What a weekend!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Network seminar this weekend. The learning was intense, the ideas were flying and the connections deepening. Guy Le Masurier exhorted us to move - and provided all the evidence why this is not only important, it is essential. Paige Fisher reminded us why assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning - and how the impact of our assessment practices live on far beyond what we might think.

Sharon Friesen helped us all understand what inquiry in depth really means. As inquiry becomes more of a buzz word, there is a danger that inquiry practices and understanding will be stuck at a superficial level. The resources on the Galileo Network website are very helpful - and the using the attached rubric for inquiry will help us all focus on what authentic inquiry really means.

Kim Schonert Reichl challenged us all to think about how we are attending to teacher social emotional learning - and showed some powerful graphics of the MDI results. We are grateful to Kim for her leading edge work in SEL and for her ability to link research and practice in a way that is changing lives.

Environmental sustainability is all of our responsibility and the notion of pop-up farms (farms, not gardens) is one way of creating local solutions to global problems. Having Paul Clarke share his passion and his expertise - as well as examples of the ways in which pop-up farms are changing schools and communities around the world - opened up our thinking to all kinds of new possibilities.

Laura Tait's work on deepening Aboriginal understandings and the emerging recognition across the networks that Aboriginal learning is for everyone is enormously important. Netcamp provided the opportunity for everyone to participate in focused conversations - and the conversations were great.

All the key sessions were videotaped and we will have short clips posted on the website (www.noii.ca) within the next few weeks.

In the package was an article Linda and I wrote  -  Inquiry and Innovation - New Mindsets Required. This article is based on the work in the networks of inquiry and innovation in BC and it is being used as pre-reading for a government policy round table in Australia. Sometimes we never know where this work is going to lead. After this weekend, we are more convinced than ever that good things will happen, when in the word of Margaret Wheatley, we can turn to one another and say, " I have an idea....what if?"