish his smoothie and get out of his bath (multitasking). Listening specifically to an interview about the dangers of unlearning over the summer. (I can’t find a CBC reference but here is a CTV article that mentions the same person being interviewed: Is the Summer […]
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A note (again) on digital citizenship
I originally published this post in May of 2013. I feel this rant coming on again…so here you go. I hear so many educators complain about how technology is hijacking our students’ education. How they don’t know how to be digital citizens. How they are addicted. How all they care about is YouTube and Facebook […]
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On gardening and understanding
When I garden I want to tear my hair out along with the weeds and grass at times because there just seems to be so much to pull to let the plants I love to breathe and shine. My first inclination could be to just pull haphazardly but I’ve noticed that if I patiently allow […]
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French Help…Whenever!
Learning a second language requires as much practice time with the language as possible. For second language learners, it can be truly overwhelming to try to squeeze all of your language learning into the few hours allotted for it during class-time. Now you (or your students 🙂 can expand your learning to whenever it is […]
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Remembering the human (in teachers, too)
You teach a resistant teacher the same way you teach a resistant and disinterested and disengaged student. By engaging them, by challenging them, by making sure they have fun, and giving them ownership of their own learning will bring back even a hardened student to the class. Eric Pollack wrote this, as a comment to […]
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A morning with Marc Prensky: idea bits
We had the opportunity to chat with Marc Prensky at a Quebec convention for adult educators (AQIFGA). Here are some thoughts and comments from the morning. —- “If the answer is findable on google then it’s not a good question.” Marc Prensky The idea of embedding curriculum within student interests and relevancy –> something I […]
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Learning, Naturally
…or is that Acquiring, Naturally? I’ve been thinking a lot about language learning lately, as I bring a group of students towards final evaluations in a few weeks’ time. This group is small, though of the 9 students there are 6 different levels I need to evaluate. So, I repeat, I’ve been thinking a lot […]
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Respectful guidance
In everything. We can’t go around trying to do new things without someone to guide us. And we can’t go around asking people to try to do new things without ensuring the guidance is there for them: guidance that is offered in a way that respects us as learners, as people. challenge me to stand […]
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On Motivation. On Learning. In Ourselves.
Last night, at 10:39, I found out about the midnight deadline for applying to the Google Teacher Academy taking place in New York this October. How was it that I only clued into the application process in the, practically literally, 11th hour? That may have a little something to do with this kind of thing: […]