The Craziness In My Brain...

For starters, I want to say thank you to anyone who cares enough to read the musings of a teacher with a need to think-out-loud.  It means a lot to not just be talking alone in the dark!

Along that note - I LOVE MY JOB! I have ben having a great time, developing great teaching and learning experiences, and growing with every minute.  While it is extremely overwhelming at times, I feel like I am submerged in a culture where I am free to explore new ideas and really live my passion - education on the edge.  On the edge of what? Everything! The freedom to take risks in an effort to provide engaging and authentic education rocks!  

That being said, I am struggling with trying to know how to deliver the CONTENT, while still keeping with the framework for exemplary teaching and learning.  Today my teaching partner and I combined our classes (for a grand total of 50 students), and in the library they experienced a (brace yourself) LECTURE. It was not your typical lecture, there were videos and a dramatization challenge, but I walked away feeling like I did not support the students well enough before jumping into the Charter of Rights & Freedoms and it's relation to the Indian Act...  I decided to jump into it so that they will be prepared to consider such things next week when we are in Bamfield BC - but am wondering if it was the right choice, and if I will be able to backpedal a bit to make sure that we don't superficially cover something so important.  

But - Bamfield! On Sunday we (4 teachers, 6 parents, 2 administrators, and 94 students) are going to the Bamfield Marine Science Center for a week long field trip!  We will be doing all kinds of science during the day (for the Science 9 Biodiversity unit), and diving into some Humanities in the evening.  I am excited to challenge the kids to let themselves be inspired by their beautiful surroundings and amazing experiences.  Stay posted for pics and more!

I have so much more to say - other online platforms that have found their way into my classroom, upcoming projects, there's too much!  (Posting more regularly may solve this dilemma!)

Thanks again, talk to you soon.

:)

Networking Now!!!

"Certainly, Web 2.0 has opened the flood gate on a dam on creativity that we weren’t even fully aware existed, and the explosion of content creation is an indication of the latent energy that’s released when anyone and everyone is able to participate more actively in the different spheres of their lives."

Check out this paper by Steve Hargadon Educational Networking: The Importance Web 2.0 Will Play in Education. He not only offers a great overview of what exactly Web 2.0 is (namely, Educational Networking); but also explores the possibilities and limitations of these technologies in our classrooms.

I have also done some work on Educational Networking for a PD project.  Check it out at Educational Networking: Towards the Twenty First Century Classroom.  The site chronicles my use of the web platform Edmodo with my Social Studies 10 and 11 classes during the Fall of 2009; I also explore limitations and possibilities associated with Educational Networking, and Edmodo in particular.

Network Away!!!

Calling All Radical Teachers...

Goodbye to teaching that is smug and self-satisfied, teaching as authoritative and proud, hiding its conflicts and uncertainties behind a lectern, a textbook, or a "social science" conceit.  Goodbye to teaching as clerking - something quickly learned, easily assessed, instantly remediated.  Goodbye to teaching as a trivial pursuit of the obvious.

Welcome to an approach that is overflowing with life, crackling with the surprising and contradictory harmonies of intimacy and love, stunning in its hope for a better world.  Welcome to teaching as value laden, aspirational, and imperfect - a never-ending voyage of discovery and surprise, a continuous work in progress.  Welcome to a life of no easy answers.

Goodbye to being in control all the time.  Goodbye to overthinking and underexperiencing.  Goodbye to deference, didacticism, ego and the need to always be right.  Goodbye to prisons and border guards and walls - whether in Palestine or in Texas or inside our own hearts and minds.  Goodbye to all that.

Welcome to the unknown, to jumping off the edge, to the new and the now, to endlessly learning how to live again and how to love anew.  Welcome to relentless curiosity, simple acts of kindness, the complexity of humanity, the wonder of it all.  Embrace teaching with one foot in the here and now, and another striding toward a world that could be but is not yet.

From: "Controversies in the Classroom: A Radical Teacher Reader" Series Foreword
By Joseph Entin, Robert C. Rosen, & Leonard Vogt, Editors
Foreword by Deborah Meier

Gaming in the Twenty-First Century Classroom

While teaching high school social studies, working at the local Blockbuster, and sitting in my own living room, I have become aware of the incredible educational potential of some popular video games.  My grade eleven students asked me about the depictions of World War II in the popular game "Call of Duty: World at War", and my grade ten class enjoyed a class of playing Risk and thinking about world domination.  In both cases the students were genuinely engaged and thinking deeper about the media that they are exposed to.

However, some would argue that video games have no place in the classroom, and that we should be discouraging students from engaging in this type of entertainment.  Due to these protests, any teacher interested in bringing commercial games into their classrooms must be aware of WHY.  That is, what does the research say about this?  How can we justify using video games in the classroom?

I was assigned a literature review in one of my classes at the University of Lethbridge, and was immediately eager to see what research there is to support (or discourage) the use of video games in the classroom.  My main concerns were that the articles be empirical (that is, based on real data collected systematically in the classroom), and that they consider commercial, as well as educational, video games. The results of my labor are summed up in the following review...

Gaming in the Twenty-First Century Classroom

I also found this incredible study by Richard Sandford, Mary Ulicsak, Keri Facer and Tim Rudd; in collaboration with EA Games and futurelab.  Teaching With Games: Using Commercial Off the Shelf Games in Formal Education 

Prezi soon to come!!