We Can’t Afford to be Lazy

Posted on November 3, 2009 by admin

NoLazy_03Nov2009 The sustainability committee is proving to be a very useful clearing-house for ideas on how to make our operations at the School more efficient. There are many different points of view and it’s a good reminder (for me at least) that there are many different reasons why people want to help reduce our impact on the environment.

The one point that I really love is efficiency. This particular idea gets the most die-hard skeptics on board in most cases. It’s just about impossible to make a reasoned case for inefficiency. Even people that couldn’t care less about what happens to their garbage or why they should not idle their cars, understand why paying for garbage pickup is silly if we can compost 65% of our solid waste (food) and make fertilizer for the gardens around the school to avoid paying for manure each spring.

Part of the reason why I like working at LCC is that fighting this battle isn’t even an issue. The maintenance staff gets it. Resource management is their game and I don’t have to make a case. The rest of our campus resource users (i.e., students and staff) need to come on board. Like many other members of our society, we are too accustomed to wasting for the sake of convenience. The world can ill-afford our laziness.

—Chris Olive, LCC faculty Member & Green Team Liaison

All Boys’ Schools Aren’t the Answer

Posted on October 30, 2009 by admin

Read University of Western Ontario Professor of Education Wayne Martino’s views on why all-boys’ schools aren’t the answer. This article was published in the October 30th issue of the Montreal Gazette.

Read article

Boyle – An Inspiration to Young Scientists

Posted on October 10, 2009 by admin

LCC_WillardBoyle_Blog Many schools can boast producing Rhodes Scholars or Olympic athletes. But it is not often that a school has the distinction of including a Nobel laureate among the ranks of its alumni.

It’s incredible to think that someone who was once in my place, studying in the same classrooms as I am right now, could go on to make such an impact on our everyday lives. Willard Boyle, LCC’s first Nobel Prize winner, is certainly an inspiration and an indication of the immeasurable possibilities awaiting each of us in our future.

This all just solidifies in my mind the strength of the education that LCC offers its students. In my six years at the school, I have realized the wealth of opportunities available to foster curiosity and creativity, leaving me feeling prepared for life “after LCC.” One never knows what the future holds, but it never hurts to hope that I will someday follow Willard Boyle’s example and do my school proud.

FraserBlog_Boyle

— Jordy Fraser ’09 (Pre-U ’10)

Building Learning Communities

Posted on September 17, 2009 by admin

NingPic À la fin juillet, j’ai eu la chance de participer au congrès d’Alan November mieux connu sous la banière BLC (Building Learning Communities).

What defines a learning community you may ask? And why is it important? We know that in the 21^st Century, one of the skills we need to teach children is to share resources and seek information through their various networks. As teachers, we must put ourselves through the same process and develop our own learning communities and teach children how to go about building theirs.

Ce congrès portant sur l’intégration des TIC a lieu tous les ans à Boston. Le congrès comme tel se déroule sur trois jours avec la possibilité de participer à deux journées pré-congrès

The BLC conference brings together classroom teachers, educational researchers, consultants and philosophers from North America and beyond which I thought allowed for a great balance between more theoretical sessions and practical workshops.

Below are links to some great teaching resources to integrate ICT into your classes and to help you and your students in developing a digital identity:

I attended two sessions with Marc Prensky, and ICT consultant. Prensky coined the terms “digital natives” (our students) and “digital immigrants” (us). His first session was titled “Partnering with your digital natives” where he talked about engaging students as being key to 21^st Century learning. He reminded us that learning must be connected to passion and discipline (see http://www.marcprensky.com/).

Bob Perlman de la Californie et Thomas Daccord de Boston ont offert des pistes intéressantes en ce qui concerne les habilités necessaires pour le 21ième siècle (see http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/ and http://www.bie.org/index.php).

Daccord talked about asynchronous learning (textured literacy). It is the idea of multimodal text that really interested me (i.e., reading, writing and video texting). By storyboarding, students are able to read and write images which defines this new textured literacy. Daccord also stressed that we MUST teach critical thinking as kids are indeed tech savvy but, all too often, they don’t analyze content and search properly. Asynchronous learning gets students to create and teach one another (see http://www.edtechteacher.org/ and http://iearn.org/).

Autres sites et trucs intéressants à partager :

La taxonomie de Bloom revistée avec le Web 2.0 : http://www.techlearning.com/article/8670
Iphone et autres trucs pour l’enseignement avec les MACs : http://lainierowell.com/
La camera video HD Flip Mino: http://ca.theflip.com/index.shtml
Le trépied Joby qu’on peut accrocher partout
http://joby.com/gorillapod: Le pulse pen (gadget révolutionnaire!)
http://www.livescribe.com/smartpen/index.html

Twitter
I don’t spend a lot of time on social networks, but have found it very informative to follow some of the abovementioned presenters on Twitter and encourage you to do so!

More about professional staff

–Nathalie Lemelin
Interim Junior School Director