The new year has arrived and I’m spending time back in my hometown visiting family. It’s always nice to come home to take some time to just visit and catch up. It gives me time to do
some reading and blogging and just reconnect with my family -
dysfunctional as we are. As I drove home, a 6 hour trip, I was
reflecting on all the things that have taken place during the past year
and looking forward to where things might be going in 2008.As I…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on January 3, 2008 at 1:24am —
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’ve been able to catch up on some of my reading this past week
although I still am looking forward to Christmas and the time to do
some more with reflection along the way. One post that drew my
attention was over at
Jennifer Dorman’s cliotech. Her post
Re-Learning Curve discusses an article by…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on December 12, 2007 at 8:41pm —
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Years back, when I was trying to figure out what to do with my life, I decided that I needed some money to pay for bills, food and rent because I didn’t want to move home and live
with my parents. I was 18 you know and that would have been a real blow
to my independence and self-esteem if I had had to move back home.
After doing a few odd things, I happened upon someone who needed some
painting. The rest, as they say, is history. I liked the job and,…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on December 5, 2007 at 7:53pm —
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I’ve been in a discussion over at Infinite Thinking Machine with various people including Arthus who is “… a 14-year-old student in Vermont who has recently become actively involved in the online dialog
about educational technology.”
Part of the discussion I’ve been having with Arthus and Steve Hargadon, of Ning…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on October 31, 2007 at 8:36pm —
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I’ve been using the Downey Walk-Through method of supervision more regularly since school began last year and with some work with my superintendent, have refined some of the things that
are going on. Last year when I was doing them, I found it very clumsy
to have an index card to write on.…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on October 17, 2007 at 11:18pm —
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Chris Lehmann has asked that those of us on Twitter post about the upcoming Educon 2.0 conference.
For complete information see the Educon 2.o wiki. Cliotech also has a very thorough blog post on the conference.
Here is the vital…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on October 8, 2007 at 7:44pm —
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When I first began teaching, one of the most stressful times was when
the director would come in to supervise/evaluate. I knew when he was
coming of course but, still, it would cause me no endless stress. Would
the lesson work? Would the students listen? Would I remain my
composure? The lesson was orchestrated and each time, thank goodness,
it went without a hitch. This is how it was for the first two years of
teaching. After that, like most other teachers to whom…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on October 7, 2007 at 10:33pm —
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Like
many of you, I occasionally do a little ranting when it comes to the
problems with some of the things that go on with the technology in
schools and the level of availability of different websites. I've also
been known to rant every now and then about other things that go on
with schools and learning.
Well, this isn't one of those. In
fact, over the past few weeks,…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on October 5, 2007 at 10:39pm —
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I’ve been using classroom Walk-Throughs for the past 7 months in order to get to get into the classrooms in my school, get to know what the teachers are doing, familiarize myself with the curricula in the
various grades and just acquaint myself with how this form of
supervision might work for me.
Now, I started with the book The Three-Minute Classroom Walk-Through by Corlyn J. Downey. Like most administrators, I read through the book, worked through the different…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on October 4, 2007 at 11:34pm —
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I like to use wikis for much of the work that I do. I think that they allow me a great deal of freedom to be creative in their construction without being overwhelming, give me just enough gadgets
and plug-ins to keep me busy and suit my purpose when it comes to
organization and access. Right now I use one for my planning, another I used with my class last year to gather information about Medieval Europe, a…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on October 2, 2007 at 10:40pm —
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“Who do you want me to be?”
That’s what my oldest daughter asked me today. It was a question that came during a heated discussion.
“Just tell me and I’ll do it!”
Each of us has had those moments when we wish someone would just tell us how to act or what to do so we could do it and avoid the difficult journey in discovering for ourselves who we are. As an
educational leader and school administrator, I’ve had a few moments
like that over the years. “If someone…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on September 29, 2007 at 4:20pm —
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Today is a day which we should be showing our appreciation for those people who work so hard finding resources and helping our students to meet the demands of the various assignments teachers assign. I’d
especially like to thank those blogging librarians who give me all
kinds of great insights and links to various informative sights.
Rob Darrow
Hey Jude…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on September 24, 2007 at 3:46pm —
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I returned from our yearly administrator’s seminar yesterday a bit tired but with a host of ideas for creating a better climate for our school. While we were there, we were given two new tools that I feel
are really going to help our staff to focus their efforts and move us
forward.
Now, to be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to these two days. Not because of the content but one of my staff members had had a stroke on the weekend and I was still trying to figure out…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on September 19, 2007 at 11:02pm —
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This past week I’ve had time to get back into reading some and commenting some. I really wish I could do more but I have decided that being connected in a variety of ways in my f2f world is more important
that my being connected on the web. I had always imagined that, as I
learned more about the tools and became better at discussing the
implementation of the tools, my readership would grow and, eventually,
I’d get to do some presenting on the topics, at least in my…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on September 16, 2007 at 1:59pm —
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As school began, I promised myself that I wouldn’t allow my network connections to interfere with my work. As last year came to a close, I was finding that much of my evening was spent checking the various
networks of which I was part and keeping up with the ever-growing RSS
feeds in my reader of choice. Once the summer began and I was able to
“denetwork”, I realized that there had to be a better way to stay
connected and informed without spending all that time checking…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on September 12, 2007 at 12:18am —
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Not the last book I read but the last book that I read.
A few years back, I received a gift certificate from Coles book store from a friend of the family. I intended on using it during a visit to the city but when I went there was nothing that really caught
my eye. Time passed and I either forgot it at home or, when I went,
there was nothing that grabbed me. So, a few weeks ago while at
meetings, I went book shopping taking the tattered certificate with me.
I had…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on August 30, 2007 at 4:43pm —
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Schools are beginning to reawaken after a summer siesta - in North America and parts of Europe anyways. I’m still three weeks out from starting day and in the midst of a major house reno so I’m not really
thinking too much about school although it has drifted across my vision
a few times. The work on the house has taken me away from my pre-summer
attachment to the “Wrinkled world” and I’ve found that it has been
refreshing to do other things. Having said that, I have…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on August 10, 2007 at 10:55pm —
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I’ve just returned from a week of holidaying and relaxing. I was away from access to all technology and that was good. I enjoyed not going through my gmail, RSS feeds, email, Classroom2.0, twitter, blogs
and online information. Now that I’m back, I’ve spent time sifting
through these and getting caught up which, to my relief, really wasn’t
nearly as difficult as I expected it would be.
Before I left, I wrote a post about being able to partake in BLC virtually and…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on August 1, 2007 at 12:05am —
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I’ve just enjoyed a fresh glass of lemonade. The summer has been a very hectic one. I’m doing way more work building houses that I thought I would be and this has really cut into the time I was expecting to be
doing other things. I have not been keeping up with my reading or my
writing as I had planned but, I’ve learned, that’s sometimes how it
goes. See, in a life before education, I worked in the construction
sector as a painter. It evolved from a summer job to a…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on July 16, 2007 at 11:47pm —
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Dean Shareski has an interesting post about summer holidays. As Dean comments
For me though, I don’t get as excited as I once did about June and it’s not just that I haven’t spend 185 days with kids, although that does make a difference, but as I said before, I still
longed for summer vacation even after I left…
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Added by Kelly Christopherson on June 27, 2007 at 12:15am —
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