Webb of Thoughts

Back on February 3rd, I decided that I was going to make a commitment to blog everyday for a month.   At that point, I had already blogged for a couple of days in a row.  This was a tremendous increase in my blogging and reflecting, having only blogged a handful of times since my ECMP courses. I didn’t pull through on my blogging for a month straight, but I did manage to post 13 more blog posts over the [...]

A few weeks ago I posted about how I had my science students blog last trimester.  Since I am starting a new trimester, I have tweaked the assignment a little. If you didn’t see the earlier post, my students were blogging about current events in science.  They were asked to summarize an article they found and then share how they feel it impacts them, their community, their country, and then the world.  It was very successful with my students, evident [...]

I came across this video this morning and felt compelled to share it here.  It’s a poem by Shane Koyczan (@koyczan) and was animated by a number of different animators through a collaborative effort.  Please watch it. There is also a website that has been created for further action: http://tothisdayproject.com/. To This Day by Shane Koyczan To This Day When I was a kid I used to think that pork chops and karate chops were the same thing I thought they [...]

Full credit for this post  goes to Mac Hird (@ImMacHird), who is blogging and collaborating with my chemistry students this trimester.  The first blog assignment was to share thoughts on “What makes a good science student?”. Mac’s response is one that I feel all science students should see. Close you eyes and imagine a science student, as portrayed by popular culture. Almost certainly you have imagined someone who has memorized the entire textbook and never asks questions in class, only answers them. [...]

This is the question that lead me to becoming a teacher. I was a second year university student, further away from knowing what I wanted to do with my life than ever before.  I had considered engineering, nursing, business and everything in between at one point or another while trying to decide.  But then one day, a friend of mine asked me “What if you won the lottery?  What would you do then?”   Almost instantly, I said I’d want [...]

I’m very fortunate to teach at a school that has a one-to-one laptop program.  Each student I teach has their own laptop that has scribing capabilities, students can use a stylus to “write” on their screens.  With my students having instant, immediate access to the internet, it has opened up learning opportunities that probably wouldn’t have presented themselves otherwise. In my math classes, I create OneNote files for my students to use instead of worksheets on paper.  It’s an attempt [...]