Mindful Ed

This Labour Day weekend two events transpired which have precipitated this post: 1. My five year old nephew and I visited a pond together 2. I had a visit from an educator whom I admire greatly who encouraged me to share my voice more often So here I am ... on the eve before a new school year ... sharing a rather cheesy analogy that popped into my head while playing at the pond with my nephew. First the story of the pond. My nephew Ben and I went on a wee adventure to a pond close to our family cottage on Lake Huron. We spotted a snapping turtle sitting on a log and he asked, "Why does he live here "? What's better than a curious five year old? Words cannot express my childlike happiness. My primary teacher instincts immediately kicked in and we got into a discussion about what we noticed about the pond - Lots of space, green stuff on the surface of the water that maybe he could eat, sunshine, a nice big log to sit on, not many people around bugging it, etc. I la...

My final task in the CPCO PQP 10 day challenge is to create a post summarizing my thoughts on what it means to be a digital leader. This happens to coincide with my participation at the MISA Innovation conference today in London. Rather serendipitous! In one of the open spaces, discussion centered around teacher/administration buy-in. How do we move the system forward? A key concept we kept coming back to was the idea of partnerships . - Partnerships between administrators and teachers where risk is embraced. This relies heavily on trust and both individuals taking a co-learning stance. It's about asking the 'What if...' and 'How might ...' questions. - Partnerships between teachers perhaps through demonstration classrooms or informal mentorship opportunities. - Partnerships between administrators, teachers, and students (learning with and from each other). Building these partnerships requires time and the alignment of resources with priorities. Changing t...

Last week, we visited Daniel Pink's website as a class and viewed examples of "What's Your Sentence?" responses. Students then spent some time thinking about who they are in a quest to come up with their own sentence. I found it quite incredible how much you can learn about somebody from simply one sentence. What is the essence of that person that they wish the world to see of them? Powerful!   Students then added personal reflections about their sentence to their blogs. I am adding purposeful time for meditation, prayer, and reflection to work towards the Catholic Graduate expectations. This includes providing more opportunities for students to reflect on who they are and how they wish to impact the world they live in.  As the students completed their own blogs, I reflected on my own sentence to model reflective and creative thinking. Summarizing oneself in as few words as possible is a difficult feat. Who am I as an educator, a leader, a sister, a daughter...

In our session today,  +Michelle Booth  and I shared our learning journeys using digital tools (D2L ePortfolio and Blogger) to create professional portfolios. We examined portfolios as reflection-in-action (on going) and reflection-on-action (showcasing).  It is not a one or other thing - I personally use blog feeds to curate, capture, and reflect and pages within Blogger for portfolio building. The image to the right is a live shot taken while presenting as a way to demonstrate the ease of adding artifacts. Check out our Slide Deck below: After our session I went to the Learning Space area to talk about Periscope in the classroom - an app that allows for real-time broadcasting and social sharing. The discussion was vibrant and thought-provoking. My biggest 'ah-ha' was the need for digital citizenship to be embedded within decision making in the classroom as it happens. Discussions of the pros and cons of apps and digital tools are necessary for stude...