November Learning: Expanding the Boundaries of Learning

Clarence Fisher

About Clarence Fisher
Grade 7/ 8 Teacher, Snow Lake, MB

Clarence teaches full time and likes to get involved with research to improve what happens in classrooms. He is involved with efforts to redefine literacy and what it means to be literate in our twenty-first century, technologically advanced society. He writes articles, makes presentations, and thinks about classrooms 2.0 and the possibilities for learning.

Clarence’s classroom has been featured in several articles in Middle School Journal, Technology and Learning, and in the recent book, New Literacies in Action. It has also been featured on CBC, CNET, and MSN. He has been honored to win one of Canada’s highest teaching awards, the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching. Clarence has also been named an Outstanding Middle Years Educator in his province, as well as won several other awards for the innovative integration of technology into everyday classroom life.

Clarence lives in the small rural community of Snow Lake, Manitoba, Canada and thinks geography can be irrelevant on our hyper-connected globe. This leads to the tagline of his blog: “Even From Here.”

Blog: Remote Access
email: glassbeed@gmail.com
Skype: glassbeed
Twitter: twitter.com/glassbeed

Main Session Workshops

Be Kind Rewind: Are Kids Today Different?

Kids today are different. Period. But just how different are they? There have been many theories about: digital immigrants and digital natives, about Google making us stupid and about how students don’t even know how to read anymore. Is this true? Is any of it true? What kinds of classrooms are kid friendly? How can we organize learning spaces and places to promote the kinds of learners we want our students to become?

Pulling the Pieces Together

There are a lot of amazing tools out there to choose from and use. But how do they fit together into a curriculum that can support learning over the entire school year? What do all of these things look like in an actual classroom? This session will look at classroom life over the long term. How can you use the power these tools offer to give your students a window on the world and a voice on the world stage? How can you get the latest information into your classroom?

Forget Best Practice: It’s All About Beta Baby! (presenting with Darren Kuropatwa)

We hear all the time about best practices in education. There are so many different contexts for education; is it possible that “best practices” no longer exist? In this session, we’ll examine the idea that as a consequence of rapid technological change teachers need to nurture “emergent practices” that arise from the needs of their community. This session will reframe the issue of “best practice” in the context of Dave Snowdon’s Cynefin Framework.