RattleBag and Rhubarb

Winter Festival 2014 and 1941

Here’s the Flickr album of photos from WinterFest 14 – last day of school before winter break. And a gallery of pics to whet the appetite: And below is the post – Tradition and Change – I wrote in 2009 about the PDS Christmas Festival of 1941. Some things change. Some things don’t From the Poughkeepsie New Yorker (Over 78,000 Read-Round-the-Clock…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Educating Global Citizens

We must foster global citizenship. Education is about more than literacy and numeracy. It is also about citizenry. Education must fully assume its essential role in helping people to forge more just, peaceful and tolerant societies. – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, 26 September 2012 at the launch of the Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) The 2013 Strategic Plan added two words to the mission statement – “global” and “leading”. The final…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Digging Deeper with The Five Whys

I first tried “The Five Whys” in a faculty meeting. It was an attempt to try something new in tackling a thorny problem.  This is new territory for me so it’s all a bit of an experiment. I had another shot at at the HMAE Annual Conference  earlier this month where working with heads of school it was a bit…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Outcomes and the Bloody Red Shrimp

Strategic plan outcomes can all seem rather formal and abstract until something like this leaps out and grabs your attention. This story is about a high school teacher, his students, their research and how they made a contribution to the scientific study of invasive species in our region. So … Congratulations to high school science teacher Brent Boscarino and PDS…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb

Some of the Fun of the (Maker)Faire

I’ve been thinking a lot about the MakerFaire and the connections with the “learning by doing” legacy of our school. So many thematic threads and connections with the work of the classroom. This video mix of images captures a few glimpses of MakerFaire and the wide variety of makers and making.

Art, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Look who came to MakerFaire 2014

It’s not every day that you get to paint with an internationally renowned artist. But that was just one of the many delights of our Poughkeepsie Mini MakerFaire yesterday. Here is PDS parent Nestor Madalengoita creating a portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt with the help of many hands of all ages. And what a day it was! So many more stories…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Every time I fail

There was a lively Twitter #satchat this morning and the topic was that fad du jour: Failure. There were plenty of excellent observations and earnest calls for embracing failure as essential to the learning process. As someone who failed rather a lot in school (and done my share of it since) it’s a topic dear to me and one I…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Three cheers for EdCamp Hudson Valley

There are lots of reasons to be concerned about the digital revolution and its impact on our lives, the lives of our students and schools. And there’s no shortage of voices raising the alarm. Here’s a small flavorsome slice of a particularly entertaining rant that was in the New Statesman a few years back: Take that digital manacle, the BlackBerry. My first…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

The Future of Employment: Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up; rather ask what problem they want to solve

Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up; rather ask what problem they want to solve. Their careers may not exist yet. Call me bonkers but I’ve been reading The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? It’s a recent working paper from Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford and it focuses on the…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

The Chronicles of Grit

I’ve been researching grit – the way one does on a snowy day. In the process I discovered an Australian newspaper archive with tens of thousand of instructive stories about grit and who has it. It seems grit frenzy has been with us for a while and this latest round in grit mania in education is just the latest version.…

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RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Operation War Diary: Backward men and awkward horses

For anyone with even a passing interest in the First World War here is an unparalleled opportunity: Operation War Diary. The National Archive (UK) has digitized 1.5 million pages of British Army unit diaries, signals, operations orders and messages from the war. They are releasing them to an army of citizen historians to read, classify, and tag. Moving through the…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb, WW1

Operation Grit

I take comfort in knowing that I am not the only gritless wonder on the internet. Peter Gow has now confessed to being genetically lacking in the GQ (grit quotient) department. I think it must be this that sinks me on the infamous grit test: “For the most accurate score, when responding, think of how you compare to most people…

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Education, RattleBag and Rhubarb

Simple ideas: Education’s only purpose and one true test

Is the only true purpose of education to help children stay learners for life? To learn how to learn? I was going to use the word “become” instead of “stay” but we all know that children arrive at school as avid, eager questioners and learners eager for the information and autonomy that comes with knowledge and skills. And  the true…

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