During our last staff meeting at David Thompson we had some discussion on teacher collaboration time, what we liked about it, what we gained for it, and what some of the outputs of the collaboration are. Part of the discussion was at least partly instigated by curiosities from parents. In the Vancouver school district there is some head-stratching by parents around all of the days that their kids are missing. These days are a result of budget cuts (non-instructional days), professional development days, holidays and some time allocated for teacher allocation.

The other day while looking at my MET course discussion forums I came across a post that made my blood boil. The topic being discussed was LOGO, and how Papert partially designed the language as a tool for constructivist learning of math for children. One of my classmates said they didn’t understand much about LOGO because she “wasn’t a math person.” My jaw dropped, blood ran to my head (or away from head?

One of the most intriguing aspects of using technology in the classroom is the concept of blended learning. Blended learning, loosely stated, is a model where students are involved in a mix of distance/remote instruction combined with face-to-face (f2f) instruction. I think in many ways blended learning epitomizes some of the ideas behind 21st Century Learning. Obviously the infusion of technology is one area, but I consider the technology angle to be more of an enablement of the other concepts in 21st Century Learning.

Today, two references to Teacher Portfolios came to my attention. The first was a link to a post on EET that I got via physicstweet. The second was a link to a UBC Event on Teacher Portfolios. I’ll have to keep these links in mind as I build my own ePortfolio. Without giving it much thought, it seems that integrating a teacher portfolio into the ePortfolio would be a good idea.

Last Friday our secondary school had a non-instructional day where the staff worked on some professional development. The afternoon was spent working on the School Goal Plan, as all schools are mandated to do by the Ministry of Education I believe. A couple of really interesting things came up. First, we were given some results from a student forum on what the students think helps their critical thinking. Secondly, we had about a dozen of students join us for a session where we broke into smaller groups and had a chance to talk with a student.

As part of a research proposal I am putting together for my ETEC 500 course, over the past week or so I have read a lot of papers that deal with the topic of conceptual change in science students. Although not all articles showed the same causal effect of addressing common misconceptions of students, the evidence from these papers makes it very compelling for teachers to implement some type of conceptual change model.

One thing that I’ve been thinking about lately is how peer instruction or other attempts to get away from pseudoteaching can be applied to junior science classes. For example, yesterday I started a Grade 8 science unit on Water. I really like this unit because it has a lot of relevance for the kids and a good number of opportunities for both lab inquiries and outdoor experiential trips. However, I can’t help think that the actual learning of the topics is firmly grounded in reading and scientific literacy.

One of the best lessons I’ve done in Physics was an introduction/inquiry into friction. It was one of those classes where the students were doing something meaningful and were part of a process of discovery. Certainly the lesson wasn’t perfect but being able to reflect upon it will give me the chance to not only improve it, but also transfer ideas and methodologies to other lessons and contexts. I should definitely point out that the overall idea of the lesson was lifted from an article written by Campbell and Neilson (2009).

In the past couple of weeks I’ve come across some blogs/articles that talk about open ended questions on physics tests. A great example of this can be found here at Physics! Blog! I think the idea behind this is to allow the student to showcase everything that they’ve learned and demonstrate a deeper understanding of the topic by applying their knowledge. I think this would correspond about 1/2 way up the cognitive domain in Blooms Taxonomy.

Last week I was teaching in a Grade 8 math class and we experienced an interesting situation of different teaching techniques. I was working as a TOC (teacher-on-call, aka substitute teacher) and the class also happened to have a student teacher. The student teacher was an experienced math teacher from overseas, so I think it is fair to say that we both felt pretty comfortable in front of the class.