"Some have “always” been true – some are unique to this century of learning. Let me know of any other universal skills you believe young people should know how to do."

Your thinking about your practice may have shifted significantly over the past month, but relationships remain at the centre of our learning.

Resources on Engaging Student Voices
Explore resources related to recognizing and valuing student knowledge, input, and expertise and building student-centered learning environments where students make decisions about how learning happens.

David is a Vice Principle with Learning Innovations Network Coquitlam (LINC). He is very passionate about his work. The two blog post that I commented on were,
1.4 notes on taking notes.
2.Leading in a time of...
I really enjoyed reading these blogs because I could relate to them and I feel like almost everyone could relate to them. The topics that he post about are a very largely known problem or idea that a lot of people could add to. He seems like he really enjoys the feed back that he gets from everyone and he usually answers back to them.

I was recently asked by a superintendent if I had some questions to ask his principals to start off the year. The questions I gave him were based on the following areas:

Fostering Effective Relationships
Instructional Leadership
Embodying Visionary Leadership
Developing Leadership Capacity
Creating Sustainable Change

We want to hear about what a fool you are, because that’s what we are." Most people, however, do not want to talk about their failures or their struggles with their weaknesses. But your honestly and willingness to be vulnerable is what draws your audience in. Though the stories are well planned and have a solid structure, The Moth's Lea Thau says in this Nieman Storyboard interview that the delivery is more about sharing than performing. "The one demand is that you are willing to step out there and be completely present with the audience and say, 'I am not performing something to you, for you, or at you, I’m sharing something with you in this moment that is true for me.'

Educators can play a key role in assisting learners in building upon and expanding their self-regulation skills. Strategies include using metacognitive reflection questions both prior to and after learning tasks to assist students through a process of guided inquiry:




What is the best way to go about this task?
How well are my learning strategies working? What changes should I make, if any?
What am I still having trouble understanding?
What can I recall and what should I review?
How does this material relate to other things I’ve learned or experienced? Supporting Self-Regulation in the Classroom)

When collaborating, people work together (co-labor) on a single shared goal.

Like an orchestra which follows a script everyone has agreed upon and each musician plays their part not for its own sake but to help make something bigger.
When cooperating, people perform together (co-operate) while working on selfish yet common goals.

The logic here is “If you help me I’ll help you” and it allows for the spontaneous kind of participation that fuels peer-to-peer systems and distributed networks. If an orchestra is the sound of collaboration, then a drum circle is the sound of cooperation.

When we are being told a story, things change dramatically. Not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are too.

“We want to take the existing unit plans and adjust the language so they are more globally accessible and do 5-to-10-minute interviews with teachers about the unit and with students to talk about how they learned and what they created,” she says. Her goal is to have the written unit and about 20 minutes of video so teachers can see and hear how a unit works. “We want teachers to see the learning potential of the unit. Over the next three years we plan to build out as many SLA units as we can.”

Kids need us. For students who struggle with behaviour challenges, it is never a simple solution. Teaching 30 students (with a variety of academic, social and emotional needs) for an entire day can be completely exhausting. When discussing solutions, though, we need to ask the question: who is this about - the teachers/admin? or the student? It likely falls somewhere in the middle but it is important to keep in mind the needs of everyone. In the end, it is our job as admin, teachers, and staff to create the conditions for student success. Meet students where they are and teach the needed skills from there.

Quality feedback is critical to student learning. Calling a grade, feedback, is like saying sharing a link with someone is collaboration.

In a still-sluggish job market, for many people job hunting can be a frustrating series of nos and non-responses.
To combat that, many job seekers with coding and design experience go to extreme creative lengths to stand out and demonstrate their skills in a tangible way.

The Personalize Learning Webinar Series presented The Inquiry Hub with David Truss and five amazing learners. The Inquiry Hub provides 9th through 12th grade learners an innovative, technology driven, full-time program that allows learners to pursue their own learning by shaping their educational experience around their interests and questions instead of structured classes.

If kids can access information from sources other than school, and if school is no longer the only place where information lives, what, then happens to the role of this institution?

Although the format and tools have changed over the past year, the philosophy has remained the same:

Unify learning at school, learning at home, and learning anywhere, anytime.

Empower learners to engage in and reflect on their own inquiry processes.

Encourage interest- and passion-driven learning.

Integrate peers, parents, communities, and global networks into the inquiry process.

By combining engaging online instruction resources and solid offline learning experiences, educators can transform their classroom and put the old column-and-rows setting to shame! Because of this notion, blended learning environments provide today's students a distinct advantage.

Technology in education, then, is useful only insofar as it extends our own humanity.

Professor John Hattie speaks passionately about outdoors learning activity centres deepening his understanding of learning - link here. He cites outdoor adventure programmes as 43rd on the list for impact on learning, but critically, its how they have the impact which matters most.

We’re not given sheets, we’re given possibilities. – Noa

Blogs are certainly writing spaces, but they lend themselves to not just publishing writing, but also response and discussion which is that higher level thinking we are vying for...

I borrowed and adapted questions from David Truss's presentation "7 Ways to Transform Your Classroom". The questions participants discussed together and shared thoughts on were a powerful part of the day, in my opinion.

David Truss is a unique educational leader in a unique school. He’s vice principal at Learning Innovations Network Coquitlam in British Columbia, Canada. Education for him, his teachers and their students is inquiry-based, driving a learning built around asking questions and discovering answers.