The SHIFT Blog

Do you have a professional learning network (PLN)? When you are planning a lesson, thinking about pedagogy, or learning about something new, do you have a group of people you turn to for guidance and support? It used to be the people who worked in our teaching offices or schools that we would rely on the most.  Today, access to social media gives us a much deeper pool of colleagues to draw ideas from. If you have an idea for a lesson, chances are there is someone else online who has done something similar and can help. So while The Shift has lots of people we rely on in person to bounce ideas off of, we also have a much wider PLN online that we can draw inspiration from. After June 4th and the #LoveMyHaltonSchool event, it would appear that this is true for many of us!  Just how big is the PNL of teachers in Halton? How far does it reach? Surprisingly, pretty far!  There were almost 400 different twitter accounts active on Monday tweeting about why the...

Last year, the Halton District School Board ran an event called #LoveMyHaltonSchool where they asked students, staff and parents to share (via Twitter) reasons why they love Halton. This year, the event is back! You can participate by tweeting on June 4th, reasons why you love working and learning in Halton using the hashtag #LoveMyHaltonSchool We've been travelling around Halton over the past two weeks talking to students and teachers and already have been given a long list of great reasons to love Halton. Guess what...there are prizes too! FREQUENT TWEETER: The school who tweets the most on June 4th EARLY BIRD: The first school to tweet on June 4th SELFIE: The school to tweet the most selfies on June 4th MOST LIKES: The school with the most likes on their # LoveMyHaltonSchool tweet on June 4th NIGHT OWL: The last school to tweet on June 4th Tweets must include the # LoveMyHaltonSchool hashtag to be eligible.   We can't wait to follow along on...

Did you know that this Saturday is World Creativity and Innovation Day? Halton wants to celebrate this day on Friday, April 20th.   Look around your building for examples of innovative teaching practices, students showing off their own creativity, or just something interesting that resonates with you.   Tweet out your observations and pictures using the hashtag #HDSBInnovates. We want to know what is happening in your building!

Well Shifters, it has been a great semester!  Since starting this blog in February of this year, we have had so much fun learning about what teachers are doing in their classes and talking about what they hope to do next. We hope that we did a little to inspire you to think differently about what you teach and how you teach and that you got excited to take some risks.    Working on this project forced us to learn a lot, and most of that learning was driven through trial and error.  Jamie used a Mac for the first time.  Matt built several rigs to help us with our sound recording.  We learned how to blog, edit video, talk on camera and listen to ideas.  We made lots of mistakes that hopefully nobody noticed.  Although, to quote Marisa Cavataio when we visited her Productions Class at Nelson High School, “The most important thing you will do in this class is make mistakes”.   Our mistakes bore fruit!  We just recently passed 10,000 v...

I hate end of period bells.   #Observe’em observation day and the Most Likely To Succeed film gave me a lot to think about how the school day can be structured.  I don’t know if we can get rid of them entirely, but I’ve been working on playing with a timetable that offers some flexibility, as well as some opportunities to go deeper and longer in a class period.  What are your thoughts on this one? Pros? Cons?  Would love to hear your ideas and feedback!

It’s 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon, and I’m Line Dancing with 200 Halton Teachers and my cell phone is still at 75% battery.  Neither of these things are ever true in the middle of the afternoon on a school day.  First of all, during a regular day my phone is a gateway onto social media for me to share things that are happening in my classes and keep up on what other teachers on various online communities are doing.  Secondly, Line Dancing is far outside of my regular comfort zone. Two shifters, modelling our new shirts.  Try, Fail, Learn! So how did it come to this? First off, the cell phone thing.  I was far too invested in the breakout sessions to seek out my phone for distraction.  Yes, I tweeted about various things that spoke to me throughout the day, but I tried to make it quick.  The only real time I spent reading twitter was during lunch or after the breakout sessions ended.  I loved reading others reactions to what they experien...