A closed windows let you see what is beyond your reach. Closed doors do not.
Closed windows still let you envision where you can go, while shut doors block your view and your path.
When windows open, they let fresh air in. When doors open, they let you out.
Windows of opportunity can provide you with the chance to see what’s possible, but you can’t get there until the door is open and you are ready to step through it.
Are you a viewer or a doer?
Most doors do not open themselves.
I’m listening to a novel right now. That’s unusual because I usually wait until holiday breaks to read for pleasure, choosing instead to read (or listen) for learning. But I was done my last book and my new credit on Audible isn’t available for another couple days, so I picked up a cheap and popular Sci-Fi novel for a bargain on Black Friday.
When I get on the treadmill at about 5:30am this morning, I’ll put my headphones on and listen to the final chapter. I’m looking forward to this, but I’m also saddened by this as well.
I love the journey a good book takes you on. It doesn’t have to be a happy book, it just has to be an adventure. The heroes journey often takes the protagonist home at the end, but the journey is unforgettable. The last chapter is seldom climatic, it just offers resolution and closure. The rollercoaster ride is over, and you are parked back at the start of the ride, but there is time to reflect on the ride before the safety belt unlocks.
I love a good adventure, I don’t really enjoy ending it. Closure is melancholy to me. I remember reading once that the two things humans struggle with most in life are beginnings and endings, of these two it is endings that I struggle with more.
It’s time to get on the treadmill, and to close the final chapter of this book.
It will only take a minute, so indulge me and give this a try. Start a stop watch, close your eyes, relax, and without counting in your head, try to stop it after one minute.
How did you do?
We count seconds between lightning and thunder to see if a storm is getting closer, but when else do we keep track of seconds?
Sports teams hold time outs and the play gets stopped. Often in the final minutes and seconds of games like American Football and basketball, these stoppages can make a few seconds take an eternity to play out.
And on the other hand, we roll our eyes and get frustrated when a web page takes 3 seconds to load… forgetting the days of dial-up when a page with a simple image would take 15-45 seconds, and a large file might fail to load after several minutes.
Our relationship to time is changing. We used to hear and even feel the sound of a clock or a watch second-hand ticking. Now a second is an unfelt moment that sweeps by on a stop watch that also measures tenths and hundredths of a second just as easily as seconds.
How does the concept of time differ for people today, when they are never alone and bored? Do kids ever feel bored the way I did, when they are entertained and/or connected to other kids through their phones? On demand friends, on demand videos, on demand games must surely alter their perception of time. Does boredom come faster or slower to someone with such a different experience growing up?
At 52, the years seem to go quicker than they did when I was 26 or 13. Is that because a year of my life now is relatively less of my total life than when I was younger? Or are there external factors influencing my perception?
I’m reminded of this poem:
If you want to know the value of one year, just ask a student who failed a course.
If you want to know the value of one month, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.
If you want to know the value of one hour, ask the lovers waiting to meet.
If you want to know the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed the bus.
If you want to know the value of one second, ask the person who just escaped death in a car accident.
And if you want to know the value of one-hundredth of a second, ask the athlete who won a silver medal in the Olympics. ~ Marc Levy
I understand that our perception of time differs due to our experience. An hour of boredom feels like it lasts considerably longer than an hour socializing with friends. But beyond that does it feel to you, like it does to me, that time moves much more quickly now?
I don’t get it? Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t feel I’m in on it.
I went to a movie tonight, it wasn’t a comedy, but it had a few laughs in it. One of the funnier moments was also in the movie trailer and it got the biggest laugh of the night… but not from me.
Why not from me? I’d seen it already. To me it is much less funny the second time. But I’ve noticed for years and years of going to movie theatres that the pre-watched comedy in the movie trailer often gets the bigger laughs.
Why is that? Is it because theatre goers want to share their experience with others? Is it ‘safe’ to be vocal because everyone knows the punchline? Is it fulfilling because everyone gets to be in on the laugh?
What is it in human nature that makes this a thing? Whatever it is, I don’t think I have it. I don’t feel like I’m in on the laugh… but a lot of people do.
What am I missing?
I was playing around with scheduling posts late Thursday night. I had already planned to share Missing out – The Art of Miscommunication as my Friday post, when I decided to write and share Harnessing the Power and Potential of Social Media to Build Learning Communities #CDNedtech19 as a resource for the round table discussion I was running at the conference Friday afternoon. So, I thought the ‘Missing out‘ post could be today’s Daily-Ink. However, I made a mistake and ended up publishing them both yesterday morning. So, today I thought I’d take a look back and share some of the more popular posts so far:
This final post I’m sharing isn’t as popular as the ones above, but it is something I enjoyed writing, and I think it has an important message:
10. Ideas on a Spectrum The world seems so bipolar right now! Topics that used to be on an ideological or political spectrum have become dichotomies.
I’ve enjoyed writing daily since mid July. My routines (see #5 above) have made it a habit that is sustainable and much less like work. To be honest, I haven’t spent a lot of time looking at the stats, and it was nice to look at them for this post. While I don’t have a huge audience, and I am writing primarily for myself, it does feel good to know there is an audience out there. And with that, I would like to thank you for taking the time to join me, even if just occasionally, on my daily writing journey.
I believe that most miscommunication results from being out of context, out of place, or our of time.
Examples:
Context – Someone uses acronyms with people that are not familiar with them.
Place – Someone gives their boss marching orders.
Time – Someone explains something everyone already found out about.
I think that a lot of news outlets intentionally focus on, or omit information from, one of these areas in order to entice, excite, anger, and/or engage viewers and readers.
While being ‘out of’ one of these makes for a great plot for a comedy, it is not ideal when we want to be fully informed, or if we want our team, or our customers, or our students to be fully informed.
The next time you are frustrated, ask yourself what you are missing out on?
I’ve been invited to host a Round Table Breakout Session at the 10th Canadian EdTech Leadership Summit today, titled; “Harnessing the Power and Potential of Social Media to Build Learning Communities.” The invitation was born out of a Podcast I did with conference organizer Robert Martellacci @MindShareLearn, where we discussed my free ebook, Twitter EDU.
Exclusive Podcast with David Truss, Principal Coquitlam SD43, on his newly released book “Twitter EDU” https://t.co/8JH5B73lOo Thanks you for the interview Robert @mindsharelearn
— David Truss (@datruss) February 13, 2018
You can get the book here:
FREE on Apple, the iTunes version is available here.
FREE on Barnes & Noble, the NOOK version is available here.
Download the FREE ePub version now from Smashwords: (You might need to open this in your web browser, if you came here via mobile Twitter: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/776978 )
What I’ll share below are resources to support the conversation, and hopefully this can also be a resource to come back to later, after the discussion.
For those interested in tweeting during the discussion, please use both of these hashtags: #CDNedtech19 and #TwitterEDU
Advice from Dave Sands @dhsands: (If you are playing along, follow the people I share tweets from!)
My True Story Of Connectedness about my network being better than Google:
Here is a short link to the video: 2di.me/connectedstory.
Here is a Twitter Moment I shared where I asked, “What’s the best advice that you have to share with someone that’s new to Twitter?”
Short link: 2di.me/advice
“The hardest part of Twitter is that it does not have a friendly entry point.”
—–
Bill Ferriter @plugusin “My goal in social media spaces isn’t to “have a bigger audience.” My goal is to find people who challenge my practice.” (Link to tweet)
“Geography used to confine and limit our networks, and now we can connect to people from around the world.”
“Think of Twitter as a river of information that streams by, not a pool of information that you collect.”
See ‘Drinking from the fire hose‘.
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Cross-Posted on my Pair-a-Dimes Blog.
Yesterday evening was the Inquiry Hub Open House.
Here is a snippet from the ‘Cold Open’ that started the event, a song written by one of our students.
It’s complicated #iHubOpen has begun! pic.twitter.com/D3iga6RICs
— David Truss (@datruss) December 5, 2019
I wrote about the rehearsal and shared it here.
My day started with my meditation at 5:30am and getting to work by 7:20. I got home after the event at just before 10pm. I should have been exhausted, but the event was so rejuvenating! I came home and had a late night 2nd dinner, and was asleep just after 11pm. That should be a wipeout kind of day.
It wasn’t.
Watching our students showcase their school and their passion projects was wonderful. The enthusiasm was contagious. The night filled my gas tank. Sometimes we need events like this to pump some fuel into us, and get us off ‘E’. I’m ready to cruise through the craziness of the month ahead.
Imagine a school where you are given time every day to Dream, Create, and Learn.
I’m writing this Tuesday evening before our annual Open House and publishing it on the morning of the event. I popped in earlier in day to see how things were going. The teacher who has worked with the students the most on this event has Tuesdays off. Another teacher is working with students on displays in the hallways, a third teacher is popping his head into the gym periodically to see how things are going and if he can help. A former student is working with a crew to get the sound up and running, and our show director is setting up the order of entrances and exits to ensure mic hand-offs go as planned. I was invited back at 2:30pm to see the final run-though. I arrive at the end of the ‘cold open’ musical performance and stand next to another former student, who ran the open for the last two years. He speaks first, “This will be the best Open yet.” The song finishes and I ask our student director? Did you write that song? “A group of us did.”
I watch the rehearsal and there are issues with sound, and a video not working properly. I am not worried about this. Last year Alvin Law did a presentation at our school and he told me that he’s presented to large corporations with massive budgets and he was never treated as well by a sound crew, or had a sound system work so perfectly, as he did at our school. I would have thought he was just being polite had he not repeatedly emphasized this, even when we were saying goodbye at his car. My sound crew know that their job is to be invisible… unnoticed because sound is never an issue. I know that they are students and it might not be as perfect as that, even if the last 3 shows were.
I only had two suggestions: First, a pair of presenters did not have a strong ending to their talk, so I suggested they present what’s coming up next; Second, one of our Grade 12’s starts with a personal story then gets lost in a list of things she accomplished. I suggested she remember to go back to storytelling and share why that list of things are important to her. Our show director has a lot more to say. She is as in control of this rehearsal as any teacher could be. She is critical, for example: “That was really good except your timing drifted off,” she says to the guitarist and piano player. She is encouraging, “I like the way you two play off of each other.” And most importantly, she is respected by the performers and presenters, and they know and understand that she has their best interest in mind.
A student designed the advertising.
Two students are working together on thematic ads for Instagram:
The Foods class have created custom deserts. All the clubs have representatives to share what they’re doing. Freshly created student work is on display on our walls. This isn’t just an open house, it’s a showcase. It is an opportunity for students to present to an authentic audience, by students who love the fact that they don’t just sit in classes all day. A presentation by students that get to design part of their day. They get to throw themselves fully into running and presenting at an even like this… they get to Dream, Create, and Learn as part of their school day.
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I’ve written about Inquiry Hub Secondary a few times before, most recently in March, on my Pair-a-Dimes Blog. Here is information for educators.
It was my sister many years ago who said this to me the first time, but I’ve heard it many times since. There are 3 sides to every story: The first person’s perspective, the second person’s perspective, and somewhere in between there is the Truth.
We all want to feel that our experience is the Truth, but in reality we can’t always see where the other person is coming from. Relationships often have perceived truths that limit us from seeing the full Truth that lies in the middle. Our bias doesn’t have to come from malice, it can come from innocent ignorance. But when we see the bigger Truth, when we are reflecting back on a conversation, we can sometimes see our own flaws in perspective if we are honest with ourselves.
When this happens, we need to decide if it is more important to come back with the new Truth (or at least our perspective of it), or is it more important to concede that our truth was wrong, and think about how holding on to that truth affected the other person? Because even at this new juncture there might still be 3 sides to the story. Pause and reflect again. Maybe the relationship is more important than the Truth?
