Skookum Presentations!

So, my two Social Studies 10 classes have been presenting "Heritage" projects for the last few days and I am "caught" (as an old prof used to say) by the powerful sentiments and connections the students have revealed. Their job was to ask some questions of their own past (family trees, interviews, story-gathering, etc.) and report on interesting findings and connections to Canadian history (where do I come from? where do we come from?). We've heard of new languages learned, sod houses built, businesses started, wars fought (one g-g-gfather fought in 3!), and doing things "the old way" (heritage skills). The Irish Potato Famine came up, as did the Royal Wardrobe of Elizabeth I, Japanese internment, the RCAF, racism & residential schools, Ellis Island & Pier 21, the potlatch, the smudge, the Stock Market Crash, Nazi spies in Prince George, escape from terror, family break-ups, sad deaths, and and also times of healing & celebration & humour. I've learned (again) that students are hungry to ask questions when their identity is involved. For example, one student talked about interviewing her grandmother who used to jump on the frozen river and ride rafts of ice... she asked "why don't we do stuff like that anymore?" A student then asked "what will we tell our grandchildren?" Another student suggested her generation watched the world go by: our grandparents talked of their adventures and "we talk about going on facebook" -- many thoughts turned to "what difference will I make in the world, in the lives of others?"

We got to see, and have explained, photo albums, ration cards, old leather books with curious hand-writing, moccasins, teapots, an A.R.P. helmet, and lederhosen. We are, it turns out, Aboriginal, American, Chinese, Dutch, East Indian, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Metis, Phillipino, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Scottish, Slovakian, South African, Syrian, Thai, and Ukrainian, and probably a few more... as one girl said "I'm a typical Canadian Calico kid." We got to eat tea biscuits, samosa, egg tarts, gingerbread cookies, and canned wieners. We thought we were going to meet a cat. The classroom walls are festooned with photos and family trees -- trees shaped like trees, like charts, like maps, and even one shaped like a dream. The students have been wowed by the presentations and many have caught a genealogy bug which they will pursue beyond this course -- "this is something I'm going to look into later" or "I didn't get ahold of this story but I'm going to track it down at Christmas." To all the students who have so thoughtfully made connections with their/our past, I thank-you!!! This project, and these two wonderful Socials classes, will occupy a special place in my memory. I'm talking about it like the semester is done but I wanted to get this out while the gratitude was fresh.

It's just hair!!!

I'm amazed how many people freaked out when I put in the dreads and then later when I cut them off. Most comments implied that it all meant something. Can't a guy just have long hair or short hair without it being about subversion or complicity with the system? Can't a guy wear a tie without people asking him if he has a job interview? O.K. who am I kidding. I don't really have a tie and I'd have hair 6 feet long if I wasn't going bald. Speaking of subversion, I'm reading a fantastic book right now... "Teaching as a Subversive Activity" (Postman/Weingartner 1968)... one of my dad's old books which found a home in my library. Their focus was on the problems if the US education system as it entered a new era, and a call for inquiry-based learning. What's amazing is that the "charges" they level against the education system of the 1960s, the slow response to change, the teacher-knows-best attitude, and the factory system of classrooms, could be used effectively today with very little change in syntax or semantics, although I think many modern proponents have hijacked inquiry-based learning for privatization agendas. I am reading it slowly (nothing new there) because it poses many challenges to my teaching practice which are not easy to resolve. Like the dreadlocks, my thoughts are bound tight and hard to work with, but also provide some joy, interest, and concern to others. There's the meaning you can take from my hair.

Paris of the North

Saw this on the CBC News website story on the big plywood plant fire and subsequent fires in the BCR industrial site in Prince George. The interesting part comes in the comments, where PG's industrial zone is elegantly slandered and someone rebuts... a good case study in heartland/hinterland dynamics!

Punchinello's comment #1 "Yes, Prince George is the Paris of northern BC. This cultural icon, the industrial district is the Champs d'Elysée of the Cariboo with it's famous neo-baroque second empire poured concrete cinder block truck stop. I think it was about to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site too. What a loss."

kristahuot's response: "To Punchinello: I see a Vancouverite has seen fit to grace us all with their perspective on Prince George. Congratulations on knowing the main street in Paris, how extremely worldly and cultured of you. It is industrial cities like Prince George who provide BC's economy with most of its revenue, so this fire is actually more devastating than your comment implies. Many of those hardworking people will be out of jobs, and they are already suffering enough due to the pine beetle infestation and the softwood lumber crisis. I grew up in Prince George, and I lived in Vancouver for 5 years. I've also lived in Toronto and Montreal which are both 5 times the city Vancouver will ever be. Call Prince George whatever you like, but Vancouver as a city is nothing but a cultural black hole, with the artistic merit of a condo developer's sales model made out of used syringes. The beauty in that city is its natural surroundings, not the city itself. The poverty and addiction in Vancouver are an absolute disgrace, something that most Vancouverites turn a blind eye to, while they hang out in Yaletown sipping lattes and toting around tiny dogs. Maybe Main and Hastings can be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site too?"

Romeo

I had a chance to hear Romeo Dallaire speak to delegates at a Colleges Conference in PG. Wow... he had a few interesting loose ends that left me with some questions (military simplicity vs political ambiguity), but I came away with a renewed sense of the difference between management and leadership. He suggests we have too much of the former and a vacuum of the latter in Canada ("there is no one selecting and maintaining a vision for Canada"). He also suggested that Canada has stumbled onto world power status and thus needs to be more responsible on the world stage in preventing and addressing humanitarian issues (perhaps starting with keeping the Americans accountable for their human rights abuses in Gitmo). He figures the way forward is better cooperation between gov't, military, and NGOs.

All grown up

My Nephew Matt has moved to Squamish! He's the first of my siblings' kids to leave the nest and has set a unique standard for doing so. After years of biathlon and related training, he is off to work with a world-class team near the 2010 Olympic venue. I think he might be a year too young to compete at Whistler, but he has kicked some butt this year, winning the PG Iceman and grabbing a gold for his age category at biathlon nationals. We're proud of Matt and a bt anxxious, too... will he starve? Will he understand the saltwater and the cedar? Will he fall victim to a shameless timeshare scheme?

Identity Curriculum Technology links

wikis and currikis - online community used to develop and share open source knowledge and curriculum

Wikispaces -- http://www.wikispaces.com
PB Wiki -- http://www.pbwiki.com/education.wiki
Curriki -- http://www.curriki.or

blogs - web journals for teachers and students

Education Blogs -- http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blog
Blogmeister -- http://classblogmeister.com/
Google's Blogger (blogspot) -- http://www.blogger.com/

ipod extras - using portable players for quizzes, notes, references, news feeds

ipod in education -- http://www.ipodined.org

iPrep Press -- http://www.ipreppress.com

podcasting - audio (and visual) storytelling for learning, review, expression

Zencast -- http://www.zencast.com

Variety of podcasts -- http://www.podcast.net

Variety of podcasts -- http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html


tags and social bookmarking - labels on web entries and web-published bookmarks for easy access and sharing
Delicious -- http://www.del.icio.us

Digg -- http://www.digg.com

Technorati -- http://www.technorati.com

online communities (com/unities) and forums - many kinds, some to join, others to watch, others to mine for curriculum and inspiration -- add community to your google search

Technology, Entertainment, Design -- http://www.ted.com

Amateur musicians sharing work -- http://www.macidol.com
Historical Recreation -- 
http://www.ancientworlds.net
Teacher's forum -- 
http://www.educationforum.ipbhost.com

Matching goals with others -- http://www.43things.com/

online conferencing and collaboration - shared documents, video/online classroom tools, communities focussed on contribution (other than wikis)
Virtual Conferencing -- 
http://www.elluminate.com

Collaborative Editing -- http://docs.google.com

Amateur writing community -- http://www.fanfiction.net

youtube on education

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnh9q_cQcUE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM

DOCUMENTS
Session Handout
Great Primer on Web 2.0
TechLearning New Literacy

Swaraj

I've been reading The Essential Gandhi (edited by Louis Fischer), and have emerged with both guilt and hope. Guilt because I recognize the truth about my complicity with consumer culture, but hope because of the strength a non-violent, self-sufficient, and power-resistant mindset affords.

I've been trying to think about how the concept of Swaraj (independence, beginning with self) applies to some of the power-structures I interact with: family/social, classroom/school/district, community/society. Also the identities of self, space, and landscapes (natural, human, and imagined). For example. what my classroom look like if I refused to exercise coercion in any form? What would our school's interaction with the district be like if we engaged in passive resistance to the policies and language which are ill-conceived for our context and collective goals? I often think that there are many fights which deserve my involvement, mostly educational crusades of one kind or another, but I'll admit that my motive is often not peace , love, and understanding so much as exposing bizarre thinking and thoughtless action in others with the hope that they'll leave me/us/them alone. Hmm... I'll read some more Gandhi before I pick this up again... the sleeping anarchist in me needs more time.

Quatchi, Miga, and Sumi

What do you think of the 2010 mascots? Compare them with some "winners" from past olympics.

panic and mirth

So... our server crashed at school on Thursday and the staff and students went without internet, email, home folders, everything on the computers, in fact (couldn't even log in as this requires a server connection). Thus, midst the frustration and despair, there was lots of storytelling, chalk & talk, bookwork, conversation, and face-to-face interaction. Let's not have too much of that or the system will collapse!

An outcome... I've put a backup website on my home computer which will only work if the computer is on at home!

Finn

Finn, our son,
born 4:55 am, Tuesday, April 17th

weighed 8 lbs 7 oz (3.83 kg)
length 20.7" (52.5 cm)
head circumference 13.8" (35 cm)

Of our daughter Luthien I said she came from one place of wonder to another, slowly, with great pain, and many scientific interventions. With Finn, the story is quicker and more connected with the elements. Following building contractions for days, Kate entered active labour at about 1:00 a.m. on the 17th. After a check-in at the hospital at 3:30 a.m., a rushed ride home brought Kate (with the midwife and the doula) in at 4:30 a.m. to make noise and bear down, waiting for the big black watering trough to fill. Someone cranked the heat and I dimmed the lights (pleasant to some, but I found it rather spectral). At about 4:50 Kate slid into the tub and pushed a few times as the baby and her body led themselves to "outness" and Finn came rushing out. The midwife Ruth (not my mom) caught him in the water and placed him on Kate's breast, where, after some gurgles and squawks, he fed and we all started to breathe deeper.

Finn's eyes dark blue-grey, some dark hair, red skin and white wrinkled hands and feet. Digits long and ears close to his round head. Cry is soft, but his neck is strong. He has slept well, some 4+ hour stretches, and is latching with relish. Peeling now less red, no white, skin and hair becoming fair.

The name Finn comes from Gaelic or Old German meaning fair. In Scandinavian languages, it would refer to Laplander. The story of Finn and Hengest (a version of which has been written by Tolkien) in Beowulf and the FIght at Finnsburg has Finn as a Frisian king. Now there is also Twain's Huck Finn and the Irish hero Finn and the giant Finn who built the cathedral in Lund.

Fin is also a root word in Tolkien's mythology meaning skill in Quenyan. It is found in Finwë, his sons Curufinwë, Fingolfin, and Finarfin, and many others. They were a powerful family of Noldorin elves, and none were more skilled and beautiful than Finwe's eldest son who was named Fëanor by his mother (Sindarin for spirit of fire). Fëanor wrote alphabets, crafted three powerful gems called Silmarils, led a rebellion against the gods, and was exiled with many of the Noldor to Middle Earth, thus setting up much of the history that Tolkien described in his books.

Some of these strands have resonated with us, and may make more sense as our children grow. Perhaps our Luthien has more of the charactersitcs of a Fëanor, and maybe Finn will have more of the grace and calm of a Luthien Tinuviel than his Noldor namesake. The name Finn appeals to us for many of the same reasons that Lu does, something easy shout as you watch your child run towards the edge of ravine or what not, but their longer names speak of our hopes for our children in some ways, which are probably our dreams for ourselves. Like many of Tolkien's characters, there is much grief to balance joy, but hope also comes from strange places. For our fiery and talkative daughter, we bless her with peace and patience, and for our (so far) gentle son, we bless him with bold words and deeds.

Help me pick our baby's name

MALE (pretty sure it's a boy): Alec, Aragorn, Avi, Bëor, Fëanor, Fin/Finn, Hemlock, Lewis, Lief/Liev, Mac, Max, Oromë, Ossë, Owen, Pierre, Rowan, Thor, Viggo

FEMALE (just in case): Arwen, Claire, Freya, Galadriel, Hilary, Lauren, Olivia, Rose, Yavanna, Zoë

be kind!

fun with photobooth

response to technology issue

A response to a developing technology issue in my district... the plan to make elementary schools go to a single platform ("minutes" related to this decision are in the previous post). I publish my thoughts here as a personal record and in case it serves to inform others.

Who am I and where am I coming from on this issue?

I’ve taught in SD57 for 11 years and have been an active user and teacher of technology and advocate for choice & experimentation. I have sat on and chaired school tech committees, acted as a teacher rep on the District Tech Team (DTT), served as a tech trainer for 4 years, serve as a Key Tech Contact (KTC) and hold the “POSR” position at my school (D.P. Todd) which provides technology leadership and facilitates school planning. The 40+ workshops I have conducted in the last 7 years on technology for transformative learning have included topics like blogs & podcasts, audio and video editing, web design, and the connection between student identity and the new digital world. This was also a key focus during my last university degree, and has guided the use of technology by students in my classes. My school (D.P. Todd) and district 57 (central administration and the DTT in particular) have been very supportive of my work, in terms of professional development, grant money, release time, hardware & software, and opportunities to lead, share, and learn.

I understand the rationale behind the funding and evergreening plans, but the single-platform issue warrants my feedback. It has already been the subject of 62 posts to the teacher’s union folder, and 22 posts to the district-wide Technology folder. Within the context of mass-delivered tech services, some decisions based on efficiency are necessary, but I believe the nature and costs of efficiency are often overlooked. I also understand that there must be a compromise between maximum efficiency and maximum choice; also a compromise between the ability of techies to administer a system and the ability of teachers to direct their own use of educational technology.

Nonetheless, I have concerns about the district’s past commitments and the current lack of inclusion on an educational decision.

A long-term commitment to being a dual-platform district was publicly made by senior admin this year and last at Key Technology Committee meetings and the previous year at an open Tech Conversation meeting. This commitment is also described in our published District Technology Standards and has been one of the diversity themes which has distinguished our district and helped make it a technology leader in the province. This commitment was also reiterated when the Debian server was introduced in the district. The DTT was told that the choice of servers was not a judgement on platforms and was specifically chosen for its purported ability to work with both macs and pcs.

The decision appears to have been imposed without adequate consultation or respect for existing processes and users; only an incomplete and group of elementary principals were involved to some (unknown) extent. The teachers on the DTT, the KTC, and the tech committees at elementary schools were avoided for decision and/or input. This issue of consultation without actively considering other frameworks (i.e. one represented by teacher/user-input) is problematic and does not lend itself to “buy-in.” Teachers, not tech support or principals, are the ones most closely tied to daily implementation of classroom curriculum and adaptation of technology.

It is not too late to consult on this issue, consider impacts, allow flexibility or room for variance. Perhaps some of this is already in the works, but just needs to be communicated to affected educators? In addition to the commitment and lack of consultation mentioned above there are other reasons why this decision warrants a second look.

Was efficiency the criteria for making the decision? It may be simpler for system technologists to conceive of a single-platform management environment, but this will not guarantee that tech problems will go away or that their jobs will be easier. The migration to a new platform and software set will require a vast amount of time and help, and will not shorten the workloads. Teachers have developed curriculum based on software which is platform-specific and is not available on pc without considerable expense or support which is not currently provided. Finding, installing, licensing, debugging, training, supporting replacements for mac's iLife suite alone would overwhelm our tech support, unless there are no plans to match level of "service" provided by existing computers. A plan to lower level of service will result in teacher frustration and cynicism as a trade off for efficiency and centrally administered delivery.

Was this decision made for financial reasons? When some of our techies studied costs this last year, they found (and published) that similarly stacked & equipped macs and pcs cost about the same; this initiative won’t save much money, but it will create work for those who are already well-served by their platforms; to start with it would fall on teachers to find replacements for software currently used and convert their files and projects. Many teachers have purchased their own computers and peripherals to match what they use at school with the belief that the district had a long-term commitment to supporting dual platforms.

One only has to see the teaching & learning projects resulting from the numerous TLITE (SFU’s tech ed diploma program) alumni in our district to see an explosion of innovative work in the last four years. A significant portion of this innovation relates to media-rich, platform-specific software beyond the cross-platform “Office”-type programs and internet browsers. What is said about this work when the tools are taken away? Teachers have been very busy spending school time and free time developing curriculum based on software which is not available on pc without considerable expense or support which is not currently provided. Finding, installing, licensing, debugging, training, and supporting replacements for mac's iLife suite alone would overwhelm our tech support. A recent case involved a teacher at Heather Park looking for a pc alternative to Mac’s iMovie which is commonly used by teachers and students for video editing. Tech Support here was limited to suggesting names of other software; the work of getting an alternative will fall on the teacher. How much extra work will teachers need to do to in order to archive and reformat years of teaching material? What will the district offer in the way of re-training, assistance with file-migration, and purchase of new software to allow new pcs to measure up to the educational uses provided by macs in the past? WIll they allow schools to purchase intel-based macs which can handle both platforms? Limiting the kinds of work teachers and students can do with technology is not a progressive move, even though I’m sure it will be marketed as “moving forward.”

Standardization and reducing the variety of configurations available to students might make tech planning easier and tech support conceptually simpler, but it does not necessarily help us teach and learn. In my school, we have a variety of tech needs: teachers with media-rich tech demands, teachers with basic computing needs, physically and mentally disabled students, film students with huge storage requirements, mini-labs with recycled computers and scaled-down configurations, "locked down" labs, wide-open workstations, office staff and admin with particular needs, and so on. Our “techie” works skilfully to accommodate these different platforms, software-sets, configurations, and generations of computers. He shares the vision of the transformative use of technology and knows how unwanted and unstudied standardization will kill programs and projects in our school.

from the District Technology Team Minutes 07.02.27

[Here lies an issue which deserves a response...]

"Funding for technology at the elementary level

Given the challenges elementary schools face from year to year, a system is required to provide predictable and increased funding for technology. There are 2 objectives:

-Redistribute the funding among large and small schools to support differences of scale that these different sites.
-Raise the overall funding level in all schools.

Elementary school principals were consulted regarding a plan to give them “targeted” funding on an annual basis to green technology over the course of five years.

Feedback from schools was positive for the plan, many of whom suggested that if funds were to be targeted, it would be easier to have it handled centrally.

[HERE IS THE CONTROVERSIAL PART]

If systems are going to be deployed centrally, principals suggested the efficiency of using a single operating system platform. With this feedback, Tony went to Senior Administration and has been given a mandate to begin to develop a process for moving the systems to centrally administered single platform system across the elementary schools.

This process will begin in 2007/08 and will employ a five year greening cycle for all elementary schools."

Frankenfoods... my kids will not be lab rats!

After watching "The Truth About Genetically Modified Food," I’m more convinced than ever that Canada needs mandatory labelling of GMOs. Here are some reasons why:

(Problems with GMOs)

-testing is limited, left to others, or done by gmo company funded reseach
-use of invasive bacterial/viral technlogy to mutate food
-concerns over toxiicity/ effect on immunity
-poses threat of new allergens and tampering with antibiotic
-cell-invasion process affects nutrition
-patenting of life and native plant species by gmo companies
-ecological/soil cutrient cycling impact of gmo plants
-use of gmo-associated pesticides and herbicides
-gene-patenting & threats to individual privacy and freedom
-malicious lawsuits by gmo ccompanies to protect patents
-conflict of interests - gmo execs become government officials (EPA/FDA)
-impact of monoculture on genetic/bio divesity
-lobbying/campaign contributions to ensure deregulation
-unfair/subsidized competition with traditional plant varieties
-demands for payment when gmo plants contaminate adjacent fields
-threat to food secuirty/genetic heritage through gmo hybridization
-consolidation of food supply/mulitnational character of gmo companies
-use of suicide genes to prevent re-use
-creation of green deserts of genetically locked species

Diamond's top 12

From "Collapse," here is Jared Diamond's most serious environmental problems facing past and present societies:
1. Destruction of natural habitats
2. Loss of wild food sources (especially fish)
3. Loss of wild species and biodiversity
4. Soil loss and damage
5. Reliance on non-renewable energy sources
6. Threats to freshwater
7. Abuse of the photosynthetic ceiling (reducing growing capacity)
8. Chemical pollution and toxic overload
9. Introduction of alien species
10. Greenhouse gas emissions (global warming) & ozone depletion
11. Unchecked population growth
12. Resource consumption & per-capita impact

What would you add to the list?

Christmas reading

I'm not sure why, but against the advice of almost everyone I respect, I never bothereed to pick up and read A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Well, I finally did, and I think it was worth the wait as the ecological wisdom might have been lost on me 16 years ago when my brother-in-law John first recommended it. John got me a book for Christmas (Dillard's For the Time Being)... hopefully this one will take me less time to read!

2 weeks of playdough

Christmas break is here and I'm looking forward to doing not much and puttering around the house. My daughter has discovered televsion (she resisted all previous attempts at "couch=training") and thus (finally!) gives Kate and I breaks to cook, clean, read, whatever. Lu's favourite is Little Bear, and then Franklin (probably the Cockburn intro). Three years ago, Little Bear, Franklin, and Cockburn were not names I associated with kid's shows (constellation, Arctic explorer, folk icon)... how far I have fallen. Well, Christmas day, the gifts are long unwrapped, and I've got 2 weeks of playdough, snowshoes, blocks, books, puzzles, and kid's shows to look forward to. Playdough video here, btw.

blog cabin fever

Like I said in this year's Christmas letter... I have written many things this year, dispatched many trees in the service of this writing, but, alas, very little of it was good writing.

GarageBand workshop

GarageBand has many purposes among educators. Some are using it to create student or teacher podcasts, others are using it more musical composition or to aid in creating media-rich presentations. There are a number of communities sharing GarageBand-made music, many by and for children & students. Here are some useful links:


Tutorials & Guides
Apple's intro to GarageBand capabiliites & possibilities
Apple's guide to GarageBand includes tips & video tutorials
NewMediaGuides on Audio thorough guide to audio editing, hardware choices...
MediaBlab how to build your own microphone popscreen

Shared GarageBand songs & ideas:
Macband.com very cool, GB songs and loops
Macidol.com wicked cool, amazing repository of sound
Garageband sample songs Apple's rss feed of student GB projects

Other related links:
Macjams.com all about audio, includes GB resources
Audacity free cross-platform audio editor & recorder
Apple project gallery student video uses GB
Teaching with GarageBand creating recorder accompaniments

Any other feedback or suggestions?

campus 2020 thoughts

I recently spoke at a "Campus 2020" forum where participants were asked to respond to some questions about the future of post-secondary education in BC... here were my responses:

1.  Understanding the future: How will the BC of 2020 be different than today? How will these differences affect the way people live and the way people learn? What will this mean for our post-secondary education system?

Threats to the environment will create & deepen issues which are not present priorities; mostly related to habitat loss, agriculture & forest land alienation, and loss of biodiversity

Electronic learning & the interactive web will challenge & replace much of what occupies present pedagogical space. By this I mean that new media and new ways of connecting people & ideas don’t necessarily fit well with how education is done in most schools

The connection/disconnection of people from sense & place will become a major theme for both of these trends, and post-secondary education will increase the time, effort, and money it applies to this theme.


2.  Creating opportunity: In 2020, what are the barriers people face in getting the education or training they want or need? Are those barriers geographic? Financial? Technological? Other?
  
Yes, yes, and yes. Besides these ones, I think one could find lots of evidence for age, gender, and race barriers in BC.

Probably the best thing we could do to address barriers is to deconstruct colonialism in the system and make it easier for people to take post-secondary education at any age or situation.

Another barrier will be overcoming the socially isolating tendencies of technology and environmental disconnect.


3.  Understanding the purpose:  As we move toward 2020, what are we educating people for – jobs? intellectual achievement? informed citizenship? personal interest? all of these and others? Can our institutions, programs and services be better designed and governed to support these goals?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. and Yes. Like the caption on the 2020 Think Pieces page states: “be intrigued, be enlightened, be outraged, be an explorer.” Whatever the purpose or designation of an education program (trades & training, arts, sciences, continuing studies), allowing the experience to be open to experimentation and dissent will help guarantee that it stays intriguing and enlightening. Practically, this could mean developing and funding programs enhance quality of life and aren’t tied to research dollars.

As a secondary teacher I’ve seen what often happens to elementary students when they come to high school. We beat the “play” out of them and then wonder why they lack creativity and original thought. Society can do the same things to college & university grads, so I think it is really important that young people squeeze all the revolutionary juice from their post-secondary experience -- deep questioning, energy, passion, originality; the man will try to beat it out of you, so get your kicks in while you can.

4.  Defining quality and measuring success: How we will define terms like “student”, “teacher”, “program”, “institution” in 2020? How will we measure their success? Do we have the appropriate mechanisms to measure our progress? 

Too little emphasis on accountability and things don’t change, teachers and students get lost in the system or stuck in a rut.

Too much emphasis on accountability and individual experimentation gets stifled, teachers and students have to follow the program and don’t have the free space to innovate. Collaboration is forced from aboev, and not allowed to develope as an deeply felt need withing a community of educators. It is tough to create mechanisms which support the right kind of accountability without prescribing behaviours for teachers and students.

Concepts like life-long learning will become more relevant as people see education as something they return to over and over again and as education becomes deschooled. Campuses will still be important places, but they have to offer something special to compete or coexist with virtual schools and independent learning


5.  Supporting innovation: As we move toward the future, how should our post-secondary system define BC’s position on the national and world stage? How should we support individuals and institutions to be innovative and responsive to change and opportunity?

Take some cues from the environment: we have an incredible biophysical heritage in BC which has sustained people for thousands of years and must continue to do so.

Take some cues from the interactive web: innovative work which honours student identity and pushes teaching and learning is taking place in elementary and secondary schools all over the province. This work experiments in multi-modal literacy and both reflects and develops a new kind of learner. I’m talking about podcasts, blogging, wikiwork, videojournals, web portfolios, gaming, and forums. Post-secondary universities need to pick up where this leaves off and really provoke society with high-quality, thoughtful, poetic forays into new media and critical response to relevant issues.

I think the most innovative work will focus on the issue I’ve raised, that of connecting people with their senses, with others, and with the earth in a future that faces environmental crises and pervasive technology. With our cultural and ecological diversity, high-tech & media industries, and the need to move beyond resource extraction in BC, I think we could be a real leader on this issue. I know many post-secondary institutions have already started to make this shift, but it is by no means mainstream.

Finding Enkidu

I've been meaning to put a bit of this online for a while (I haven't tried to embed video before). It is a scene from a video project I completed to accompany a writing project on the ecology of identity.

summer before you know it

To beat the clock, I've continued my school year ritual of rising early to get stuff done before anyone awakes. Now I've banished school worries for the summer time, and have used this time rather selfishly to watch movies and tv shows. Movies so far: bronx tale, capote, casanova, fargo, godfather series, green mile, junebug, match point, prime, red eye, and syriana. For tv: Carnivale season 1 and 2, Deadwood season 3, next will be Lost and Entourage. I'll put these shows on half the screen and flip through related websites, email, or read ezines on the other half of the screen. Headphones in, everyone else sleeping, cat on a cushion and the first cup off the coffee pot beside me, maybe yoghurt with saskatoons; I'd say this is a pretty good if self indulgent way to start a summer day. It's either that or go swimming.

Now that was a nice river

The Stellako flows out of Francois Lake and drops 45 metres over 11 km down to Fraser Lake. With a shaky knee and gimpy foot I didn't go more than a few hundred metres down the river and I caught a total of 0 fish in the river. The lake was easier and the whole place was quite idyllic. I was there with a bunch of yahoos but that was by choice!

Samorost Game

O.K. this is a very cool game which stole an hour from me early this morning.

Spring Break in Victoria

Magnolia trees blooming, cherry trees spent... wow - a nice change from snowbanks and the "dog days" in PG when the melting uncovers successive layers of canine droppings. neways...
I attended an interesting discussion at Royal Roads University last week. It was a meeting of people interested in the role of Arts in Health Care with the aim of forming a basis for national dialogue and organization. An amazing assemblage of people: artists who did paint therapy with cancer aptients, hospital admin looking for info on how aesthetics and wholistic architecture affects healing, a plant therapist (who uses gardens and person-plant connectons to aid in rehab), an interfaith chaplain looking at the role of meditation in healing, an aboriginal artist/filmaker who developed a shield-making workshop to uncover and discuss personal symbols, an educator who focused on healing the mind/body split through ecotherapy, directors, artisans, health care workers... very enlightening discussion. I was a guest of one of the organizers, and tried just to listen, but was pulled in a few times when the talk came around to ecology, identity and technology.

March 3 workshop links

Blogging and Beyond... Educational Technology to bridge the gap between curriculum and identity. Here are the workshop links:

Formal Webquest search site
Tree octopus... the result of an informal webquest
Free & easy blog service (Blogger)
Geography 12 course blog
An English teacher's blog
Committed Sardine blog (education)
Wikipedia... the big wiki
Amazing collection of fiction
Example of a forum (Bigfoot)
Example of a Web Portal
Example of a community (msn)
Example of a community (Bjork)
Example of a cybrary (Holocaust info)
Instant Messaging service
Peer 2 Peer information
Class project involving realtime/RSS
Podcast.net (free) directory
Zencast - free podcasts

For public_html (web share folder) try http://www.dpts.sd57.bc.ca/~gthielmann/education/docs/ as an example. The idea is that anything you put in your public_html folder (which most of our district techies can "enable" for you) will appear at the addres http://(your school address)/~(your username) --if you have trouble with this, email Jason Mager (techie) at the board office for help. He has done some workshops on this.

Try itunes music store to see their free podcasts and video podcasts. My Geography 12 webpage should have podcasts up as soon as I have permission forms in.

Try any of the above tools with a Google search in your currciuluar area (e.g. blog, wiki, portal, rss, podcast with science, math, elementary, language arts) -- it won't take long to find something you can use.

Thanks for attending and good luck experimenting!

Yurting

Watch a 15-yr-old in a school computer lab and you'll see something new to a generation: yurting. Like Mongol nomads, the students pack their familiar things, move to a new pasture on an established route, and set up a temporary home. The goods, however, are virtual, and the landscape is digital. A yurt (actually a stretch of grazing land, but often used for the circular Mongol tent or gher) is an encampment built by students where they store and display photos, songs, movies, software, sites, and text -- a changing scene which reflects (and alters) individual and group identities. This is something different than putting family photos up in the office cubicle, or wearing something that reflects personality -- it is an external, dynamic, and portable "unpacking" that changes with the context. Students are erecting yurts which articulate their values, goals, tastes, and trends -- at arms length (literally) from their own words and actions.
 

Stewing, like yurting, is a new phenomenon in our age of technology-inflenced learning. A stew, for the purpose of this discussion, is the product of research, exploration, synthesis, and identification that learners experience when working on tasks in an online envrironment. Often taking the form of a video or multimedia preentation, the stew is a place to stick all the "stuff" a student finds relevant to a topic under investigation. Initially, the stew is often a computer desktop full of video clips, text files, url links, mp3s, jpegs, and gifs. In the past, the project-junk which was hunted and gathered in magazines, libraries, and textbooks, was then copied or redrawn and pasted onto a poster. Now, it is archived and retrieved in a system designed by the learner. The pathways to the information (and thus, I suppose, the learning process) has the potential to be much more synced to a learner's own style than the pre-planned research in the past. The stew can still taste pretty bad, but there is (maybe) a greater sense of ownership. Mongol nomads called there stews "sulen" if someone would like to play with this idea in the yurting metaphor.

what I'm reading Christmas 2005!

Data & Education

pet peeve... when people analyze ordinal data as if it were interval data...

I wasn't even aware of what this meant until a couple of years ago -- see the difference among types of data