Visual Notes by Guilia.Forsythe Before I left for the Unplug’d Canadian Education Summit, my best friend gave me some solid advice: Try to be open and let people in. Our conversation was a little bit longer than that, but the message was about what I had to do in order to truly connect with people. I didn’t like hearing it. On my long journey to Toronto and then onward to Northern Edge Algonquin I reflected on my friend’s words...

by Kim Crawford and Andrew Forgrave Photo by Jeannine St. Amand Central to Unplug’d was the notion of leaving the Internet behind. Various thoughts on connecting, unplugging, and focusing attention have started to emerge. What did it feel like to unplug? Kim:I didn’t have far to go from ‘plugged’ to ‘unplugged’. I scaled back my online presence a year ago.  Since then it has been sporadic; I lurked, but rarely...

by Kim Crawford and Andrew Forgrave   This past weekend, 37 connected educators from across Canada gathered in Toronto for the Unplug’d: Canadian Education Summit 2011. While we shared a few initial hours getting to meet one-another face-to-face within the relative comforts of the Toronto Westin Harbour Castle hotel, after a few hours sleep, we boarded an Ontario Northlands train to South River, Ontario. From there we travelled...

Two years ago I couldn’t have foreseen how facilitating teacher inquiry meetings would impact my own professional development.  I’ve invested approximately 240 hours as a facilitator, looking at student work and exploring next steps in student learning and teacher instruction.  But I didn’t learn in isolation; my colleagues were present for each one of those 240 hours.  They were at the table with questions, ideas and...

I’ve sat down to type my reflection on TedxOntarioEd every evening since it took place on April 9th. I’ve written about what it was like to get to know the amazing organizing team of Jamie Weir, Ben Hazzard, Rodd Lucier, Sharon Drummond and Colin Jagoe. I’ve written about the speakers, motivation and meeting people from my PLN for the first time. My words cannot do any of this justice. They seem dry and flat. So, inspired by Ben...