The first thing that strikes me when I visit a new school is that the classrooms don’t look a whole lot different from my dad’s one-room school house in 1940s Saskatchewan. (In fact, my dad’s classroom, above, generally looks more vital and lived in.) Not much has changed except the colour of the chalkboard in 200 years.

Highlights from Angela Maiers’ great session on authentic writing on Friday. Angela brought in 12-year old Zoe for her perspective on schooling:

N.B> this is cross-posted on November Learning’s blog.

At the Building Learning Communities 10 conference, keynote speaker, Rahaf Harfoush, told a great story about an experiment in which five monkeys were put in a room. In the corner of the room was a shelf on which sat a ripe banana. But, when a monkey reached for the banana, his pals would be hosed with cold water. It wasn’t long before the monkeys learned to beat the hell out of anyone who reached for the banana.

Next the researchers subbed-in a new monkey, who didn’t know the hands-off-the-banana rule. As you’d expect, the startled newcomer took a hard lesson form his pals. The researchers eventually subbed-in four more monkeys until none of the original monkeys were left. Nevertheless, none of the monkeys would go near the banana because they knew they would take a lickin’ from the others, even though the researchers had long since stopped spraying water.

Corporate policy–school policy–is too often informed by this monkey-mind.

N.B. this is cross-posted on November Learning’s blog.

Everyone says that the great part of a conference is all the informal networking and chat that happens between the keynotes and presentations. Here’s what I’ve overheard in the in-between at November Learning’s Building Learning Communities 10 conference:

N.B. this is cross=posted at November Learning’s blog.

At the end of April I gave this presentation at the Canadian Association of Independent School’s Best Practices Conference held at the Crescent School in Toronto.

The idea that students are digital natives is a myth. None of the potential educational advantages of social media or cloud computing are self-evident; and just as students had to be taught to see a pencil as a learning tool, they need to be taught to see the web as a learning tool. As we focus that teaching on ends, not means—just as we say let’s do some writing, not let’s do some penciling—we find increased student engagement and quality of work. This workshop shows how to view the web (browser) itself as the go-to platform and how to sort web tools by function—research, production, publication, discussion and management—to create a simple, solid framework for helping student and teachers make sense out of an ever-growing, ever-diversifying web.

Here’s my slide deck;