Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

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.

Came back from vacation down to Yellowstone last night. A big thanks to Wes for guestblogging. As expected, he did an outstanding job and of course manage to post some great stuff.

Looking back at our holiday, there were a number of ways technology was used to create a better vacation.

• Wiki. We travelled with another family and used a wiki to plan out the details. While I basically did all the editing, everyone viewed it many times prior to the trip and we all sat down and used it to finalize things. When travelling with another family, it was nice to have many things pre-planned.
• Flickr. Friends and family members loved being able to keep up with things along the way. In addition, it enabled me to deal with all the pictures in smaller chunks rather than doing it all after the fact. I also found a great little bookmarklet that easily adds a geotag to your photos. I also incorporated a little tip found at photojojo.com that we had a lot of fun with.

• Youtube. I was even able to create a short video and upload it to youtube.
• Blog. Providing short updates rather than emailing, allowed me to describe some of the details of our trip.
• Geocaching. Had the opportunity to do a few geocaches which led us to some interesting places we may not have found otherwise…Ousell Falls being one.
• Cellphones and text messaging. We needed to text message each other throughout the trip as the US charges $1 a minute for cellphone use.

I’ll definitely use these again for future vacations.

Found this via Stephen Downes. It didn’t embed as nicely as I’d hope so I had to resort to my vPIP plugin.

Play Flash version

When I was a kid I loved watching Johnny Carson. I particularly loved Monday nights because he’d often have a guest host. Although I liked Carson, it was always interesting to see how others handled the monologue and interviews.

Wes Fryer, who recently moved to Edmond, Oklahoma, is one of my favourite reads and certainly gets my vote for pumping out the most stuff, has asked me to do some guest blogging on his site while he’s on holidays. This, to me, is a rather new concept and one that offers me an opportunity to write to some new people and also keeps his content fresh.

I’m going to be quite busy the next few days, trying to get a daughter married off and  preparing for some workshops. I don’t quite know what will happen to my blog. I don’t want to simply cross post everything and yet when I think I’ve got some good stuff, I don’t want to have to choose where I’ll post.

I’ll do my best to keep things alive on both fronts but it’s kind of a neat opportunity and so I’ll likely focus my efforts on Wes’ site. It’s a nice honour to be asked to write on someone else’s blog.
He has agreed to do some guest blogging for me next month. I imagine I’ll double my postings for the year during that time.

Happy Canada Day!

Highlights included:

• Breakfast on the neighbours deck
• Park Art
• Walk Crescent Park
• Martha in the Water Park
• Shea and her friends at the pool
• The nap
• Icecream
• Street Art
• Martha and her scooter downtown (listening to the fake Bee Gees)
• Fireworks

I’m going to offering a 2 day workshop this summer on digital storytelling. I’ve done similar sessions before but focused more on specific applications. This time the focus will be on the process. Piggy backing on the fine work that’s out there,(Joe Lambert, Bernajean Porter, and others) I’ll be trying to help teachers understand the power of digital storytelling across the curriculum.

In addition to discussing the various tools, I want to show them the process that in some ways is very simple and yet when done well can be challenging. I wanted to once again walk through the experience of storytelling and so I created this story as a tribute to my Dad.

• It begins with an idea….looking at tangible evidence of how my father has influenced me.
• This translates to a written script.
• I collect assets….photos, music, video
• I record my script
• Insert the assets in the appropriate spots in the timeline
• Add motion to images to create a more compelling message

For my project I used Pinnacle Studio 10 but the tool isn’t as important as the message. Hopefully I’ll have as positive an experience as Miguel has had.

This one’s for you Dad.
2:30 (3.5MB)

 

 I Love Father's Day: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (604)

In the words of a famous Canadian, “If the women don’t find you handsome, at least let them find you handy.” Unfortunately for me neither of these are particularly true; espescially the latter.
So it was with great pride I worked for over an hour Saturday morning fixing my weedeater. Okay, not exactly at the same level as rewiring your house but for me it was an accomplishment.

As I worked away at this a thought struck me. A few years ago, I would have given up after 10 minutes of struggle. Why was I willing to persist and experience failure after failure now? The answer in part is WordPress but it really is my overall experience into technology. I worked for hours on the weekend trying to resolve an issue I am having with my PodPress plugin and Audacity. Didn’t fix it but was persistent. Today I worked for several hours on my WordPress site with some help from technical support and forums. This issue I resolved.

I think the lessons in problem solving I’ve experiences over the past few years have a definite transfer to other areas. I knew that stupid weedeater had to work. I needed to isolate the problem and continue with trial and error. Pretty basic stuff but those problem solving skills are critical. I get less frustrated because I understand patience is part of the process. I’ve also had enough success to keep me interested.
I don’t usually get this philosophical when trimming my lawn but it was so unlike me to fiddle with things like this. I’m attributing it to my time spent on my laptop.

“Honey, cancel the repairman. I’ll fix the dishwasher myself!”