Archive for January, 2014

Educon Presentation: Supporting Democracy Beyond Content

Posted January 26, 2014 By Dave Thomer

I will be leading a conversation about how our schools can support democracy at EduCon in about an hour. I may edit this post with some reflections after the fact, but for now I want to make sure there’s an easily accessible link to the Google documents we’ll be using. Here’s the slide set. Here’s […]

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David, Come Quickly, You’re Missing the Whole Thing – Toad the Wet Sprocket at the Keswick Theatre

Posted January 5, 2014 By Dave Thomer

As intrigued as I am by the possibilities of crowdfunding, so far my only foray into the waters of Kickstarter and similar sites has been my support of Toad the Wet Sprocket’s new album. I’ve already discussed how much I’ve enjoyed New Constellation, but in November I had the chance to enjoy another fruit of […]

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First Thoughts on Implementing Genius Hour

Posted January 3, 2014 By Dave Thomer

I’ve wanted to emphasize project-based learning in my teaching since before I knew that project-based learning was the term for what I wanted to emphasize. One challenge I have faced is that while my school has been supportive of the use of projects, they have not been a central focus of the administration’s pedagogical philosophy. […]

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I Can Still See Where I Am – Dada at The Note

Posted January 2, 2014 By Dave Thomer

I remarked earlier in the year that four bands were really important to me in the early 90s as I graduated from high school and went off to college: R.E.M., Matthew Sweet (all right, three bands and a solo artist), Toad the Wet Sprocket, and dada. While I have managed to see the first three […]

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Comedy Is When the Normans Invade England, Tragedy Is When I Get the Theme Song Stuck in My Head

Posted January 1, 2014 By Dave Thomer

So in the past couple of weeks, my daughter has discovered Horrible Histories, a British television program based on a series of books. It’s basically a sketch comedy program that takes historical fact as its source material. As a result, my daughter has a far better understanding of the Tudor and Stuart dynasties than I […]

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