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Ed Hitchcock
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Indeed. And don't forget trying to ban Ernie & Bert for homosexual indoctrination... I think what scares me most is that some of these people are "public policy leaders".
2 hours ago
Wow. Lumping Darwin and Dewey in with Hitler and Mao. Just, wow.
15 hours ago
I came across Sharendipity (http://www.sharendipity.com/), which looks like it could be very useful for both teacher and student created games and learning environments. I found it because it is one of the apps that can be embedded in Ning!
on Saturday
Perhaps transcribing notes is good, at least it used to be considered good, but when eight kids produce, more or less, the same page of notes, it says to me that minimal processing has occured between book and page. I am trying to set up an online...
on Friday
Seems like swinging back and forth from textbook orientation to hands-on tinkering and experimenting is rather perfect. Transcribing notes is actually good, isn't it? It's a different "style of mind," and the two styles of mind support and enrich ...
on Friday
On day 3 it stalled a bit - the kids were working away quietly (un oh), and individually (double uh oh). On further investigation, they were - *gasp* - transcribing notes from their textbooks. GAAAHHH! It took significant encouragement to get them...
on Thursday
Ed-- Wow! That's courageous of you, and exciting and empowering for your students. It'd be a blast to work with you--wish we could do stuff together. We'd put your HS kids with my 5th graders, and then... Who would rein us in, I wonder? We'd need ...
on Thursday
I'll throw in two very important events for me, personally. First was a trip to Gettysburg, and a tour of the battlefields. Very informative, and very moving. It was the day after the big re-enactment on the anniversary of the battle, so people we...
on Thursday

Profile Information

Tell about your involvement in education, and your ideals for collegial sharing
Part of my role as an administrator is to oversee the curriculum, including improvement to the existing curriculum and implementation of new curriculum. Change does not always come easy in a school, and the only way it can happen is through collaboration, and buy-in by the frontline educators who will be implementing it. This means not only ensuring the necessary tools are in place, but also being able to listen to concerns, and help work towards solutions. In short, I love hashing out ideas with other teachers.
About Me:
I am an educator from a family of educators. My background is in Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, and I teach General Science, Biology and Physics (these latter up to and including AP level). I have also taught Math and Computers, but not in the last several years. I am also Director of Academics (like a VP, sort of) for a an independent school in Toronto.
My escapism is Astronomy. I am a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) and host the Budget Astronomer website.
Website:
http://www.budgetastronomer.ca

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Ed Hitchcock

First impression: promising.

Following discussions on creativity, play, tinkering, 21st century learning, and a few other relevant topics on Fireside and elsewhere, I decided to depart from the norm. My grade 11 physics students, in particular, seemed to be ready for something a little different - by which I mean they seem bored to tears with the same...
So today as I started the electricity unit, I announced to my class that I would not be lecturing, because it is wasting their time and mine. They have, at their disposal,… Continue

Posted on November 25, 2009 at 11:12pm — 4 Comments

Ed Hitchcock

Fear of Failure

We have all seen people - not just our students or children, but friends and colleagues as well - who are afraid of failure. As Sir Ken Robinson points out, this fear of failure is tied to (but not the esclusive domain of) the crushing of creativity by structured education in schools.
I have certainly noticed an increase in this perfectionist attitude in students, but there is one small, seemingly insignificant indicator that really has me worried. Lately, my students have been leaving answers b… Continue

Posted on November 23, 2009 at 11:08am — 3 Comments

Ed Hitchcock

A Pointless War

There is a battle waging, one that we cannot possibly win. The "enemy" is too resourceful, and we are battling on their home ground. I am not talking of the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq, but in our own halls and classrooms. I am speaking of the war to block the internet...
A few years ago the decision was made to go laptop, and it was a decision I supported, because it gives every student a complete library and multimedia production studio at their fingertips. The catch-phrases being used we… Continue

Posted on November 11, 2009 at 11:49am — 11 Comments

Ed Hitchcock

A quick analogy

I like analogies. I find they are one of the quickest ways to get students to latch onto an idea.
This morning I was going back over the "first day advice" discussion, and another analogy occured to me. You know the old practical joke where students (typically engineers) disassemble a car and reassemble it in a dorm room (or the Dean's office)? Well, as a teacher, that is in a sense what I do. I take ideas, disassemble them into their component parts, and reasemble them inside my student's heads… Continue

Posted on August 13, 2009 at 9:32am — 2 Comments

Ed Hitchcock

Experiment, part I

As part of our comittment to public outreach, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada runs a series of lectures for the general public (free, but signup required) called NOVA (New Observers to Visual Astronomy). I had never done one of these before, but I was in the right place at the right time - having coffee with the organizer when he got the call that one of the speakers had to cancel - and agreed to fill the gap.

As I was preparing my talk it occurred to me that a one-shot deal for a few… Continue

Posted on July 26, 2009 at 1:55pm — 5 Comments

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At 2:48pm on November 13, 2009, Laura Gibbs said…
Hi Ed, I thought you might be interested in this - I just read a REALLY good, detailed, thoughtful review of Moodle; it expresses a lot of my concerns about course managements systems in general, and also does a good job of pointing out which things Moodle really does succeed at (I would love to be using Moodle's quizzing options, for example, as noted in the article - even in the version of Moodle I was using five years ago, the quizzing options were really excellent). I don't know if you all explored alternatives to Blackboard, but if you will be reviewing your investment in Blackboard ($$$$) at some point, this article is a great place to learn something about Moodle as an open-source cms option. :-)
At 12:39am on November 12, 2009, Ian Carmichael said…
Ed, one of the great intrigues in my early physics education was the course on (Terrestrial) infra-red astronomy - where the discussion and action is about the noise-to-signal ratio (I don't recall the figure, but I think it was 10 or 100-1) and the cute solution of subtracting a neighbouring section of sky to get some signal! (Well, such was the story in '72: days are different now.)
At 2:23am on October 30, 2009, Or-Tal Kiriati said…
Hi,what grades do you teach physics to?
At 1:12pm on August 15, 2009, Connie Weber said…
Hi Ed,
Want to put up some information and links for the Perseids Meteor Shower?
At 9:30am on February 5, 2008, Laura Gibbs said…
The planetarium on campus is GREAT - they have this giant sundial outside! My husband worked in the camera shop across from campus back in the 60s and loves to tell about the astronauts who came to Chapel Hill to learn celestial navigation! :-)
At 8:59am on February 5, 2008, Laura Gibbs said…
How exciting, Ed! So you don't have lots of childhood memories of Chapel Hill then! My husbands talks a lot about how it has grown grown grown and changed so much. My parents go to Vancouver every summer so I've been up there a few times - what a fantastic place! It is the only part of Canada I have visited. :-)
At 12:09am on February 5, 2008, Laura Gibbs said…
SMALL WORLD! My husband was born in Chapel Hill which is why we moved back here; his dad is still here, and not so long ago widowed, so when my husband retired, we decided to move here (so far, Univ. of Oklahoma is letting me keep on teaching at a distance) - I can't remember if that is our spring break time or not, but if we are in town, we could meet at the Brewery hoping for the FUNKY MONK (great Belgian beer they sometimes make)... but all kinds of other delights are available too. Keep me posted on your plans - how did you end up in Toronto??? :-)
At 7:11pm on February 4, 2008, Laura Gibbs said…
Hi Ed, if you are ever in Durham-Raleigh-ChapelHill, we will have to rendezvous at the Chapel Hill Brewery!!! North Carolina is a great state for micro-breweries and local beers! :-)
At 10:41am on January 29, 2008, Connie Weber said…
I love the whole ACOS idea. Last night I was thinking of the various ways to do it: on Google Docs, on a wiki, on a ning. Decided it'd be best to keep within the ning, at least for a try. Can you imagine it, sequentially? Would it be forum after forum for a response, with out of character comments? Could you proved an example (such as copying a bit of your son's) for the class to see?
At 6:30am on January 22, 2008, Connie Weber said…
How about you choose a post that goes with any teaching/learning/systems/science theme? (most of them do, really.) I think it'd be good to get a strong nature-science stream going here. Also, this is my thing, but I really want to talk about information ecology, systems-approach, emergent pedagogy, distributed leadership, the relationship between networking and systems in biology.
Seems you've talked about some of those things--any articles you could place here in your blog?
What did you mean about this: "really need to find the right niche for that blog - the combination of observation log and thoughts on pedagogy is just not quite working for me :-)" Is it that you haven't found the right niche for those posts yet? Or are you saying that combination of thoughts isn't working...
Please consider yourself encouraged to get some of your essays on Fireside!
 
 

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