Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Living in Canada, snow really never gets me too excited. Needless to say, I’ve seen it all. That is until today. We’ve had some unseasonably warm temperatures and most of our snow had melted. Tonight we received some very interesting snowfall. The largest flakes I’ve seen in my life and snow the consistency of styrofoam or my favourite treat….dippin’ dots. Here’s some footage of the falling snow.

I later found out it’s called Thundersnow. I had never hear of it before. According to sources, it’s extremely rare.

I got tagged a couple of times so with the premise of not over thinking these things and their importance, I’ll bite.

1. My oldest daughter went to university when she was less than a year old. I married my wife when I was only 20 and had just completed my first year of university. We both were attending university for the first 4 years of marriage. We had our first child during my 4th year and my wife’s 3rd year, and on occasion, when babysitters were an issue, we took her to class with us.
2. I have a wealth of useless sports trivia knowledge, particularly golf. I was a sports statistic freak as a child and still am when it comes to PGA golf and NFL football. I’ve even been consulted very regularly from friends and family to resolve disputes on the matter.
3. I do almost all the cooking in our house. Probably not the the extent of Mark Ahlness but I have a few specialties.
4. I taught grade one for the first 6 years of my teaching career. There were few and still aren’t many males teaching primary students. It was a great experience and I’d highly encourage men to pursue this.
5. I like TV. My favourites being Seinfeld (seen every episode dozens of times), The Office, King of Queens, almost anything on the Documentary, Biography channel and the NFL Network, college basketball and golf. I also challenge those who pride themselves in the statement, “I don’t watch a lot of TV, there’s nothing good on.” My wife, who is a teacher-librarian says it’s like kids who come into the library and ask, “Are there any good books in here?”

I guess you’re supposed to tag others so here goes:

Clarence, Kelly, Tom, Anne, and Tim.

I really like when bloggers take the time to cull through their writing and reveal their best or favourite pieces. Certainly the ease of web 2.0 publishing often means that the good stuff can get quickly buried in favour of the more current work.

In a effort to avoid the dreaded “list“, I’ll simply post some of my favourite posts of the past year with a quick explanation of why I thought their were especially important or interesting.

• Asking the hard questions…February 7th. Challenging our text driven curricula
  
• Podcast 14… Dinner with Bloggers...March 27th. Face to face meeting with Will Richardson, Wes Fryer, Steve Dembo and Tim Wilson
• Telling the new story Part 1 Podcast 16…May 12th. Interview with Darren Kuropatwa.
• Telling the new story Part 3 Podcast 18…May 17th. Interview with Clarence Fisher
• Telling the New Story…the Video…May 19th. Video I created that’s been used by myself and others to show the life and times of Kathy Cassidy, a primary teacher who embraces web 2.0
• The easiest Masters degree ever…May 28th. Reflections on my Masters degree
• Digital Storytelling at its best…June 3rd. Always nice to share others good work…especially students.
• I don’t want to look busy…October 10th. Another idea I need to remember.
• Podcast 20…Blogging with Administrators…October 24th.
• PowerPoint Extreme Makeover…November 28th…Received many nice comments and trackbacks on this one.

Most Challenging…Posts that received some criticism or challenged my thinking.

• Is a blog a blog if there are no comments?…June 10th. One fairly lengthy response was particularly interesting.
• Telling the Old Story…April 4th. Caused a bit of stir locally when I criticized a technology project.
• Too many consultants?…September 12th. Created a lot of talk locally.
• Blog rage…September 17th. Reflections from a USA Today article with some interesting comments.

Wishing all my friends a very Merry Christmas. I’ll be spending Christmas with my family and friends here in Moose Jaw.

A special treat for me was to sing with my three girls at our Candle Light Service.

The added bonus was we got to sing a James Taylor song. Love J.T.

Like most who would read this blog using an aggregator, I spend the majority of my time reading educational blogs and sources. But who else do you read? How diverse are your feeds?

I keep a list of librarians, administrators and other school related bloggers in my aggregator, not because I’m particularly interested but I like to be able to show others what is possible. If we believe that students will be able to transfer the experiences and skills associated with blogging, we need examples of real world of bloggers that cross cultural, societal and vocational lines. Do you know of blogging doctors? lawyers (beside Larry Lessig)? mechanics? parents? plumbers? store owners? car salesman?

My list of non-educational bloggers is pretty weak. Here are a few:

• Dave Weinberger: technologist and commentator (this one really doesn’t count)
• Scott Hodge: Pastor from Chicago. Stumbled across his blog a year or so ago and enjoy his passion for Starbucks coffee and his church
• Freakonomics:authors of the best selling book continue to see the world from a very different perspective.

This list isn’t very diverse. Is yours? Does your mechanic blog?

My wife has always wanted a VW beetle. I pretty well do what she wants so we got a 2007 red Beetle. I would have been happy with a 1995 Ford Focus but we got the beetle.

Anyway, besides the fact that it was way more than I wanted to spend, I discovered one little feature that might make the whole thing worthwhile.  A tiny auxilary jack located next to the stereo allows me to plug in my mp3 player. So my drives around my school division are now the perfect opportunity to get caught up with podcasts. Yesterday the 100km trip back and forth from Assiniboia allowed me to listen to:

• David Warlick talking to teachers in Northern Ontario. I was actually amazed at the resistance and skeptism by the teachers.
• TED TALKS with Jimmy Wales
• TED TALKS with Nicholas Negroponte.  My favourite line was in regards to school districts who asked about piloting his laptops for smaller sizes, “Screw you! Get to the back of the line!”
• Wes Fryer’s free digital curriculum talk. I always get good stuff from Wes.

I guess we’ll keep the bug.

Our culture is obsessed with being busy. When’s the last time you asked someone about their job or life and they didn’t use the word busy? It’s worn like a badge of honor. To even hint you might not be busy, conjures up visions of laziness and lack of ambition. As we plan various activities and events for schools, I’ll often hear, “that’s a busy time for schools”. Tell me when it’s not a busy time?

That fact that everyone is busy should be a given by now. It’s almost akin to breathing. Should I preface every statement about my current state of existence by stating that, “I’ve been really breathing lately….consuming a lot of oxygen.”

I’m trying to stop acting like I’m so busy and telling everyone how busy I am. No one really cares and it’s nothing worth talking about. Telling folks about how busy you are creates too many negative images. Talking about busyness does not usually leave the impression you love your job. I do love my job so maybe I don’t think of myself as busy. My job is to support teachers. When a teacher asks for my support, I figure out how to help. I don’t need to remind them how busy I am because they’re just as busy. I want to give people the impression that I have lots of time for them. They need to feel relaxed and I’d like to alleviate some of the stress they might be feeling in their daily grind. Life and work shouldn’t be taken so seriously. Relax. I’ve worked with some great people that I know were extremely busy but always had time to chat with me about work, life and I dare say it, even fun, non-work related stuff.

I think this is the type of classroom we ought to be creating. One where teachers have lots of time to work with students and there is less a sense of panic and mayhem and more one of calm and reflection. Is this possible? I don’t know but I’m going to try and avoid the word busy to describe my work and life.

I uploaded the last of my summer photos to flickr and wanted to showcase a few.

Bet you didn’t think you could grow grapes in Saskatchewan. Well this crop comes from my backyard. We had some great crops of both raspberries and strawberries. These are my favourite.

Never been much of a farmer but this wheat field near Waldheim, SK was quite amazing.

This is the largest tree in Saskatchewan also near Waldheim. If you go to flickr, I geotagged it so you can see the exact location. Again, you wondered if there were any trees in Saskatchewan, I give you this.