Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Author: Tracy Rosen

  • Graffiti, Skate Shops, Burgers…

    Yup, that’s basically what we did today. It was another of our travel days, and this time we took the metro to Berri-UQAM Metro station and went for a bit of a walk around the area.

    Montreal Metro Map

    (image from http://www.crimt.org/Images_shared/Images/Metro_UQAM.gif)

    The boys spotted Underworld Skate shop right away so in we went…

    After that we went to see graffiti on the buildings behind les Foufounes Electrique. These pieces are added to each year at the annual Under Pressure Show.

    (image from http://www.thinkempire.com/blog/2007_08_01_archive.html)

    The boys had some fun doing tricks with Conner’s skateboard for a bit while I cringed each time one of them fell and Allison took some pictures of the graffiti.

    I wanted to eat in China Town but was voted against 3-1 for McDonald’s instead…yeesh… On the way there we saw a little community of homeless people and their menagerie of dogs and cats in a makeshift blue-tarp hut. The kids were pretty impressed by that.

    So we had some burgers and fries and then made our way back to school.

    Let’s see what the students thought of the day…

    Conner

    Troy

    Allison

  • Constructivism mind map

    The content of this mind map is taken directly from Marcy Driscoll’s map, found on p. 384 of Psychology of learning for Instruction (2005).

    The point of this post is that I wanted to play around with mindmeister‘s map embed function. It’s pretty cool, at first I though that it had chopped off part of my map, but then I realized that I could drag the map around in order to see what I was missing and I could zoom in or out…neat :)

    Originally I had tried to play around with glinkr.net…unfortunately they still have some bugs with Linux (Ubuntu, to be precise). I tried it with firefox, swiftweasel, and epiphany…but no go or, to be more precise, partial go. I could use it, the problem was it would only save part of it – no matter how many times I tried to re-type the content. Too bad because I prefer the interface and the flexibility of glinkr to mindmeister. Hopefully they’ll figure out the problem soon!

  • Questions about learning with tech…a start

    …technology integration in schools is not easy to achieve, no matter how much evidence we have that it can help learning. It’s also important to integrate technology appropriately, as critics are quick to point out that computers, besides being expensive, can harm young children who sit for hours in front of them instead of being engaged in the “real world” (Alliance for Childhood, 2000). So what is known about how people learn and the role technology may play in their learning? How might that knowledge provide guidelines for appropriate uses of technology that can help students and teachers?

    Questions to ponder from the ERIC Digest: How People Learn (and What Technology Might Have To Do with It).

    ***added April 1, 2008***

    Elona pointed me toward this great article by Mark Prensky called Turning On the Lights The last section does offer some answers to the questions posed above. Give it a read….

    Prensky, M. (2008) Turning on the lights. Educational Leadership, 65 (6), 40-45.

  • A New Home

    Some of you have been around for the past few weeks as I have been testing out the new site, and here it finally is – the new home of Leading From the Heart!

    The major changes are:

    • I now host the site
    • I found this fun theme and modified it a tad
    • I’ve decided to focus my writing, minimizing the categories and writing along distinct themes:

    I like this theme because it is forcing me to organize my posts in a new way.

    To start, I have these ones:

    • News: For blog-related news and new posts
    • Classroom: For school (work) related items.
    • Personal Research: For school (university) related items.
    • ShoutOuts: For when I quote fellow edubloggers who I feel have said something worth underlining.
    • Word: For quotes from music, poetry, prose…
    • Tech: For technology specific posts.
    • Pedagogy & Theory: For, well, P & T ;)

    I’m feeling good about starting anew

    As always, feedback is fun :)

    tracy

  • Moving On

    Hey all,

    I have spent the past few months trying out new blog platforms and themes.

    I’ve finally decided to host the blog on my own domain and have moved things on over to

    https://leadingfromtheheart.org

    Please come for a visit and update your feeds – for the last time folks, because we have found a home :)