October+2014

October 2014
...was a whirlwind.

The month started off with an opportunity to do an [|IGNITE talk with Discovery Education Canada], along with nine other awesome presenters. Thanks to Dean Shareski and Andy McKiel for doing most of the leg work for the event!

[|IGNITE] is a pretty interesting presentation format. It reminds me a bit of Pecha Kucha, and ends up sounding a bit like "TED lite" when it works out. Pulling together the slides and the notes for a 20 slide, timed and auto advancing five minute speech was a bit of work, but it really helped me to consolidate my thinking around the [|growaloafofbread] project blog that I set up with my family in 2013. The condensed format meant that I had to explain our 7 month agriculture and food processing project in five minutes flat. And keep it entertaining. All of the presenters did an awesome job, and it was so good to see a couple of tables of Louis Riel School Division colleagues attending as well!

[|Back at Dakota], I had the opportunity to have two teachers from other high schools drop by on separate occasions to spend a morning observing my classes, just to get a sense of what "Bring Your Own Device 1 to 1" looks like. I often think that some of the best PD that teachers can get is to [|watch other teachers interact with learners]. Too bad that it is so hard to arrange all of that. After all, observing someone for a morning means giving your own classes to someone else, getting a sub, and then spending the time to try and understand someone else's context. Still, it is a really worthwhile experience for everyone involved.

The highlight of the Manitoba SAGE coordinated PD conference (for me) was getting to hear from [|Penny Kittle], as she addressed the Manitoba Association of Teachers of English (MATE) and encouraged us with inspiring stories and helpful advice for encouraging literacy among adolescents. Her injunction to "Follow the Kids" has been haunting me...how can we do a better job of that? Maybe if we knew them all the way through, from K to 12, then maybe we could watch for the gaps and also have the relational credibility to encourage them to stick to it when things are tough. As it is, we tend to lose the continuity of learning when we group learners and pass them on to another person, in batches. Yes, echoes of [|Sir Ken] here, I know.

As November creeps up into full-view and the last of the Canada Geese fly south all of us in Winnipeg are bracing for the first really cold days, and the first really big snowfall. October was a whirlwind...and now its over.