Searching for this air and fuel screw

Does School Kill Creativity?

I was treated to this video in my Philosophy Of Education lecture. Be forewarned this video is 19 minutes long.; worth every minute of it, I believe. If you are only to watch a bit, start 4:14 into it. It's quite funny. Also, click the top right corner of the video area to toggle full-screen mode.

What Teacher's Make

I recently saw this video of Taylor Mali in my Theory and Professional Practice course. A poet and a teacher himself, he does an fantastic job of describing what a teacher makes. I enjoyed his linguistic skills so much I searched and found a second video that's just as good, called "Miracle Worker". Enjoy. If your a teacher you definitely (beautiful) will.

How I Got Here

We had an assignment in our philosophy class where we were to draw a life map; showing our journey in becoming an educator. The "map" is probably a good indicator of how your philosophy of teaching developed. As you can see I had fun doing this assignment.

CTV Placement Was The Bomb

During my placement at CTV I had the unique opportunity to see how the "magic" of television all comes together. I spent several days with crew members from pre-production, production and post production. I shadowed positions like technical directors, camera operators, production assistants, tape operators, Deko operators, audio technicians, equipment engineers, on-line editors, directors and even producers. I would espcially like to thank the following people who made it all worth while: Stephen Shepherd, Doug Kelly, Roy Janke and Sally Karim. I won't soon forget my time spent on set of the television show Forensic Factor; that's where I shot the above photo of the prop bomb exploding.

Lenticular Print

This is a lenticular print I created for my Curriculum class. It was an interpretative assignment where I was responsible for the final design of the project. The criteria for the assignment was to reflect on a personal experience and curricular issue that was important to me. On the back of the print was my rational and this is what it said: Some of the motivation I called upon during my process of becoming a teacher was to recall my experience as a student. I was a student that was often over-looked for help because I appeared to have understood. A student who suffered in silence because of pride and a lack of self-confidence, was also the same student who immediately behaved when guided to some success. During my practicum I made a conscious decision to seek out these silent students. First hand, I saw how a little success created a different student. It was fun watching those self-deprecating individuals become empowered bright lights in the classroom. Even when students gain minimal success, I will continue to use this strategy during my career because I remember what I needed as a student.

Up The River Without A...

Shhh. Don't tell my mother but I'm making her a paddle. Just one of the many projects here at Queen's to help you incorporate cool things into your own classroom.

Charity Community-Based Project

This is a fictitious ad campaign I did for a charity. The idea is to have these napkins accompany the coffee or beverage that a customer receives during a purchase. The concept was designed to attract the most amount of attention for the least amount of cost. The napkin on the left is the front side and on the right is the back side. After a little reflection I'm curious if it's a little too risky. What do you think? Click on the image to see a larger version.

VIdeo Killed The Queen's Student

This is a video I did for a Social Justice class. How did it go? The results look decent I think but the time it took; well let's just say I am now finished at 7:15 am. Arghhhhhhhhh.

Success In The Darkroom

After many long days of preparation; Angie and myself pulled off the impossible: Teaching the concepts of aperture, shutter speed, ISO, print making and film development all inside four hours. Whew, glad that one's over.

Totally Unrelated To School

The last four days has been quite exciting and revealing for me. I was happy to discover the Ontario College of Teachers called only to clarify a detail on my application. Not to deny me certification or any combination of wild ideas my imagination could dream up (Those blue pages haunt my dreams). I was graced by a visit from my girlfriend, on this my birthday weekend, without once an anxious thought of homework. I discovered today that I shared the same age as the extraordinary Lance Armstrong; who decided to make this day his return to cycling after 3 years of retirement. I've always known I shared my birthday with Martin Luther King day but I would never had guessed that it would be this close to the Inauguration of the world's new hope for change; Barack Obama.

Thanks to these little discoveries I feel a renewed sense of energy. Perfect timing.

Keep On Truckin'

I built this little Tonka for Taylor. Words can't explain how much it warms your heart when see something you've made (props to J.Chute) put a smile on little kids face. Words can't explain how anxious you get when she takes a plastic hammer to it. I love you Taylor.

Show And Tell

This is a wine container, with the guidance of Mr. Chute, I created in Tech Design class. He was kind enough to give me some walnut to use as beautiful end pieces as you can see. I love working in the shop!

LED Project

I acquired a new skill last week--Soldering! Ask me to explain electricity and I may have trouble but I think this project turned out pretty good. The blue LEDs were so strong I had to re-solder my wiring to miss the resistor. That's because they use a lot of juice! Using these LEDs was cool because they were bright enough to lite my way home in the dark. If you look carefully at the top image you can see the On/Off switch I made to complete the circuit. The 9V battery is tucked inside the little box beside the On/Off switch.

Kinesthetic Teaching

I used this example yesterday to show folks how layers in InDesign and Photoshop works. I think they enjoyed it. I'm a big fan of teaching to the senses of touch (kinesthetic). I even had fun creating this little mock-up magazine.

Outline This

Here is a little Screencast I did for the kids at Cawthra Park Secondary. It seems they had forgotten how to create outlines in InDesign. I had taught it to them previously in their Communications Technology class. I apologize for the background noise, I was working on my laptop with a very sensitive microphone. If you listen close enough you can hear the fan from the CPU kick in.

Did You Know

I had an opportunity to attend my associate school's P.A. day on Monday. I hosted a workshop on PowerPoint for a group of teachers. It was quite an experience--each teacher displayed an archetype of every student I have taught to date. There was the one kid who always had their hand up, the student that would jump ahead in the lesson only to ask for help later, the student that sat silently and struggled, the student that constantly chatted with others while I was speaking and the student that had no idea what I was talking about. Wow.

On a more positive note, the beginning of the day started out with this informative video. I think you'll find it interesting. (Note: it runs for 13 secs before a new picture appears)

Para-Chutes

This is John Chute (my host teacher) and myself posing for a photo. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, and so for this Halloween I dressed up as my associate teacher--circa 1983. Everyone had a mullet haircut back then and so I imagined he would too. Luckily for me, he found this rather amusing as did the students. I had his outfit down pat: Golf shirt tucked in, tool belt on, safety glasses around my neck and a collection of various nuts and bolts in my pockets.

Cable Car In The Classroom

What do I do at Teacher's College? Can you believe building things like this. About eight hours of work, by the three of us, went into this cable car. It sports a drive system with a gear ratio of 10:1 (that'll impress the kids).

A Sample Of Alfie Kohn

This is not the video I wanted to show you but the premise is the same. The video I did see however, was Alfie explaining an experiment he performed on the Oprah Winfrey show:

20 kids were asked to evaluate some games and puzzles.
10 of those kids were told they would receive money for each game/puzzle they critiqued.
10 were not told about the money.

When the supervising adult left the children unattended the camera recorded this:

All 10 of the kids that were not offered a reward PLAYED with the toys.
9 out of the 10 kids who were offered a reward DID NOT PLAY with the toys.

The motivation to play with the toys was no longer intrinsic. "No more reward? Why should I continue to play?"

This is Alfie's argument against the use of rewards (aka carrots). What do you think? Bring on the comments.