Getting social (with this guy)

With apologies to QMI's Gina Phillips (who has a daily "Getting social with Gina" bit in QMI papers) for the title of this post, this blog's social-media profile has changed in the past few weeks.
With Google+'s arrival earlier this year, I had initially created a profile for this blog using the Google account it was created under. Around the time that Google started telling me I had to be a real person and not a 'brand' to have a G+ account, the social-media site started allowing brand and business pages.
This blog now has such a page and if you're on Google+, you can add it to your circles.
In the world of Facebook, which in my opinion still has the better 'page' experience, I had moved to feeding my posts into my personal page, but as of recently also built a brand page around this blog.
Links to the Facebook page are to the left, and my single Twitter account will remain the source for the varied array of things I post there, including feeding this blog's posts to that stream.
Given I no longer cover this beat on a day-to-day basis for the newsroom I work in, these will help me continue building the profile of this site and the work I do here. The aim has not changed-- to be a great choice for news, analysis and opinion on K-12 education within this country with Ontario as its focus.

Look ma, I made the radio!

It was a distinct honour to be interviewed by Barry Hennessey last week for Inside Education, a regular program broadcast on 102.3 Dublin City FM.
Hennessey scoped me out via this blog and we spoke about the 2009 PISA results.
The Irish and their recent coalition government are zeroing in on PISA results there, after a decline and some soul-searching on why that's happened and what could be done to correct it.
I hope I sound intelligent in the interview-- it was difficult to speak nationally about results in Canada given our provincial education systems, so often I did lean on my particular expertise regarding the Ontario system. We spoke about the EQAO tests, the OSSLT, the culture that might be contributing to the Canadian results.
It also allowed an opportunity to exchange information and learn a few things about what education topics are being discussed in Ireland.
Hennessey was quite surprised that we don't have many if any national education reporters here-- he contacted Katie Hammer at the Globe but she's off on a leave. So to fill in for that designation was quite a distinction.
The specific piece is here, and my interview is about 2:00 in, right after the introductions to that week's episode. It was quite a Canadian show-- the item after my interview is on interactive whiteboards and the leaders in that tech are SMART, a company with continental roots but firmly a part of Western Canada.

On hiatus

Not that I've been terribly wordy on here lately, but the blog is going on hiatus until Oct. 6 as I travel to do some more volunteer work.
I did promise to do a platform-by-platform comparison, which I haven't done for here but I did do as part of our campaign coverage for the Expositor if you want to take a peek at it there.
I'll return with some thoughts on election day and thereafter.

Changing

Friday, July 29, 2011 was my final day as a reporter working at the Sentinel-Review in Woodstock, Ont. After almost eight years (minus a fellowship) in that newsroom I will begin a new position at the Expositor in Brantford, Ont., starting tomorrow, Aug. 2, 2011.
I am indebted to the colleagues and friends I've worked with since 2003 at the Sentinel-Review. I'm also indebted to the community, where I have learned so much about the areas I've reported in, be it education, agriculture or municipal politics. In particular, sitting in the board rooms at the Thames Valley District School Board and the London District Catholic School Board only fed my knowledge and drive to specialize as an expert in K-12 education reporting in this province. As I established a relationship based on trust and professionalism with staff members in both those boards they responded by opening doors and allowing me to write about things many other education reporters in this province haven't.
My new position in Brantford will be primarily focused on covering municipal politics.
While I don't expect to regularly or often be writing about education for the Expositor, I will continue to write about it in this space, perhaps unencumbered. I rarely if ever blogged here about my own reporting, which did tend to leave issues within the district here absent from this space. Now that I'm moving on and also won't be paid (primarily) to write about education, I'll be freer to write here about what's happening there.
I've invested time and energy to become as knowledgeable about this subject and I won't soon be allowing that information to sit idle, so this blog will continue to be updated and I will continue to post in this space.

Impending hiatus

The blog will be on a short hiatus until at least May 30.
Please come back and look for new posts after that date.

All the way to 20K

A brief moment for minutiae: Some time last week the blog passed 20,000 visits.
Traffic spikes relative to when I actually eke out the time to post, but is generally in the 30-50 visits a day range. That's a nice loyal (returning visitor numbers are on the up) audience.
Thanks!

Fellowship hiatus No. 1

With a pre-scheduled exception, the blog will be on hiatus as of Dec. 4, until at least Jan. 3, 2011.
Hope you and yours are able to celebrate the season in whatever way is appropriate. I look forward to writing, reading and discussing in this space in 2011.

Brief hiatus

The blog will be on a hiatus until Sept. 7 or thereabouts.
Lots to blog about in these days leading up to the resumption of classes (EQAO release, "FDK" stuff, etc. etc. etc.) but if I spent the whole time blogging then I wouldn't be packing and cleaning in prep for the move, which I need to do.
There'll be a soft re-launch of sorts when I return next week.

The transition begins...

For the first time in a few months today (mostly because I had a deadline) I started looking at my course selection for my upcoming fellowship. Thought it might be apropos to post a few thoughts here about the upcoming transition.
The blog is going to live on-- I will change the title however (not the URL) to "The Education Reporter-- on fellowship." Or maybe "The Education Reporter-- at OISE." Haven't decided yet, as you can see.
I'll continue to do my regular media monitoring for education coverage, posting when something of interest crosses the inbox or the twitter feed. I'll also post about the life-- things in the courses I audit, general journalism fellowship life and the trips!
I have nine working days left until I start the experience of a lifetime... so as busy as I'll be I'm sure to take a moment here or there to get excited about it all.

Shameless self-promotion

I've been holding this under my hat for about a month, under request not to yell it from the rooftops until the official announcement that happened Thursday at the 20th annual Canadian Journalism Foundation gala.
I am the recipient of the Gordon N. Fisher journalism fellowship at Massey College / University of Toronto for the 2010-11 academic year.
This means that starting this September, I'll be on an unpaid leave of absence from my job at the Sentinel-Review and living full-time in Toronto. The program provides a stipend and allows me to audit any course, at any level, offered by any faculty at the U of T.
My plan, and goals, are to audit courses at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (conveniently, at the end of the block from Massey College) for the upcoming year. This exposure will feed the policy wonk in my heart and reflect itself in my post-fellowship reporting.
At this point in time, months away from beginning the fellowship, I don't know what will happen with the time for this blog. Given I've had so little in the last six months, it may actually increase. Or, surrounded by the college-life ambiance, I may have less time.

On hiatus

The blog will be on hiatus until at least May 21.

On Victory in Europe hiatus

This blog will be on hiatus until at least May 10.
I have the honour of attending and covering events in the Netherlands from May 1-7 around the 65th anniversary of Victory in Europe and the liberation of the Netherlands. Students from Woodstock's Huron Park Secondary School are attending these events (and others I won't be at) as well over this time period. I may tweet occasionally from Europe as time and connectivity allows.
Please check out my newspaper's coverage, as well as the website and blog maintained by HPSS.
Metroland Durham Region reporter Crystal Crimi and photographer Sabrina Byrnes are on the same tour as myself-- check out their blog, which they are updating on Blackberries and an iPhone throughout the tour.

What a year

I realized this past weekend that this blog has been up and running for a year now. Over the past year, I have grown so much as an education reporter through the reading, research and discussions I've been having on these pages— I hope that it's made me a better education reporter as I continue to seek that 'perfect' job where someone pays me to do this and only this full-time.
Over the year, this site has seen approximately 11,000 visits from just over 4,000 unique visitors with about 18,000 page views. What started as an experiment blossomed into something far more regular and now competes for my work and leisure time.
Thanks for dropping by, thanks for reading, and to the few who stick their heads out and comment, thanks for joining in.

Hugo

ELP blog

This came across in an alert today-- Full Day Early Learning: Facts and Speculation.
As the subtitle indicates:

There is much rumour and speculation about the introduction of full day early learning in Ontario. This blog attempts to separate fact from speculation about issues faced by not-for-profit community-based childcare centres in Ontario.

Something to keep an eye on in the coming months as more and more information is hopefully pushed out from the Ministry. One for the bookmark list, and I'll add it to the blogroll on the right. I'll just note its backers are from the not-for-profit childcare industry.

Playing at AgendaCamp

This Sunday, I'll be spending the full day at TVO's AgendaCamp, being held at UWO in London. Peruse the site / wiki for more information on what AgendaCamp is and the topics under discussion in London. I'm pretty psyched about this day, particularly after having spent Saturday at a Canadian Association of Journalists' one-day technology and innovation conference in Toronto. It's a weekend full of stepping outside of the day-to-day reporting (and even blogging) that I've been doing and wrapping my head around concepts of what tomorrow might look like and how I can fit into that as a journalist.
I had pitched a session for AgendaCamp, which has been rolled up into "Making London a leader in education innovation and implementation." It also includes topics as proposed on early learning, supports for young families and a scholastic park and resort at the city's Fanshawe Conservation Area.
I will be social-media-ing my brains out yet again Sunday (Twitter locked me out for too many status updates twice on Saturday, I need to moderate my count Sunday), via Twitter, Facebook and maybe even Flickr if I get the camera out and working. You can search Twitter for all AgendaCamp tweets from all the participants who'll be online from the venue. I'll try and tag my education-related tweets, if you're not as interested in the bigger picture.
If the brain's not too fried by Monday, I may post some longer relevant thoughts back on here.

Holiday hiatus

This blog is on hiatus until at least Jan. 4, 2010.
Please take some time to enjoy and celebrate Christmas (if you celebrate— if not, well, enjoy the time off work and celebrate the season) and have a wonderful new year.

Things you learn updating links

A recent comment highlighted a need to review and update links in my blogroll. The 'Snap' preview function was pointing us to the wrong place and providing erroneous RSS updates. In doing so, I tripped across a great PPoint presentation over at The Lampost, a blog written by a Durham District School Board high school teacher.
It demonstrates how some teachers, good teachers, are enabling the use of technology as another tool for teaching and learning.

Hiatus

One of the more frustrating things in life the last month or so has been the sheer and utter lack of time to post on as many things as I'd like to in this space. In the past week alone, I've had browser tabs open for a new K-12 school in Pembroke, a new homework policy unveiled by the Simcoe County District School Board and the continuing saga that is unfolding in Niagara-on-the-Lake-- where attributing devilish qualities and asking DSBN to "stay away," has become the new form of municipal-school board co-operation so heralded by the town's own council members on the Community Schools Alliance. I wonder if the other members of the alliance executive will follow this grand path of adding insult to injury after a board makes a disputed decision. Not to mention Studio2's time this week on early learning featuring Education Minister Kathleen Wynne, which I didn't have time to see yet would have liked to blog about here.
All things I wish I'd had more time for but haven't as most of my work blogging time has concentrated on my municipal politics blog, leaving precious little personal time for this space.

Anyway.

The blog is going on a short hiatus until at least Nov. 12.
I successfully applied for and received a fellowship to attend an Education Writers Association seminar in San Diego, Cal., titled "Small Schools and High School Reform: Shrinking Size, Diminishing Returns?" I am grateful for the opportunity and rather excited to spend two days in the company of about a dozen U.S. education reporters talking about small-school models and why they do and don't work and how to cover them as a journalist.
Some of the insight I gain will hopefully show itself through posts in this space as well as in my reporting through my full-time gig.
It does mean no posts for the coming days however. I may be able to tweet from a few of the venues, but won't make any guarantees.
Please check back after Nov. 12 for new posts.

Minutiae update

Just a brief update-- the blog hit its 3,000th visit over the past day.
It's now receiving an average of about 1,000 visits a month, approximately 30 a day, with over 300 unique visitors in the last month alone. Individual page views are a hair over 5,000. For those who weren't already aware, I use both Google Analytics and Sitemeter to track site visits, solely for information purposes.
Thanks for stopping by folks. This is far better than I anticipated when this project began back in March.

Circular loving

A link to my recently published column touching on several summertime posts and comments here on this blog. The column was written prior to the start of my nine-day hiatus Aug. 31 and focuses more on the early posts and discussions on the Community Schools Alliance.