I've not written much in this blog about the educational aspects of our visit to Canada, which is odd really, since that's the whole reason we are here in the first place. I have some fairly strong ideas and beliefs about education, but so far I've just been quietly observing and absorbing the Canadian education system, and I will probably write more about it in due course.

Suffice to say that there are aspects of the school system in Canada that I really like and I will undoubtedly borrow a few ideas to take home with me. There are also a few things that I don't particularly like, that I find frustrating or strange, and make me glad I don't have to live with them forever. And there are yet others that make me scratch my head and say "What the..."? Fortunately, the things I like about teaching in Canada here are amply sufficient to keep my enthusiasm up. I will write more on this later...

For now though, I wanted to share a project I undertook with my Grade 10 Introduction to Business class. I was keen to explore the idea of podcasting at some stage, so when I realised that most of my class seemed to own an iPod or MP3 player of some sort, and their enthusiasm for working from the textbook was rapidly running out of steam, it seemed an ideal opportunity to try a podcasting project. Working on the principle that it's much easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission, I made a fairly radical departure from the standard approach to the course.

The results turned out much better than I expected... in fact you can check out the kids' work by going to www.podbizproject.net, where you can see (and hear) the results for yourself. For our first podcasting project I was quite pleased with the end result, and I feel my belief in student-centered, constructivist-based learning was well rewarded. Well done kids!