Monthly Archives: October 2019

Playing it up for Halloween

I live in a house with three people that are passionate about musical theatre. They can all sing, and they are all natural on the stage. They can watch and re-watch live plays over and over again. As for me? I’ll talk in front of school with over 1,000 students, and I’ve presented to hundreds of educators, but give me 3 lines to memorize and act out, and I’m a mess. I’m robotic, monotone, and completely unnatural… and I hate it! I’ll happily go to see a performance, and I truly enjoy watching talented people perform, I just don’t want to perform myself.

Then comes Halloween. Once a year I put on makeup, and I go ‘full on’. I make the most of a fun day, I share my costume online, I take photos with my secretaries, my staff, and my students. I have fun, not because I’m in my element, but because I get to revel in the enjoyment of others, and be part of something I would usually avoid for most of the rest of the year.

It always turns out to be a wonderful day. Then I wash off the makeup, I put my costume away, and I happily wait another year before I do it again.

Happy Halloween!

In orbit around the sun

Yesterday was my sister’s anniversary, and that made me think about how many rituals and celebrations are based on one rotation of the earth around the sun: Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, school years, mating seasons, and harvests… All these are based on our orbital geography around our galaxy’s star.

Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of 149.60 million km (92.96 million mi),[1] and one complete orbit takes 365.256 days (1 sidereal year), during which time Earth has traveled 940 million km (584 million mi). ~ Wikipedia

We celebrate events based on yearly journeys of 940 million kilometres. That works out to over 2.5 million kilometres a day! Would this yearly trip have been as significant if the earth’s axis was not tilted, giving rise to the changing seasons?

Perhaps one of the most apparent factors contributing to Earth climate change is the angle at which the earth is tilted. This is the angle at which Earth’s axis of rotation is from the vertical, also known as Earth’s obliquity. Earth’s current tilt angle is approximately 23.5 degrees. The axial tilt angle affects climate largely by determining which parts of the earth get more sunlight during different stages of the year. This is the primary cause for the different seasons Earth experiences throughout the year, as well as the intensity of the seasons for higher latitudes. For example, in the Northern Hemisphere, if there were no axial tilt, i.e. Earth’s obliquity would be zero degrees, then there would be no change in the seasons from year to year. This would be because there would be no difference in the amount of solar irradiation received, year-round, anywhere on Earth. ~ Wikipedia

What would life be like if temperatures stayed relatively constant depending on your latitude? How important would birthdays be? Would our calendars be based on the moon? How important would the passing of a year be?

Enjoy your next orbit!

Too much choice

I’ve been thinking a lot about creative constraints recently. In the move to give students more choice and more freedom to explore their own passions and interests, we sometimes forget that constraints and limitations can help foster both creativity and work completion.

Tell kids to pick any topic to study and some will flourish while others will flounder. Tell kids they have a lot of time to work, some will engage and use it well, while others will squander that time. Tell kids they can present in any format they want, and some kids will be creative while others will choose the easiest path, (even if they love the topic they are presenting on).

We don’t always benefit from choice. 15 kinds of toothpaste to choose from doesn’t translate to us choosing the best toothpaste… and probably delays our selection time. Sometimes it’s easier if we have less choice or limits to how much time we spend on something. “Constraints aren’t the boundaries of creativity, but the foundation of it.”

When we put constraints on projects, limiting resources, time, scope, size, delivery, or focus, we might be restrictive and limit choice, but done with thought and purpose, we can also inspire creativity.

Cardboard, duct tape, and a maker mindset.

My daughter and I created this Buzz Lightyear backpack for her Halloween costume yesterday. Besides a small backpack hidden in a box, that functions as a working backpack, and serving as the straps to hold the pack on her back, the only other parts are cardboard, coloured duct tape, and a few photocopies of parts stuck on with clear tape.

Although we were following a very specific design, this got me thinking about rapid prototyping. It’s so easy to think up ideas and then create a mock-up these days. Cardboard is cheap, coloured duct tape is available in most dollar stores, and it only costs a few dollars for box-cutters that will outlast most projects. Parts can be printed on 3-D printers, or carved from small CNC machines if you have them, but they aren’t necessary. Lettering & logos can be designed and printed on coloured printers. Add a few things like coloured construction paper, markers, popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners, toilet/paper towel rolls, and recycled plastic bottles and caps, and the options to create are endless.

We should have fast-prototyping events at schools, and have containers to store accessories that are easily accessible for designing models. Then use these containers to put everything away when it is time to clean up. It wouldn’t be hard or very expensive to do this. The only safety concern would be the box cutters, but scissors could work too.

It’s not hard these days to promote a maker mentality in schools. What design projects would you want to do with students, given these few and affordable resources?

Love, work, and being human

This is a very powerful movie: HUMAN Extended version VOL.1

Most of it is subtitled, and so be prepared to read what you are listening to. Make yourself a coffee, or pour yourself a drink, sit back and step into the lives of some people that you would not otherwise get to meet. Share in the humanity, the struggles, and the hearts of some people from many walks of life that are significantly different than yours. What does it mean to be human for people that did not grow up the same way you did?

Here is the description:

What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight ? That we laugh ? Cry ? Our curiosity ? The quest for discovery ? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness. The VOL.1 deals with the themes of love, women, work and poverty.

This is a powerful look at love, at work, and at the heart of what it means to live life bound by geographical, cultural, and economical status.

The long format podcasts experience

I don’t listen to the radio in my car anymore, and I only listen to music when I’m with other people. If I’m alone in the car, even on my very short commute to work, I’m either listening to an audio book or I’m listening to a long format podcast.

What’s the appeal of the long format?

I have gotten very tired of the typical news-style interview format. That format is designed to work in one of two ways:

1. Three to seven minute interviews that focuses on one key idea, one good, quotable sound byte (and glosses over many other interesting and big ideas).

2. A panel discussion where discourse is trumped by arguments from the extremes with blatant disregard for anyone with a centrist view.

On the other hand, a long format discussion can go deep. It can meander to different topics. It can invite you in as if you are in the room with the interviewer and interviewee.

No one does this better than Joe Rogan. He has become a master interviewer! He is skilled at interviewing people smarter than us, and asking the right clarifying question for us to take the journey along with him.

I don’t listen to all his interviews (too many, and I focus on the interviewees I can learn a lot from), but I’m currently listening to his interview with Edward Snowden. At the time of writing this, the YouTube version has 7.4 million views, and several million more people listen to an audio version like me. As an aside, Joe Rogan is changing the way people listen to media. His podcasts routinely get more views than television shows and newscasts. And his unbiased reporting, not having to pander to broadcast networks, and advertisers that are restrictive, are exactly why he could get 3-hours of Edward Snowden’s time that the networks would never get.

What I like about his podcasts is that he can get guests like Peter Attia or Dr. Rhonda Patrick, and while they both have podcasts, when I listen to their podcasts, they get too technical and go over my head. Whereas, Joe will ask clarifying questions and help me take the journey with them.

Here are a few more longer format interviews/podcasts that are worth listening to:

1. Derek Sivers or Jamie Foxx on The Tim Ferriss Show

2. Stephen Fry or Yuval Noah Harari on the Sam Harris podcast.

3. And I’ll be going back to podcasting again, here are two of my favourites so far, Remi Kalir and Roy Henry Vickers.

The long format podcast is an engaging way to learn, and to pass time normally consumed with talk radio and annoying commercial interruptions. Give them a try!

Plus one – an audience matters

A couple days ago I wrote Publish button pangs, about the tension I feel before hitting the publish button on a blog post. I know it’s going to an audience and I want it to be perfect, even though I’m keenly aware that I will often make mistakes. Aaron Davis wrote a comment on that post and he shared:

This touches on Clive Thompson’s argument for the power of public:

Many people have told me that they feel the dynamic kick in with even a tiny handful of viewers. I’d argue that the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of 10 (a few friends or random strangers checking out your online post) is so big that it’s actually huger than going from 10 people to a million.

There is a lot of merit in this quote that Aaron shared. I remember teaching science and introducing Grade 8 students to wikis back in 2007. I had one ELL – English Language Learner – in my class that was quite low, and I could never get him to edit and improve his writing after handing in something. Then we started our wiki and he had his own project page (it was on the now defunct Wikispaces or I’d share it here). On this sight I had a little widget called Meebo that let me know when people were on this site, and allowed me to chat with them (they got a random number as a username, and could change that to their actual name). I remember about midway through the project I started seeing this ELL boy online after 10pm and would often end up telling him to go to bed, via the Meebo widget, closer to midnight. After about 3 days of seeing him on this site late at night, I decided to go into the wiki history and see if there was any activity by him, or was he jus looking around? It turned out he was there editing his work! There were small changes, mostly grammatical, but there was no doubt that he was working on improving his page. See An Authentic Audience Matters for more on this idea project and idea.

When a student hands in work to a teacher, there isn’t an audience, there is an assessor. No one is ‘seeing’ the work, it’s ‘just going to the teacher’. When a student has to share work with the class, suddenly there is an audience. When a student has to share something online, then there is a ‘real’ audience… even if no one is going to the page, the perception of there being one more (or 10 more) people watching changes the student’s perception of the importance to do a good job.

One counterpoint to this Clive Thompson quote:

“I’d argue that the cognitive shift in going from an audience of zero (talking to yourself) to an audience of 10 (a few friends or random strangers checking out your online post) is so big that it’s actually huger than going from 10 people to a million.”

Social media is changing this. One of my daughters, when she was younger, used to delete her Instagram posts that didn’t have a minimum threshold of ‘Likes’. Social media seems to put a bit more emphasis on popularity and a larger audiences. That same daughter though, was happy when Instagram made the shift to not letting the public see how many likes were on a post. She thought that was a great decision. So, with young students there is definitely a greater emphasis, pressure, or focus on the size of the audience.

That said, I do believe that the critical idea of having a ‘plus one’, having an audience that is bigger and unknown, increases the stakes for many, and helps inspire them to do better work. I know that’s true for me.

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Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay

Angry people

It was many years ago, but I remember the situation well, having told it a few times. One of my online teachers was dealing with a student who was cheating. It was obvious, yet the student refused to admit it. His work was plagiarism of a student who had already completed the course… it wasn’t exact, but paraphrased sentence by sentence. This wasn’t done on questions with a single answer, it was done on two assignments where students were sharing personal opinions. Even if this student shared similar views to the original author, the essays could never match so well structurally, sentence by sentence, and idea by idea. The student’s father got involved and treated my teacher poorly and so she asked me for help.

When I called, I got a mouthful of rudeness, I could barely get a word in. I tried to explain but didn’t get a chance. Then the next day the student called me. He was condescending. He asked me how long I’d been out of the classroom, and asked me if I understood the word ‘collaboration’. He got to me a bit and I gave a bit of a snarky response. At that point his mom jumped in and I realized that I had been on speakerphone. She went on a full tirade.

I should have hung up. I should have ended the call. But two things played in my mind. First, that I should not have been snarky, second, that if they were underhanded enough to bait me like that, they were probably also capable of recording the call. So I listened to the abuse. I let her rant, I would occasionally begin to respond, only when asked, and then I would be cut off with another attack. And I took it. One thing made it bearable…

I’ve met a number of kids who have had a challenging parent in my career as an educator. A parent that was overbearing, or over-controlling, or unreasonable. I’ve met some kids that have both parents come in like two mamma bears protecting their kid, and while they might or might not be dealing ideally with the situation, they are genuinely caring for their child. I’d never met (albeit this was just over the phone) a kid before who had two completely angry and bitter parents.

I thought of what this kid’s experience at home must be like? I wondered if this kid had a role model that didn’t treat the world like it was against them? Did his parents treat him like they treated me? Did he have siblings or did he face their wrath alone? I imagined what it would be like for me if when I did something wrong, rather than my parents calling me out, they doubled down and defended me? I sat on the phone listening, but the abuse I took didn’t hurt. I felt genuinely sorry for this kid. I hoped this way of dealing with a problem that he was experiencing was not the only way that he experienced problem solving at home.

In the end, I gave a choice to the family. He could redo the essays, he could take the zeros for plagiarism on these two assignments and move on, or he could drop the course. I told the teacher that all email correspondence with the parent should be cc’d to me as well and that any phone calls should be directed to me. I didn’t want her to have to take any abuse.

There ended up being one more similar issue, and my conversation with the kid’s dad at that point actually went well for me, but I again felt sorry for the kid. I felt empathy. I wondered if the lack of face to face communication made my first interactions challenging, and maybe, hopefully, it would have been different had we met in person. I wondered if this kid’s parents were always angry or if this experience triggered something awful? I wondered what they were dealing with in their lives that I don’t have to deal with in mine?

I don’t think I would stay on the phone if something like that happened again. I don’t need to take the abuse. I know that I won’t be as likely to be snarky, even to someone treating me in a condescending way. But the best lesson I got from this was to remind myself that when I’m dealing with an angry person, I don’t know why they are so angry? I don’t know what their lives are like? And I don’t have to live the angry lives they live.

I get to choose my disposition. I can feel empathy for people that give themselves less choice than I have. I can move on after these interactions without feeling bad, if I know that I handled things as best as I could with the resources and experience that I have… and I need to remember that this applies to them too. They did they best they could, given their experiences and circumstances. I don’t choose to look back on this experience with anger. I’m not upset that I didn’t handle it better. I don’t pretend that it didn’t have an effect on me or I probably wouldn’t be writing about it now. But I will meet more angry people in my life, and I believe that I’m more resilient and more prepared for that time, thanks to this experience.

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Publish button pangs

It’s hard to believe that I started blogging 13 years ago! I’ve gone through many different web addresses, and I’ve published things on other platforms like wikis and discussion forums, (and even in a book), but blogs are my favourite way to share.

The challenge with blogs, and even this daily one, is that all these years later I still get pangs before hitting the publish button. I still want to read over my post one more time before I commit to publishing. Is my message clear? Did I miss something? Is my grammar good? Is there a better word I could use to describe… ?

And then I still make mistakes! My last post was written on election night, and scheduled for the next morning. I woke up, meditated, re-read the post, made a few small changes, and hit the update button. All nice and easy. I dropped my kid to school and my post got published while I was seeing a teacher and some students off on a field trip. My post auto Tweets, posts to Facebook, and to LinkedIn.

I walk back to my office and I check Twitter, someone ‘Liked’ my post and on a whim, I click on it and re-read my post again, this time as a published, ‘final’ copy…

I find two typo’s. Two careless mistakes! How could I have missed these, they are so blatant! So I go to my WordPress App, click the edit button and make the changes. It’s 8:15am, the post was live for 1/2 an hour, maybe 3 people have read it, but I’m embarrassed. Ashamed. Upset with myself for being so careless.

It’s stupid. I know it is. But any work I’ve done until now to reduce the publish button pangs is gone. They are back in full force.

The weird thing though is that I like it! I like the pressure I put on myself. I believe I write better because of it. I believe I care more because of both a real, and an imagined audience. I get to be a writer! I also get to be my own editor, and I want to be excellent at both of theses things.

Let the pangs come. I want to be hesitant before hitting publish. I want to feel the pressure to do well, to not make careless mistakes, and to look things over one more time. These pangs are a badge of honour that I wear as a blogger.

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P.S. I’ll still make mistakes, so feel free to point them out to me. You will be doing me a favour.

P.P.S. I’ve seen students care far more about their writing because they were sharing their work publicly. They too can benefit from the publish button pangs!

The great divide

I make a commitment as an educator to promote people doing their civic duty and voting, and so I choose not to publicly share who I vote for. I want people to exercise their right, and participate in the democracy that they live in, and I’d rather promote that than promote any one party.

That said, I must say that I’m saddened by the story told by voters in yesterday’s election:

  1. The news leading up to the election focused on dirty tactics and the ‘ugliness’ of the attacks by parties on other parties.
  2. The Bloc Québécois had a resurgence, suggesting the return of separatist attitudes in Quebec.
  3.  While the Liberals won, the Conservatives had the popular vote.
  4. #Wexit was trending during the election, with Albertans wanting to start their own separatist movement for Western Canada.

The story being told is one of a divided nation. Head south of the border and the story, while quite different, also speaks of divisiveness in their upcoming election as well. Head ‘across the pond’ and Brexit tells yet another story of a country divided.

How does our media promote this? News headlines need to be catchy to gain clicks and advertising, or to keep people glued to their television. Social media sites are slow to respond to hateful comments and trolling. Hate and divisiveness spreads quickly. False information is easily shared. Memes that attack and ridicule get more likes and shares compared to newsworthy items on issues that really matter.

Why are democracies becoming so polarized, separatist, and adversarial? Why do we identify on the extremes rather than recognize that our ideas and opinions sit on a spectrum? Why do these extremes define our politics?

I don’t have answers to these questions. I have concerns about how great a divide we are seeing, and I wonder what can be done to promote a democracy that can be defined by unity rather than polarization?