Daily-Ink & Pair-a-dimes un-post-ed

This is less than a 5 minute walk from our school, and it's a China you don't see when you visit Beijing or Shanghai and do what the tourists do. A block up was a barber cutting hair on the street corner. I'll share that photo tomorrow.

For the next few days I'll share a number of different sights and sounds and 'Chinglish' phrases that help to make this a wonderful experience here. There are many hard-to-describe events and circumstances that happen here and our staff will say T.I.C. - "This is China". I'll use this same term to celebrate and share in the adventure our family is having here.

Just to put a little perspective on T.I.C. - one of my teachers shared her elevator ride to her apartment with a neighbor and her goat today... T.I.C.

"At this point, we appear to have a 19th century curriculum, 20th century buildings and organizations and 21st century students facing an undefined future."

'20th century organizations' - We spend a lot of time discussing our out-dated curriculum, and about students graduating into an unknown work force... could things move faster if we paid a lot more attention to our organizational structures that perpetuate an out-dated education?

Related:
A pro-d session I did with Bruce Wellman, 'Promoting a Spirit of Inquiry'
and
Andy Hargreaves and the 4th Way 'Part 1' and 'Part 2'.

Unlike Rock Band, you actually have to know how to play music to do what these guys are doing. Here is another group doing a Christmas concert with iPads: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DJddb73OOQ
Or how about 1 guy putting all the pieces together himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYo5dCeBZYA

Garage Band comes free on Apple computers and the same 'equipment' would have cost about $20,000 and needed it's own room when I was a kid. It's just amazing what you can do these days if you have a musical or creative flare.

Taking this one step further. Have a look at what Eric Whitacre did using technology to connect "individuals alone, together." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyLX2cke-Lw

Rock band is fun, but making music is definitely beyond Rock Band!

I have two sources of inspiration for you.

One is a video… Brave New World Wide Web.  It compares 20th century learning with 21st century learning.  It was originally posted in 2008, but is still relevant today.  I hope it gets you thinking about one small change you can make to bring yourself forward.  I can help and support you in that process.

 

 

http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/

The second is a blog post from December of 2009, but it’s still fitting and good food for thought…

21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020.

I was planning on sharing the link to Shelly Blake-Plock's, @TeachPaperless', post (a year old today and still very insightful), '21 Things That Will Become Obsolete in Education by 2020' anyway, but here it has been put together with my Brave New World Wide Web video on the DeDorest Area School District blog.

It amazes me that on blip.tv where it was first posted, the video has never in 2 years and 2 months had a 'zero' day... it has had a long-tail audience and every couple months it gets a spike in viewings as someone else shares it. All told, at several sites, it has probably been viewed over 40,000 times and downloaded over 500 times since I put it online. I realize that a cat sneezing on YouTube can get 150,000 views in less time than that, but this story of a personal journey into the world of edtech, and what it offered to me as an educator, has a very specific audience and I'm humbled by it's reception... even 2 years later.

This video tells two stories, one 2,000+ years old and another of our modern world... I love seeing a story transformed through the ages.

√ "Avoid Romans" - LOL

Hat-tip to Brian Mull @BrianMullNL for pointing the way!

Well, not on a highway, but we've had some interesting adventures while here in China. The weird thing about events like this is the lack of horn-blowing from oncoming traffic. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of horns going off here, but not for things like this, or for a left-turn into oncoming traffic.
Instead a horn comes from:
1) A driver passing on the left in the lane of oncoming traffic, to let the car on their right know to squeeze over as it is being passed.
2) A driver passing a slower car that's on the right and then making a right-hand turn in front of the car just passed.
3) A driver passing two cars, on a two lane road, down the middle white line of the two lanes between the cars.
Which one of these has happened to me?
All of the above!