ITC Conf 2019

People I met
Elizabeth Johnson
Frank Crocco
Don, from Prince Ed Island
Waleed Ma'arouf, who told me about demitri martin
Ted Ward, whose favorite music is early hiphop

A worker dragging a cart full of projectors asked me if I was alright. I worry about seeming like a quiet psycho. Maybe he cared. I am copping an air of neediness. It takes work for me to keep my spirits from slumping and the dinner group pressed my social anxiety buttons to overload until I was pretty much in a state of paralysis. At those moments it's hard, and easy to look back only minutes later wishing I was truly authentic, but my authenticity is full of trembling fears that tend to freak people out and shut them out. I have to keep the mask on. The mask of being just fine. Just tired. Unable to laugh.
A light and airy sense of the real - what's really going on with my emotions, but in a light and airy fashion that isn't soft - might work to express the fears authentically, so my companions would see and connect, as opposed to shuddering and thinking I'm on the spectrum, as I sometimes do, but it's just that I think too much, too much up here (points to head). Fuck the frontal lobe!
In the early morning at the conference hall in planet hollywood, a few of the folks show up as early as me. I'm not alone.
It's the feminine side, all the watery wishy washy wannabies in me.
My joke fell flat, the quip about Las Vegas being the hub of all the world's magicians and clowns. I think the thing's changed because clowns are pariahs now, not happy-silly beings of childhood.
Stay in the masculine and stay in the center. Grounded even in heavy emotion. That would work. That could be the way. But a fish swims not on to the land.
The Ethiopian restaurant, makumba(?) was pretty amaze', even if I did have a paranoid jealous freakout. I get close to crying lately. I need a good watershed moment. The music and the dancing on the screen, and the beautiful woman serving and making us coffee by roasting the beans right in front of us in a little pan, then it brews in an elegant tall black pot. She forgot to serve me mine and maybe that would have been just as well, a sign. I felt terribly passive. A sign that the ship is taking on water.
The talk here is dire: of everything going online and art schools closing and the young generation being so damn worried about the worrisome state of the world they want nothing but security, so they give up every dream of... dreams like mine, that don't cling to security. It is entirely fascinating to know that things fall apart.
Chinue Achebe
Now the worker pushes the cart by me again and "Sweet Dreams" is playing from the phone in his pocket and I take a chance and sing it out and he smiles and paints at me and says "I like good music". And we're connected again. And I want to cry.

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Perspectively

I just found out I was closed-minded. It is slightly annoying to create repeating events in a calendar, just for the fact it takes a little longer and burns a few extra calories in brain-work to click around before getting it right. Now you know me a little.
So I'm making an adjustment to an event that happens daily for 5 days, Fall Break. It's a week earlier than I'd thought, and while adjusting the date, predicting that it will require some juggling in the repetition part, I clicked the dates range of the primary event from the 6th to the 10th. Then it asked me if I want multiple events or just one. Without thinking, I clicked one. Made more sense.
Holy calendar catharthis, Batman! For this weeklong event, I don't have to repeat, just extend it over multiple days. I didn't think of that. I saw only discreet daily happenings when it's actually one long event. How little things open up my eyes wider. How many other things am I blind to? How many other simple answers to seemingly complex problems are waiting to free me, just a little more, from being stupidly annoyed at life, technology, my kids?

G+ photos are not easy to share

Now that Google has G-plussed everything, getting your photos from an album to facebook is a matter of actually copying from the address field into a Fb post. Seems so arcane for a service that has such basic sophistication when it was picasaweb. And share? The share button is exclusively for G+. Moving photos between albums? Who knows how to do that anymore. It's all become so easy that you can't do anything.

connected learners video

Connected Learning: 'ENGAGED' from DML Research Hub on Vimeo.

Digital Native Languages - not just for Digital Native

This fun little quiz reminds us that it is not your age or generation, but who you are and what you do that matters.

web 2ools

I just made a new net-term.

How fun and hilarious (you can be)

I've heard it oft said of late that personality is the key to communication. Well, not exactly like that, but when a teacher claims that his students connect with his lessons more when his humor and humanity (aka. mistakes) come out in a recording. Let go of perfection and greet the welcome reality, even if you can try a "take 2!".
Here's a YC instructor that has said, "...it's funny how students will reference my lectures in their discussion board posts and assignments -- e.g., "As Dr. Karly said in the lecture about blah blah blah," lol! It's great to know they're listening (and not texting under the desk, which is the bane of my existence in any lecture class today). And it's always nice to get those emails saying how much they appreciate the pre-recorded lectures (and "how fun and hilarious you are")".

Social network with personal/professional limiting

When at the Innovations conference, I asked everyone I could about whether they would be open to "friending" their students. ONE person (besides Todd Conaway:) would've. Ok, I get it, we want to have separation and a private life. While I've taken the tack of creating multiple Fb personalities, the Latin American oriented social network site Sonico has conveniently separated people for you, into work, family, and friend "buckets'.

On Wisconsin Blogs

I get my alumni magazine "On Wisconsin" mailed to me(!), and it serves as excellent fodder for our bathroom library. This latest edition has an article called Brave New Blogs, about UW profs blogging and is, above all, a good read. Anthropologist John Hawks describes it in wonderfully simple terms, “It’s about getting people excited about what we know,” he says. Yes it is.

It gives me perspective, again, that I am in a unique and privileged position, and NO, not everyone is hip to blogging yet, and it is a highly useful part of the world's dialogue.

Illegal Invite?

The images in my Picasa slideshow may be violating copyright, pending the response from the British website Sciencephotolibrary.com to whether student use is allowed without a membership. While I wait for a cease & disist order, I sent this "share" e-vite to myself, where I can click to contribute photos. I'm quite a guy!

Our baseball team has a Shutterfly website which links to our pictures of little league glory, and are functional collaborative sites like Ning or Grou.ps, with modules for blogging turned to game reports, news items used for pitching advice, and storage of files like the team yearbook pdf.

UPDATE: The sciencephotolibrary replied to my inquiry:
 
Dear Thatcher,
Thank you for the email.

We have made our collection available through the Encyclopaedia Britannica Image Quest, which is an educational subscription.

http://quest.eb.com/


This link is a pay subscription, so one would surmise that using the images violates copyright, though I believe since they are watermarked and available, an in-class use by teachers or students would be fair use (of course, only a court would say for sure). My posting them online is probably not. 

Innovations Conference - What is a Great Teacher?

Todd and I are currently in San Diego attending and presenting at the Innovations in the Community College conference.
I look around and get a pretty wonky impression that there are more administrators than teachers here, but it should be fruitful, and I'm pleased to report that some warm fuzzys are germinating, inspired by the keynote speaker, Allan Golston, President of the  U.S. Programs for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


He spoke of the pain in realizing some early efforts came up short, mainly that systemic and structural changes in K-12 education did not have the effects hoped for. What they learned was that real change happens at the classroom level, WITH THE TEACHER. Top teachers can improve even the lowest performing students. Wooo! This was personally affirming, because after going through 5 different schools (so far) with my 3 kids, this was dominant lesson for us as well. School philosophy be damned, it was the teacher that mattered. I can imagine that this was painful for Mr. Golston because a good teacher is something of an outlier, and far more tricky to find and develop that making changes in policy or method. A good teacher transcends all those things.

Mr. Golston told the story of his being a young accounting teacher, confronted by ill-prepared students. Instead of flunking them, as one mentor coldly suggested, he opened a special Saturday session to bring those students up to where they needed to be. It wasn't a special gift of oratory, cleverness or technology, but simple willingness to go beyond for those students. I got totally choked up. The quality that all great teachers have? They care deeply about their students.

The Things that Don't Change

If you don't update your blog for 3 months, people will wonder whether you will ever be back. Currency is valuable on the internet, and I'm not talking cash. It's more of a credit line. If you keep your web log fresh, like the flowers on the table, you might keep people coming back for a bite. Let it wilt to crusted brown and there will be no one coming to your door.

Do you find this ironic? Postings on the web can last, well, until the electricity runs out. So wouldn't this permanence let you say the things you need to only once? No need to repeat yourself, it would live on in transcendence of time, there for the searching now and forever.
It doesn't necessarily work that way - the internet gets stale faster than french bread. I doubt anyone will read any post contained in my archives, and they will be as good as last month's newspapers, balled up and burned. It's a good thing this internet isn't static, but churning churning out more fresh bit-burger-bytes. Still, what lasts? What do you return to?

Reflecting on Our F2F Meeting

Do you have 5 minutes?

Springing into Edu255

Wow, this will be Edu255's sixth semester. 75 amazing teachers! Looking at the change over that time and the growth ahead is amazing, and we are in the very center of it. Very exciting stuff, and frightening, and fun, and difficult at times. Technology surrounds us. We can resist it, or go ahead and make the move, toward it, without leaving behind our values and what we believe. It is ours to shape with everyone else, so let's learn how.

When approaching the online world, open to the possibility that what you might imagine to be possible, is possible. Can you talk to people through it? Yes. Can you make this blog whatever color you want? Yes. Can we organize videos together for a lesson plan? Affirmative, with the proper curiosity and perseverence. That kind of customizability by you - and students, together in interactive spaces, is really neat, with huge potential. These new contexts can create new self-motivations for learning.

We've had incredible discussions. The discussion board is the heart of the course, and this semester's going experimental again using the discus discussion tool, which personalizes it Facebook-style. The visual image gives life to it.

I look forward to making more great connections this semester. See you on Saturday!

Multitasking is Just Wrong

This short, entertaining (two words I hope will combine to make you actually WATCH this) video may make you want to do less. Enjoy and be entertained, and perhaps, educated.

Dangerous Science Education

This article about science education was very interesting so I thought I'd pass it on here. Whatever get them engaged, I say!

Philosophy of Teaching

My philosophy of teaching is undefined, evolving, turning in on itself, and I have limited teaching experiences to draw upon. From these, I believe caring about students is a strength I possess and something that matters for students, a conclusion drawn from course evaluations and talking to students. I believe when students feel that a teacher cares about how they are doing in class, this tends to affect them for the better in terms of engagement.

Everyone at different times takes the role of teacher or student, and it has been said that perhaps teaching makes one the best of students. Teaching and learning are two sides of the same thing - to discover. When one has a passion, sharing that passion through teaching brings it alive for the teacher to live again and again.
I have often found it difficult to refrain from the old lecture mode, expounding on a subject to one's own delight, to the detriment of the listener.

While much criticism is heaped on the "old" methods of teaching as a kind of one-way conduit of information flowing from the sage to the student, who is expected to memorize and repeat the facts and figures, there is of course a place for this kind of teaching. We need to know the facts, formulas, and faces of our world. The exciting learning, though, always takes place somewhere in the conversation of ideas.
In this practice we have to let go of assumptions, experiment, fail and find our way back to knowing again.

We learn by making mistakes, as Edison famously said before inventing the lightbulb, "I have discovered 10,000 ways to do it wrong" or something to that effect.
The best discoveries take place within each student, and within each student's creative capacity. Creativity carries a kind of artistic stigma that it belongs to a gifted few, but creativity is necessary for every endeavor - we wouldn't survive without it.
People learn by doing.