As a Design Technology teacher my students are constantly creating Computer Aided Design (CAD) files. These might be from 2D Design (.dtd), Photoshop (.psd), Sketchup (.skp), and (hopefully soon) 3D printer files (.stl). In the past, getting the files from their computer to the appropriate machine involved lots of passing USB drives around in a … [Read more…]
Nothing beats a face to face conversation. I am reminded of this constantly as I work with teachers to help them incorporate our school’s relatively new G Suite (I still want to call it Google Apps) platform into their workflow. Every conversation gives me small insights into the unique frustrations each teacher and department struggle … [Read more…]
I am slowly working my way through Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo, which is full of useful presentation advice that I am trying to apply in my classroom. Today I was reading about emotionally charged events and came across this interesting excerpt: An emotionally charged event (usually called an ECS, short for emotional competent … [Read more…]
I just upgraded my Diigo account as I plan to use it a lot next year to help share resources with teachers at my school. In the process I discovered the outliner tool, which seems to be a great way to organise bookmarks and turn them into useful knowledge (to quote Diigo). Here is one I made … [Read more…]
Some thoughts on school improvement and self-organization from a simpler way by Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers, that I couldn’t figure out how to fit into my final Masters paper. The world we work in, and into which our students will graduate, is very different from the one many of us were prepared for … [Read more…]
It seems my current fascination is with the qualities of an effective school leader. I really like the list below, which comes from Kim Marshall’s excellent summary of “Touching Eternity” by Adam Rohdie in Independent School, Winter 2016 (Vol. 75, #2, p. 12, 14). A passion for education, a respect for and love of teachers, … [Read more…]
I just finished reading Action research as instructional supervision: Suggestions for principals by Glanz, J. (2005) for my Masters course and there were a couple sections at the end that describe a reflective leader that I really liked. This is what I aspire to be one day: “One of the most important decisions a principal must make is … [Read more…]
I am sitting in domestic departures in Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport outside Kuala Lumpur, waiting for my flight home to Penang. This marks my 3rd month in Malaysia and the 2nd professional development workshop full of incredibly talented and dedicated teachers. This time it was the Kuala Lumpur Google Summit hosted by ISKL. It was an … [Read more…]
This year I purchased a 3D printer for my classroom. Our PrintrBot Simple Metal has been going flat out all year trying to keep up with our project ideas. So far it has printed trophies for our Mindstorms SumoBot competitions , Bugging Eyeballs for Halloween, Gameboard pieces for a Science Gameboard project, various attachment pieces for my … [Read more…]
My Masters starts tomorrow and I have been playing around with note taking strategies. Evernote, the Paper App, and my blog are all being considered for my note taking work flow. As some of my books are the paper kind I am also having to relearn how to mark up with a pencil and highlighter. … [Read more…]
