Monthly Archives: June 2020

The mass of trees

There are many questions that might seem simple but aren’t. For instance, where does the mass of trees come from?

Many people believe it comes from the soil. However, most of a tree’s mass comes from carbon… in the air.

This is one of those tidbits of information that if you know it, it’s not a big deal, but if you don’t, well then you likely either checked the date of this post to see if it was written on April Fools, or you did a Google search.

While it is interesting to dig into the science of this and learn about photosynthesis, and study the exchange of gasses, and what happens to carbon in the process, it’s also wonderful to marvel at the idea of what’s happening: Trees grow and get their size out of the air.

Here’s a quick video that explains it.

Here is another thought about trees. They won’t grow without the energy of the sun doing the work to convert the carbon from the air into the mass of the tree… so when you throw a log into a fire, you are converting energy captured by the sun back into heat energy.

From Wikipedia:

In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the principle that anything having mass has an equivalent amount of energy and vice versa, with these fundamental quantities directly relating to one another by Albert Einstein’s famous formula:

This is a big jump in thinking, but isn’t it interesting that so much of the mystery of life and our universe can be derived from the mass of a tree?

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* Update: See the first comment by Stephen Downes that points out my error in connecting the relationship to the mass-energy equivalent… I should have just left this post at the marvel of trees growing out of air!

A simple question

I’m always intrigued by the questions we ask ourselves. We worry, and fret about things that could, but don’t happen. We ask stupid questions like, ‘Why me?’ So that our brains fill the void with reasons that make us feel like victims of our own circumstances. We ask for advice, but then we don’t listen to the advice given to us.

Here is a good questions to ask:

What can I say or do to make today better for another person in my life?

It’s a simple question that can bring as much joy to yourself as it does to someone else.

Questions about September 2020

I was speaking to a friend that teaches at a university and she said about 30% of students that would normally come to her university next year are requesting a one year deferral, and taking a gap year. If that’s happening at universities across the province, and the country, that’s going to have a devastating impact on universities. Also, what are these students going to do next year? The two most productive things that students do in a gap year are work to save money, and travel (get some life experience). The job market is not going to bounce back quick enough, with unemployment at some of the highest levels in years, and most countries aren’t going to lift travel bans any time soon.

So what are all these gap year students going to do?

I wonder about the mental well-being of students who are not going to school, can’t get a job or travel, and are home and idle?

What can we do to support these students?

I also wonder if all of our colleges and universities will survive financially with such a decrease in students and revenue?

Will a percentage of high school students also stay home? Will there be a spike in high school students wanting to take online courses rather than try blended courses with teachers unfamiliar with this form of delivery?

Will private school students and their families decide that they should just go to public school rather than pay expensive tuition for an online experience?

We are headed into some very unknown territory and the impacts to what schooling might look like for September 2020 and beyond may not unfold in ways that we are expecting.

Education focussed mind dump

I’m going to do a little mind dump of things on my mind about school, education, life, and learning, in point form – bullet format. Many of these could be entire posts on their own, and I want to share these as placeholders for future development:

  • Teaching is going to be more challenging in the future, but also more rewarding. Yes, technology will replace some teaching… an AI (Artificial Intelligence) based program can teach students who are learning to use algorithms better than a teacher in front of 30 students, when students could use just-in-time feedback and an adjusted curriculum based on their answers being right or wrong. However we are decades away from AI being able to teach problem solving, or critical thinking, or moderate a philosophical discussion. Teaching these things is exciting and can be very engaging for students, but also challenging to do well… this is the true art of teaching.
  • I’m tired of seeing ‘Remote Learning didn’t work’ articles. It is not ideal for every student and it magnifies the issue of privilege, and access to required technology. It especially won’t work when educators need to make the switch with no forward planning. That said, it has made us question a few things we needed to question, like traditional assessment practices for example.
  • Assessment practices needs to change. We can’t rely on information-based content as a means of measuring student success. ie. 1. We still need to know that students can use mathematical algorithms, but we also need to know that they are numerate and understand the concepts behind those algorithms. ie. 2. The so called soft skills that we want to see like critical thinking and collaboration don’t work well being marked in a traditional way. What does a mark of 77% in Creativity mean?
  • Blended learning is the future of learning in schools, and so two things need to change: 1. Block schedules/timetables where the structure is exclusively around a teacher at the front of a room teaching for a set time. 2. “Teach them while I’ve got them in front of me” mentality, where the face-to-face component of the blending is all about teaching as it used to be… Blended learning should be centred around creating ‘learning experiences’.
  • Student voice and choice needs to be the forefront of course and lesson design. Cookie-cutter assignments are not enough. That said, there can be considerable teacher influence and high expectations. A teacher-led inquiry with embedded opportunities for students choice can be much better than not giving students creative constraints (that they might flounder without).
  • We need to leverage blended learning, in order to create collaboration and professional development time inside of a teacher’s workday. The idea of a teacher working in isolation for over 85% of the school day is counter productive to creating a culture of learning at institutions (schools) that should be modelling a learning culture.
  • A well funded, free, and public education is an essential public service. It also has to foster the values we want to see in our world. Diversity, acceptance (not just tolerance), civics, kindness, and charity need to be celebrated and highlighted. Yes, we need to prepare students to function in society, and even be employable, but the most important thing we do in schools is make all students feel like they belong, and we help them become decent human beings.
  • We need to help students be tolerant of others with opposing points of view. We have to show them that despite the desire of attention-seeking news media to polarize ideas into different camps, ideas sit on a spectrum, they are not all dichotomous. And we do not have to agree with different ideas to be respectful of the people who hold them… That said, while “we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views“, we must also be, “unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference“.
  • We need to find a balance between ‘open’ classrooms and ‘private’ learning spaces. Students need a space where they can fumble and be less than perfect, having a private space to work out the rough edges of their work. They also need to be able to share what they want out in the open, and with the world. Everything doesn’t have to be on display, and we need to help students discern what is important to share, and what we keep to ourselves.
  • Mistakes need to be legitimately celebrated as part of learning. Failure is part of most challenging journeys, and while we talk about the importance of this, we freak out when students fail in a public setting. Mistakes are ok when we can fix them quickly, but we still admonish bigger public mistakes in ways that do not foster learning. This is an issue beyond schools, we seem to live in a world where everyone is judged (harshly) by their worst public mistake, and sincere apologies are not enough. This has two important, negative ramifications: 1. Public mistakes become something we can’t recover or learn from; 2. We can not be truly innovative when we can’t risk looking bad for our efforts. So many schools, school districts, and even companies, brag about being innovative, but when it is ‘innovative as long as it looks good’, well then all the risk is gone and so is the opportunity to do something daring.
  • Everyone has a right to their opinion, and everyone can share those opinions, but not all opinions are good, and not all opinions deserve an equal footing. Bad ideas can spread very easily these days. People need to be brave enough to speak out against bad ideas… in non-violent ways. We must celebrate the power of dialogue and use our words instead of our fists, if we truly want our society to be better. We have to challenge ourselves to take higher ground and not fight the fight that the spreaders of bad ideas want us to fight. There is a saying, “Never wrestle a pig, you both get dirty but the big likes it.” Bad ideas get unwarranted publicity when the battles get messy… and the weak-minded get fuel to oppose good ideas when those with the good ideas act in bad faith. You do not have to ‘turn the other cheek’ but you do have to act in a way that is decent and good, if you want to fight for things that are decent and good.

… Ideas To be expanded on at a future date.

Use video to monitor slow progress

I broke my knee cap in late February. This is an injury with a minimum 6 week recovery. I’m well past 3 months, and while I was fortunate to have suffered very little with pain since about the second day after the injury, I still can’t run on it. Last Sunday I had a video physio appointment and I’m now on a daily regimen of strengthening exercises. I’m already seeing improvements in strength and balance but I know this will still take a while.

I’ve also been working on handstands for a while now. I had hoped that before the end of last month I would have been able to hold a 30 second, unsupported handstand. I’ve built up my strength and am now at the point where I can easily hold my weight for that amount of time (and more). However, the balance of an unsupported handstand is very challenging. I’m still a ways away from my goal. My physio gave me a tip, and I’ve got a new exercise to build up strength and balance using my forearms. I’m already seeing progress, but it is slow.

Slow progress is to be expected, but it can still feel frustrating at times. Day to day the improvements aren’t always noticeable. One thing I’ve noticed with my handstands is that video helps. Video allows me to see where I’ve come from, and how much I’ve improved. This is very helpful to inspire me to keep going, even when the progress continues to be slow.

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1243331006767210497?s=20

https://twitter.com/datruss/status/1249596233078829056?s=20

Slides are free

I think it was Rodd Lucier that told me ‘Slides are free’ after I did a presentation at a conference at Niagara Falls 6 years ago. I came off stage and asked for feedback and that’s what he said.

To give it some context, I had shared a slide with more than one idea on it, like this:

And then I quickly discussed each idea. It’s ok to share a slide like this for context, but then instead of talking about all 3 quickly on the same slide, I could have had three more slides, one for each idea. Here is the first example:

It costs nothing to add that slide, and 2 more like it, to my presentation deck. It’s a way to declutter what the audience is looking at, and let’s them focus on what exactly I’m talking about.

With tools like Microsoft Teams and Zoom calls there is a loss of screen size for the presentation being shown, due to the webinar frame around the screen-share window. Words that are too small, or images of items that take up less than a third of the page become unreadable and decorative rather than functional. Too many words? Increase the font size and put the information on 2 or 3 slides. Breaking down a concept? Sure you can share a slide with the 3-4 ideas or images on it, but then add 3-4 more slides with each idea shared individually.

The extra slides are free, and the separated and uncluttered ideas on the slides are freeing for the presenter, and the audience.

I miss the conversations that used to happen on blogs

I can remember blogging and getting 20 to 50 comments that made the post into a conversation… a dialogue that I learned from. That rarely happens anymore. Part of this is that the conversation has moved. For example my Daily-Ink posts generate conversations on LinkedIn, and on Facebook. But I miss rich feedback that made a blog post feel like an engaging conversation. That doesn’t happen much anymore.

What made me bring this up is that I had two people, Brad and Bill, comment on my post about ‘Trying to find the Truth‘, and this conversation reminded me of the kind of commenting that used to happen more frequently.

Twitter conversations are fun, but the richness isn’t there like it is in a longer format blog post and follow up conversation in the comments. Facebook seems to invite compliments like, ‘thanks for sharing’ or ‘I really enjoyed this’, but seldom anything deeper as an add-on to a shared post. LinkedIn seems to have the better conversations coming from blog posts, but they get lost in the stream as opposed to being curated with the blog post.

Perhaps I need to make the effort Aaron Davis does to ‘Read Write Curate‘. Interesting timing that I went to find that link and stumbled on this quote Aaron curated from Bill Ferriter:

Here is Aaron’s full website, Read Write Respond.

Anyway, I’m going to make a commitment to comment more on the blogs I read. If I want to see this kind of conversation more frequently, I should also participate more myself.

School 2020

I used to think I had a good handle on where things were going. What does the end of the school year look like? What will September start-up look like? All this is out the window.

An online grad/annual celebration in June? Never would have guessed that was coming, I had a theatre booked for the occasion.

Students sitting socially distant from each other? I don’t have more than 4 single desks in the whole school.

There is a lot to think about with respect to the coming school year. How will the year start? How often in a week will students attend? How much will be taught from a distance? Who will struggle and who will thrive in this new environment?

We will adapt. We will make it work. But making it work isn’t enough over a sustained period. It’s one thing to ‘make it work’ for the last 3 months of a school year, and yet another for that to be your plan for a full year.

As busy as June is, it’s also a time to be creative. September 2020 will be here sooner than we think, and school will not be what it has been in the past. We need to create opportunities for students not just to survive the year, but for them to thrive.

One December 31st, 2019 I picked my #OneWord2020 to be Resilience… I don’t think I could have picked a better word!

Some are more equal

It has been years since I read Animal Farm, but this quote comes to mind now:

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” ~ George Orwell

And this idea reminds me of an image that differentiates equality from equity:

On the left side of the image, some people are ‘more equal’. On the right is the equity that all people deserve. When people counter #BlackLivesMatter with #AllLivesMatter, they completely miss the point that if you believe that ‘All Lives Matter’, then fundamentally you care about equity and not equality. At the core of all lives mattering is living in a just world where everyone can thrive. That’s not the world we live in. ‘Black Lives Matter’ does not negate all lives mattering, it changes the conversation from equality to equity.

In Animal Farm the rebellion starts out with the idea that ‘All animals are equal’, but the idea of equality is corrupted by power and privilege, and this phrase is switched to ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’

‘More equal’ today comes out of privilege for some, it comes out of systemic prejudice, it comes out of unequal opportunity. Equity is about making things more fair and equitable, not taking away anyone else’s equality.

Do all lives matter? The answer is: They all should matter, yes, but right now they do not matter with any equity. If you believe that all lives matter, then ultimately you should support #BlackLivesMatter… If you truly care about living in an equitable and just world.

Weird dreams

I have this weird thing about my dreams that I don’t think I’ve known to be true for anyone else. I almost never dream of people that I see on a regular basis in my waking hours. It is very rare for my wife, or kids, or my current coworkers to be in any of my dreams that I remember having.

That’s kind of weird. I often dream of friends and family members I have not seen in years. But if I have a rare dream of someone close to me, it’s usually a shallow, not quite awake dream about something I’m thinking/worried about. Beyond these rare occasions, the people that are usually in my dreams are almost always from my past, or strangers.

The other thing about my dreams is that when I wake up in the middle of the night, I tend to go back to my dream even if I don’t like the situation I’m in. I might feel relief that it was only a dream, and think that I’m glad I’m up and can forget the dream, but then I go back to it anyway. Last night was one of those nights.

I was dreaming that this man and woman were spying on me. I knew they were spies, and that they had guns, and I spent most of the dream trying to lose them. At least three times last night I woke up from within this dream and the stress of being (slowly) chased by armed spies was something that made me feel relieved that I could stop. But each time I went back to sleep I was thrust into this same dream again. The spies followed me, they pretended they were not, I tried to lose them. At one point I double backed and spied on them. At another point I booby trapped their weapons stash to blow up if they tried to get to their weapons, but they never triggered my trap. Even after waking up with resolve to end the dream, I’d go back into it again,

Those are my silly stress dreams. Dumb plots, unrelated to any real stresses, with people I don’t know, or people who visit me from my distant past.

I know dreams are supposed to be weird. But does anyone else dream void of people regularly in their lives? Does anyone else keep going back to dreams even after they wake up relieved that they were only dreaming? Or maybe it’s just me and my dreams that are this weird?