inquiry-based learning
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The pillars of my teaching are shifting
I’ve only read Chapters 1 and 2 (and 10) in Garfield Gini-Newman and Roland Case’s Creating Thinking Classrooms, but I can feel the foundation of my beliefs, the pillars of my teaching and the roof of my practice shifting. I’m looking through two of my school roles as I read this book. Firstly, I have to…
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Launching a book club with a riddle
My White Pine book club is growing stale. The same few students join every year (which is awesome) but I’m not reaching as far as I’d like to in my secondary school of 1200 students. So I’m trying an additional book club this year in a different format. The book I’ve chosen is “This Dark…
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Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal
I don’t think of myself as a gamer. I have been known to play lots of those Flash-based Facebook games with my Candy Crush Saga friends, and occasionally a great puzzle-based novella will come along like Gabriel Knight 2, Syberia or Ripper that I devour, but generally I didn’t think they were a big part…
Black & White, book reviews, Candy Crush Saga, collection development, definition of literacy, digital identity, Eagles Flight, educational research, educational technology, Epic Winners, Gabriel Knight 2, Game of Thrones Ascent, game-based learning, games for change, information literacy, inquiry-based learning, Jane McGonigal, Lemonade Stand, library leadership, Librarygame, literacy promotion, McGonigal, meaningful games, non-fiction, Plants vs. Zombies, professional development, Quest to Learn, Reality is Broken, Ripper, school librarian, secondary school library, secondary school teacher, serious games, Sim City, Spore, student-centred learning, Syberia, teacher-librarian, technology, technology integration, The Audience, the game, The Sims, transliteracy, Twitter, Will Wright -
Change Agent rant
WARNING: the following response could be seen as a rant. It probably is. I read the Cochran-Smith & Lytle article with some trepidation. One of the hard things about being a teacher-librarian in 2013 is that I expect any day now that some policymaker is going to make me redundant. Ouch. So when I read…
being a teacher, Change agent, core curriculum, Education reform, educational policy, educational research, inquiry-based learning, library leadership, policymaker, professional development, role of the teacher, school leadership team, school librarian, secondary school library, secondary school teacher, teacher-librarian -
Tuned out: Engaging the 21st century learner by Karen Hume
Tuned Out: Engaging The 21st Century Learner by Karen Hume My rating: 2 of 5 stars If you want a quick snapshot of all that’s happening in educational theory, this is the book for you. At the risk of sounding over-confident, this is exactly why this book was not for me. It’s a basic primer…
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Is it possible to grow readers who are also digitally savvy?
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Penny Kittle speak about reading and how complex it is for intermediate/senior teachers to teach. Kittle estimates that in 1st year college/university that the average pages a student reads is 500. She proposed that the #1 reason that students drop out after first year…
authentic audience, books, children’s literature, critical thinking, definition of literacy, digital literacy, Don Tapscott, education, Grown Up Digital, Heather Durnin, inquiry-based learning, literacy promotion, Literature Circles, Penny Kittle, reading, struggling reader, student-centred learning, Vygotzky, young adult fiction
threadbare beauty 