Have a look at this study of a bull by Pablo Picasso: It starts off with intricate drawings and step by step Picasso moves from detail to just the essence of what a bull is, using just a handful of lines. Sometimes we have to ‘cut the bull’… We have to look at the essence […]
Author: David Truss
Alec Couros shared this on Facebook: Every “new” revolution or trend in education is inevitably accompanied by the critics who wisely note “We tried this back in the x0’s. If you want change to happen and to stick, engage your historians to better understand why things failed the first time around. I then shared his post on […]
This video is 100% student made. It was created to promote our open house on November 22nd. It’s just over a minute long, and yet it says so much… about our school, about empowering students, and about some pretty awesome students themselves. This year at Inquiry Hub, we really want to showcase our students, and […]
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. ~Aristotle I think that we sometimes lose sight of what is important. We focus on individual acts, or in schools, individual assignments, and on praising final products and presentations. We often lose sight of the continual work, the tireless editing […]
A small group of educators from Coquitlam gather at a restaurant where 10 of them take turns doing an Ignite talk. 20 slides, timed at 15 seconds, for a fixed total time of 5 minutes. Excited to be a part of #ignite43 with my old friend @datruss pic.twitter.com/yC1O343mcO — Dave Sands (@dhsands) September 29, 2017 […]
“Educators who work in isolation improve incrementally, while educators who collaborate transform exponentially!” I said this in a Twitter Chat a few days ago in response to the question: “Why…
It is very risky to choose not to take risks. Thought 1. You can’t look at averages when everyone isn’t moving. When some people are doing amazing things and others have done nothing new, measuring the average tells us absolutely nothing. Everyone needs to be moving in the right direction, and when someone is standing still, […]
Last month I was honoured to be interviewed on Corey Engstrom’s Teacher Tech Trails. Near the end of the podcast, I mentioned the ‘greatest’ injustices that we tend to do in more traditional schools and classrooms to three different kinds of students. While I would question my choice of the word ‘greatest’, I think these […]
am·bi·gu·i·ty noun • uncertainty or inexactness of meaning in language. synonyms: vagueness, obscurity, abstruseness, doubtfulness, uncertainty; • a lack of decisiveness or commitment resulting from a failure to make a choice between alternatives. Ambiguity has potential to be a catalyst to new learning. It can be the spark to kindle lateral thinking and creative solutions to huge problems […]
Background (Part 1 – Purpose) The following image and description were created for an application for an award. ‘Assignments’ like this are great because they force us (teachers John Sarte, Alan Soiseth and myself) to think about what it is we value, and strive towards as we build our program at Inquiry Hub Secondary School. […]
Read More Creating the time and space for self-directed, personalized, inquiry learning.
I have to admit, that I’ve avoided edcamps and unconfernces for a while, because they have felt to me like group hugs… warm and cozy, but not a lot about moving my learning forward. However, I participated in the Institute for Innovation in Education (iiE) conference at Vancouver Island University this pass weekend and the afternoon of […]
1. Is this best for students and their learning? 2. Is this scalable? 3. Are you willing to share? In a conversation with my good friend, Dave Sands, we were talking about the challenge of investing in systematic change vs supporting the outliers (and the Lone Wolves). There will always be limited resources to work with, and […]
Last year two grade 11 students, Josh & Brandon, started creating an app using iBeacon technology to help our teachers take attendance. A year later, that app is not completed, it probably won’t be completed any time soon, and yet this is one of a number of very successful projects that happened last year. The plan […]
As educators, we often refer to ‘Wait Time’ as the time between when you ask a question and when you expect an answer. Cast out a question to your class and if you don’t provide wait time, then when the first student begins to answer (takes a bite), all your other students are ‘off the […]
17,000+ emails in a year. That’s not a guess, that’s how many emails I had in my inbox for one calendar year. That doesn’t include a few hundred deleted items. It also doesn’t include emails to my gmail account… 17,000+ is a total for just my work email. Excluding holidays and weekends, that’s about 85 emails […]