The first week of September means back to school for millions of kids and young adults in North America. What happens this first week will largely presage the events of students’ learning lives in the coming school year. I’m not talking about what classroom seat is chosen or whether a new math textbook is handed […]
School’s Out! Bring on the school slide(s)
Well, it’s a wrap on another school year as of a few days ago. And with the end of school about a gazillion kids are suddenly ratting around poking their noses in all kinds of places and doing all kinds of nefarious activities. I’m being facetious but the start of summer holidays also brings alarms […]
Personalized Learning III – Resource Links
In my presentation and workshop last week at the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Councils spring conference, I provided the list below of Personalized Learning Resources. The list is aligned with the categories I provided in my previous two entries:• John Holt resources [unschooling] (johnholtgws.com)• Dr. Maurice Gibbons (selfdirectedlearning.com)• Reggio Emilia [child-centred] – see Wikipedia […]
Personalized Learning II
I would like to provide some additional insights into Personalized Learning, following my last entry a couple of weeks ago. BC History: We tend to forget that here in BC we had momentum in the late 1980s (no, we didn’t have the internet, but we weren’t driving horse buggies either!) for introducing a system-wide, learner-centred […]
Interpreting the “Personalized Learning” Landscape – A Zookeeper’s Guide
On May 5th, I am giving a keynote presentation at the BC Confederation of Parent Advisory Groups (BCCPAC) Spring Conference and AGM (link here) on the theme of Personalized Learning or PL. I thought I’d take this opportunity to provide a brief overview of the PL landscape as it exists in education today. What’s most […]
It’s a DIY / MAKERS’ World! (i.e. Learn Your Way!)
Everywhere I look today I’m being drawn into a secretive, seductive world: DIY. Be a Maker. Build a Treehouse, or a pair of snow goggles, or a solar theramin (I had to look that up). Learn how to identify animal tracks in the snow, or mushrooms in your neighbourhood. Get your bike or your […]
Some advice for BC’s new Education Minister
Following the resignation of (Curious) George Abbott last week British Columbia has a new Minister of Education: Don McRae. Let’s see, in the 22 years I’ve been a certified educator in BC we’ve had … about 15 Education Ministers! Alas, they don’t seem to have long shelf lives and if the polls for next spring’s […]
Ten suggestions to improve K-12 education :
The start of a new schooling year spawns renewed interest in education. Mostly, this interest is fleeting and lead by mainstream media serving up sound bites, lunchbox recipes and superficial debates on the subject of “Back to School.” Our children deserve deeper discussion. The world they live in and are inheriting is changing rapidly and […]
Tipping (sacred) cows: Updating Bloom’s Taxonomy Overdue
The year was 1956. Elvis Presley stokes teen and parental angst with his newly-released “Hound Dog”, Communist Russia invades Hungary and a gallon of gas costs .22 cents almost anywhere in North America. In education circles the earth quakes when a professor from Chicago, Dr. Benjamin Bloom publishes his “Taxonomy of Learning” that crystallizes a […]
Michael’s book, 