As members of the future workforce and society, today’s students require guidance and education, in order to successfully navigate and utilize the digital world that they were born into. Acknowledging the importance of becoming digitally literate, the provincial and territorial governments of Canada have been developing various forms of information and communication technology (ICT) curricula, which will assist students in their skill development. School-age children have a unique set of experiences awarded to them due to the digital age in which they were born. However, their birth date alone is not sufficient to equip them for navigating the digital world… Read More
Why a Fishbowl?
In the fall of 2011 I began my teaching journey when I started my Bachelor of Education (After Degree) at a small rural university in Manitoba, Canada. While social studies was my primary teachable (and still my subject-area of choice) I immediately became fascinated with technology and the implications it could have on education. As part of my new years resolution for 2012 I began blogging at Miss L’s Whole Brain Teaching as a means of exploring different educational tech tools, growing my own PLN, and learning more about specific teaching methods. I never imagined what… Read More
Welcome to my New Adventure!
Hello! Is anyone here to read this yet?! After being a regular blogger at Miss L’s Whole Brain Teaching since 2012, I have been struggling with the fact that I have not shared anything since the very beginning of this year. Yes, you read that right, a 6+ month hiatus after being a 15+ post a month kind of gal. If you had an opportunity to read my “Moving On” post at the old local, however, I did mention that I had a good reason for my hiatus. *Que announcement music* “Baby T” is currently 35 weeks along!… Read More
The Social Media Debate: Should Schools Be Using Social Media To Connect with the Community?
“The first step in building strong relationships in schools is the first step for building any strong relationships: talk to each other. The more we communicate our hopes, desires, and needs within the school system, the more ideas and solutions we will have to discuss, the more plans we will have to put into action, and the more support and enthusiasm we will have for seeing those plans through.”[1]Communication is essential for building and maintaining relationships with school stakeholders, but how can schools easily communicate information to the masses without it becoming a time-consuming task?… Read More
The Four Critical Digital Skills We Are Failing to Teach Our Students
“… Young people as a whole have enthusiastically integrated a variety of networked media into their daily lives, and can text, upload photos and blog with relative ease. However, using media effortlessly isn’t necessarily the same thing as using it well. Young people are mistakenly considered experts in digital technologies because they’re so highly connected, but they are still lacking many essential digital literacy skills.”[1]Classrooms are now filled with students that, from a generational standpoint, are coined, digital natives; born into the age of digital technology and familiar with computers and the internet from an early age.[2] Does an increase… Read More
Charlie Appelstein: No Such Thing As A Bad Kid
On Friday all of “T-Division’s” teaching staff and EAs had the opportunity to attend a PD session with Charlie Appelstein; a youth-care specialist, author, and father. Being that we are now into December, and only have a short ten days until the Christmas break, I was apprehensive about attending a PD session when there is so much to do in so little time left. On the other hand, classroom energy is always high at this time of year so it was nice to have a day away to think and recharge! Mr. Appelstein was an incredibly entertaining presenter… Read More
Interactive Notebooks (I.N.B) in Grade 8: Front Matter & Rational Numbers
Last year I used Interactive Notebooks with my Grade 8-10 Math classes with some success. My Grade 8 and 9 students used them the most but my implementation lacked direction and I don’t feel my students got as much out of them as they should have. I still taught my lessons regularly and then we would do an Interactive Notebook entry at the end of that topic as a type of review activity. So, while useful, I wasn’t using them to my full potential and my students could pick up on that, This year I was… Read More
December Currently
If you haven’t encountered a “Currently” post before, it is just a fun post at the beginning of each month that serves as a way to share what is Currently going on in your life! You can link up and share your own “Currently” post by visiting the wonderful Farley over at Oh’ Boy 4th Grade. I can’t believe it is already December! The last currently post I did was ALL the way back in September and it seems like everything has just flown by since then. Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year and I love getting… Read More
First Steps in Math – Day 1
Today I began the First Steps in Math program with four other educators from our division. Several years ago our division sent one of our colleagues to the First Steps in Math training program and he has now spent time each year educating other teachers in our division and was actually trained by David McKillop, who I saw last year in Brandon. My new books (provided by our division): the First Steps in Math Number Sense course book & work book. First Steps in Math was developed in Australia in the early 1990’s as a means… Read More
Encouraging Student Voice Through Social Media
I am currently working on my Master’s degree in the Curriculum & Planning Stream with a focus on tech integration in the classroom. My first class, Educational Issues, involves the completion of four different assignments: 1 blog post, 1 presentation, and 2 papers.This past Saturday our professor drove up to our community (abut a 2hr drive for him) to watch our presentations. We were each responsible for creating a 15min presentation on a topic of our choice and participated in a Q & A session immediately following. My presentation topic was Encouraging Student Voice Through Social Media and I chose… Read More