Parent Choice and School Reform: The Case of the Science Leadership Academy

Parents and Students
Originally uploaded by PGoGS

Meaningful parent involvement requires more than just programming. Some would argue it begs for major school reform.
Mark Holmes, Honourary Patron of the Society for Quality Education and Professor Emeritus at Ontario Institute for Studies in Education lays bare his personal bias [...]

Storehouses of Stuff

Twitter
Originally uploaded by mariacecita

I sent a tweet the other day asking for advice on how to capture and track all the great links that come flying across my Twitter Timeline.
@edtechworkshop admonished “I’m sure I will be blasted for this….but I say don’t even try! It’s a sure [...]

Parents, pedagogy and context

I spent the better part of the day yesterday pondering a great book by Kevin Marjoribanks called Family and School Capital: Towards a Context Theory of Students’ School Outcomes. The essence of the theory (without meaning to trivialize the complexity of the analysis) is that parents bring social and cultural capital togehter with [...]

Re-defining Technical Support

@achurches wrote an insightful post titled “One Size Fits All”. He writes about the barriers to teacher creativity due in part to lack of flexibility from school and district administration and a locking down of technology by technical support staff.
I agree.
But teachers need help in working with tech staff. Allanah commented on “One [...]

Collaborative Model Building

Part of planning for success in a 21st Century Learning organization is understanding and prioritizing the investments in technology. Success is about aligning the work in K-12 schools with the deployment of infrastructure, services, and supporting administrative operations. As we attempt to prioritize our work, such models can direct the planning and [...]

Can Pre-Built = Personal?

Personal Learning Environments are
a single user’s e-learning system that provides access to a variety of learning resources, and that may provide access to learners and teachers who use other PLEs.
(van Harmelen, 2006)

In a recent discussion with fellow grad students and Stephen Downes, Dan made what I thought was a brilliant comparison about two kinds [...]

Not Detached?

It was an article that made me sit up and take notice. The Faculty is Remote, but Not Detached was recently published in the New York Times. In fact, some of the faculty referenced in the article appear to have either taken a detached stand-and-deliver style to the Internet, or won’t move to [...]

Top Ten Reasons…. Online Learning Disasters

Last summer we explored the Model of a Community of Inquiry as it relates to online learning. The model includes three elements considered essential to an educational transaction: cognitive presence, social presence and teaching presence. Please follow the link to the website for more detailed information.
As a fun assignment I prepared a [...]

Twits are (not?) for kids

I keep two blogs. My other blog Masterthoughts is where I chronicle my personal learning journey through my Master’s program, struggle through learning issues, and generally find my way. I appreciate feedback and discourse at Masterthoughts, although sometimes it is good enough to just get my thoughts on the virtual paper.
This blog is [...]