Peter Gow, Trying to Further Education and Educators

Archive for the NotYourFathersSchool Category

PLAYING IT FORWARD—INNOVATION AND ITS AUDIENCES (Part 3 of 3)

The challenge for the school embarking on innovative practice is to communicate clearly and concisely what it is they are doing that sets them—and that will set their students—apart from the crowd. In the first part of this series, back in early September when summer’s glow was […]

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373 CRITICAL INNOVATIONS THAT NO COMPETENT TEACHER CAN AFFORD TO IGNORE—INNOVATION AND ITS AUDIENCES (Part 2 of 3)

Does the first part of this headline sound familiar? How many similar headlines have you read, or had tweeted to you? I see about a dozen a day, sometimes bouncing around my PLNosphere like an asteroid field. I admit that sometimes I bite—usually when the number is […]

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WHAT’S WRONG WITH A LITTLE BOREDOM?

A while back I heard an interview with British rocker and cheesemaker(!) Alex James, late of the band The Blur (with which I am utterly unfamiliar, being a high culture man*). At one point in a discussion about cars, the host asked what kind of car Alex […]

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LOOKS LIKE SCHOOL: INNOVATION AND ITS AUDIENCES (PART 1 of 3)

I had a personal revelation—I’ll get to it in a bit—the other day as I was trying to explain to someone my day job as a college counselor. Few positions in a school seem to be quite as clear in the purpose as college guidance, and to […]

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LET THE DIALOGUE BEGIN: ANOTHER TAKE ON OUR PUBLIC PURPOSE

Briefly: For a while it has been on my mind that independent schools here and there are up to some pretty exciting things and that for various reasons this information tends to remain within our sector of the education world. Earlier this summer I put pen to […]

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TAKING NOTES IN A DIGITAL AGE–SOMETHING FOR THE INTENTIONAL TEACHER TO THINK ABOUT

The other day I heard a teacher wonder whether it was okay to ask students in a digital classroom—that is, a classroom in which every kid is packing a laptop—to keep notes in a paper notebook. That’s a heck of a good question, getting at the heart […]

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NEW FACULTY ORIENTATION: ALWAYS TOO MUCH, NEVER ENOUGH

We’re halfway through our week-long new teacher program at my school, and it’s going well. They have their laptops and have had a whole lot of training on the way we utilize the Google suite of applications, they’ve had a thorough, stop-and-meet-the-office-folks tour of the school, and […]

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UNCLE WIGGLY IN CONNECTIVISM: THE MOOC MOOC ENDS

The scene from The Wizard of Oz my subconscious most often references is when Dorothy & Co. awake as snow falls to counteract the effects of the Wicked Witch’s poisonous poppies. Like the travelers, I hear little voices singing, “You’re out of the woods, you’re out of […]

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PREPARING K-12 STUDENTS FOR CONNECTIVIST LEARNING: SOME INITIALQUESTIONS

As part of today’s “homework” I’m opening this up to fellow participants in Hybrid Pedagogy‘s stimulating MOOC MOOC, hoping to capture some thoughts on the today’s MOOC MOOC “Questions at Hand,” from Jesse Stommel: How does the rise of hybrid pedagogy, open education, and massive open online […]

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AN EDUCATION IN MESSINESS

When I was a kid at Southside Elementary School, my parents used to receive an extremely detailed report card—I’m guessing 20-plus categories in which I could be Satisfactory, Unsatisfactory, and a couple of other letters (I for Improving? Dunno). Southside was innovative(!) in a number of ways, […]

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF TRADITIONAL LANDS

I here affirm that the offices from which I work are situated on lands that have a very long and continuing history as a locus of residence, livelihood, traditional expression, and exchange by the Massachusett, Wampanoag, Abenaki, Mohawk, Wabanaki, Hohokam, O’odam, Salt River Pima, and Maricopa people. The servers for this website are situated on Ute and Goshute land. We make this acknowledgment to remind ourselves, our educational partners, and our friends of our shared obligation to acknowledge and work toward righting the inequities and injustices that have alienated indigenous peoples from the full occupation and utilization of these spaces.