Jean-Louis Bontront : Weblog

Going to try being a presenter

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:26:13 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/going-to-try-being-a-present

Well, I’ve finally done it. I’ve put in an application to be a presenter at a conference. I like the title of this one, hosted by my teacher’s union, OSSTF (Ontario Secondary Schools Teacher’s Federation): Tools & Toys…Technology in Education I plan on presenting how using a wiki in a classroom can help students collaborate [...]

Easy way of organizing my teaching files

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:34:02 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/easy-way-of-organizing-my-te

I’ve been teaching for many years now (19, wow, time flies!!). During that time, I have amassed a large number of files (word processing documents, PDF documents, images, videos, answer keys, etc…). Early on, I was naming my files in a way that would help to identify what the file was for. This soon became [...]

Did you know Google is a calculator?

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:14:34 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/did-you-know-google-is-a-cal

I found out something completely new and surprising about Google. Not only is it a really good search engine, RSS reader and document handler (just to name a few), but it’s a calculator and unit converter too!
I typed this is:
and received this as a result:
Then I typed this:
and received this as a result:
Goodbye Windows calculator! [...]

If you can’t attend a conference, fire up twitter!

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:05:04 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/if-you-cant-attend-a-confere

I recently leveraged the power of twitter to attend a conference vicariously through some of its attendees.
An organization called the Western Regional Computer Advisory Committee held a conference in London, ON yesterday. To my chagrin, I was not able to attend. One of my colleagues, Doug Peterson was the main organizer. Visit his blog, he [...]

Been away, but I’m back

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:25:31 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/been-away-but-im-back/

I’ve been away for some time from this blog (you may have noticed if you looked into the history of my posts, a few months of ‘dead air’).
The reasons are personal and medical, and I tend to stay away from those topics in this blog; however, I did want to say something about my absence.
I [...]

A great Organic Chemistry Nomenclature activity

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:49:54 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/a-great-organic-chemistry-no

Okay, so I know this is not the most riveting topic for an educational blog, but organic chemistry is what I studied and what I’m passionate about teaching. I’m always looking for ways to make this subject more interesting for my grade 12 students. I think I hit the nail on the head with this [...]

Back for another year

Sat, 12 Sep 2009 00:48:04 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/back-for-another-year/

I know it’s been awhile since my last post. My family has been having the time of our lives this past summer with all sorts of activities. Now that school has started, I’ll be coming back here much more often.
This is my 19th year teaching, and I’ve had another great start. I’m teaching exactly what [...]

Why I like PBWORKS so much for my wiki space

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:53:43 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/why-i-like-pbworks-so-much-f

PBWORK.COM, the web service I use to host (and pay for a premium account) my course wiki, is running a summer camp to help teach teachers how to use the service to host an educational wiki. I’ve been invited to act as one of the camp counselors to help the new users along with their [...]

A new teaching approach – Vodcasting

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:07:44 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/a-new-teaching-approach-vodc

I saw a very interesting new video about a new teaching approach being used by some school. It is called Vodcasting, which stands for Video on Demand Casting. It really got me thinking about what I do in the classroom and how I can change some things up. You can view the news video here. [...]

The power of Twitter for a teacher

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 02:43:44 GMT

http://jeanbont.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/the-power-of-twitter-for-a-t

I just had a “Twitter is Awesome” moment today.
I’ve spoken about it before, but now I have proof how well it works as a Professional Learning Network (PLN). (I use Twitter to primarily connect with other educators all over the world and have learned tons of ideas from them.)
As a chemistry teacher, I tried an [...]