There are several debates around education that seem to be going nowhere. Partly because you have folks with longstanding beliefs but also because the participants are not speaking the same language. The issue today of course is that many of these debates aren't really debates but exchanges of sound bites in media outlets, comment fields, twitter and passing...

Earlier tonight I tweeted, This disdain for the word busy has been with me for a while. It's simply becoming more annoying. When someone tells you how busy they are, I never know how to respond. Should I feel sorry for them? Congratulate them? Offer to help? When people ask how busy I am, I usually respond, "No busier than you" or "Do you really...

This story is posted over at the Huffington Post. Read it here but comment over there. Also, this is not a paid gig. As I told the editors when they invited me, I barely understand politics and I'm Canadian. Yet they still asked me to write. Go figure. Full disclosure: I'm not an American. I'm Canadian — which isn't all that significant outside...

Data driven decision making is a buzz word in education of late. My crap detector goes into high alert when this discussion roles around, since data in this case usually means test scores and tests usually means low level, knowledge based memorization. Without this discussion, it's too easy to move to solutions that potentially address something that in the end,...

The education world is a buzz with the release of the new movie "Waiting for Superman". The media has embraced the movie and is joining the charge to make schools better. While everyone is in agreement that our system is broken, not everyone is siding with the methods and approach and even the pedagogy described in the movie. Here are three takes you should...

Saskatchewan is smack dab in the middle of curriculum renewal. The shift is to outcome based education.   It is a student-centered learning philosophy that focuses on empirically measuring student performance, which are called outcomes. OBE contrasts with traditional education, which primarily focuses on the resources that are...