Author Archives: David Truss

The secret sauce of iHub – Time and Space, and Pace

Inquiry Hub (iHub) is a small school that runs more like a specialty program than a school. The backbone of the program (besides some awesome and innovative educators) is two courses we wrote: Foundations of Inquiry 10 – BAA Course 2018 &  & Foundations of Inquiry 11 – BAA Course 2018. Large high schools have a multitude of elective offerings that students can take, and we can’t offer them with our small teaching staff. Instead, Grades 9 & 10 take these two courses and then in Grades 11 & 12 students do IDS, Independent Directed Studies, where they develop their own year-long course.

Here  is a student, Thia, describing her inquiries, her ‘electives’, at our school:

You can see other unique projects on our student page.

I’ve been doing some reflection and our inquiry courses are necessary, but they not the secret sauce of our school. The secret sauce has two main ingredients: ‘Time and Space’ and ‘Pace’.

  1. We create the time and space for students to work on projects that they want to work on. Student are not ‘in front’ of a teacher who is ‘in front’ of the room all day. They have time and space to work independently and in groups. We create multidisciplinary projects and use an adapted version of scrum project management to get required content out of the way so that students have more time to work on projects they want to work on. They get the time and space to follow their passions and interests while at school.
  2. We provide support for students to help them maintain a good pace. The most important trait a student needs to be successful at our school is that they are self-directed learners… they know how to use their time well. However, most Grade 8 students don’t come fully pre-loaded with these skills, (in fact many adults lack these skills). So, teachers work as a team and our student services teacher connects with any students that are behind on work. She works with students to help them build in strategies that help them keep up and stay on top of work. This is essential in a school where students can have up to 50% of their school day without a teacher in front of them, directing their work/tasks.

Yes, the inquiry process is important. Yes, we can talk about their mindset and look at how we examine failure, but when I really think about what makes Inquiry Hub tick (again, besides the hard work of great teachers) I think that giving students the time and space to explore their interests while supporting them in keeping up a good pace, is what the school is really all about.

Un-breaking a break in routines

Yes, I went back home to my parents house after my father’s death, and spent no time alone except sleep and going to the bathroom.

Yes, I’m dealing with a herniated disc and choosing between feeling loopy on drugs or in pain.

Yes, I also fell and it took weeks for my knee to heal because the wound would re-open every time I bent my knee.

Yes, I’ve missed a few days posting here in the last few weeks. I’ve also had the least amount of exercise since I started tracking in January 2019. I’ve also missed more meditations than I have in that same time.

Yes, I’ve missed more work in the past month than I’ve missed in any 10 years of working combined.

Yes, I’m further behind in email than I ever have been… (I’m smart enough not to try to be on email when loopy or in pain).

Yes, I’m really hard on myself when I can’t do the things I think I should be doing.

But I also know how important these routines are for my mental health. It’s 10:45am and I’m finally out of bed and the loopy feeling of the drugs have worn off enough that while I’m not in pain, I feel that I can sit here and write this. I also feel like it’s not safe to walk on a treadmill, like I did for the first time in weeks last night before taking my meds for bed. Sitting in bed this morning I realized that I can lie on the floor and do some stretching. I can definitely meditate. I can listen to my body and go for walks outside, rather than navigating a treadmill.

I can’t rebuild the routines I had before all this just yet, but I can build new routines that keep me thinking positively rather than lying on my back with a pillow below my knees for most of the day. Well, actually that might still be a big part of my coming week, but at least I can (re)build i some routines that make me feel better both physically and mentally.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who lives with chronic pain. It inspires me to see people who deal with daily or constant pain and still live out their daily lives. For now, I just need to build in some routines that make me feel more human.

I need to un-break my break in routines… not trying to do what I did before… not trying to do too much and setting myself back. Just trying to build a new routine that lets me feel good. On that note, my neck and shoulder have told me that this is enough sitting and typing for a few hours, if not the rest of the day. I’m going to go lay on the floor, listen to some music, stretch and meditate. The best time to start a new habit is right now!

Keeper of your digital history

When I lived in China, I had a hard time communicating on any social media. I connected to this blog using Posterous, which let me post easily from an App on my phone, before WordPress had an App. When Posterous went defunct all the images I posted through their App were not saved on WordPress and so those images were lost. So I have old posts like this, where I only have a dead link where a photo used to be:

This isn’t the only social media company that has gone defunct, taking the history of my work with it. I loved using the Ning Network communites like Classroom 2.0, I had a student project with over a 100,000 visits on Wikispaces, this video had close to 100,000 views on BlipTV, and I had great conversations archived on coComment. My original blog was on ELGG, where I had a great community of bloggers to learn from, then it switched to Eduspaces which was less friendly and forced me to do the smart thing and self-host on DavidTruss.com. Delicious, Diigo, and Scribed were communities but now they’ve changed and are just ‘places’ that I used to visit and use. And there are plenty of other tools that have come and gone and when they are gone, so is a record of everything I did in those spaces.

One social media tool that I have used more than any other is Twitter. I was such a fan, I even wrote an ebook about how to get started on Twitter, then gave it away for free. I have Tweeted 33,800+ times since I started Twitter in 2007. Today I decided to request an archive of all my tweets.

I’ve lost too many great conversations and archives of data because of social media services either transforming to something different, suddenly requiring fees that are beyond what I’m willing to pay, or just going defunct… and with so much happening to Twitter right now, I just figured I’d request my data and store it myself for safe keeping. If anything happens to Twitter, I want a record of what I did in this social media space. I’m not predicting that Twitter will go the way of the dodo bird, but I’m just not confident it will look the same at the end of 2023, now that it is privately owned and operated. I want a backup of my data… just in case.

Shifting Paradigms

TLDR: I’m not publishing any more posts on my Pair-a-Dimes blog (where this post is being cross-posted)… I’d be honoured if my Pair-a-Dimes subscribers, (and/or you), subscribed here on Daily Ink. To do so, fill in your email on the subscription form on the right-side column on your computer, or under the comment box on your mobile device.

Well, if it isn’t obvious yet, I will make it clear now. After whimsically naming my blog ‘Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts‘ on a blog service called Elgg, and publishing my first post on March 29th, 2006 (reposted on DavidTruss.com on March 26th, 2008), it is now evident to me that I’ve fully transitioned to my Daily-Ink blog. My last post on Pair-a-Dimes (Choice time for teacher Pro-D) before this one was over a year ago. The one before that (How do we get to ‘YES’?) was written almost two years ago. Meanwhile, on my Daily-Ink I’ve posted every day since July 6th, 2019 (It’s time…). That’s 3 days short of 3 years, or 1,093 daily blog posts.

To put that number in perspective, I had my Pair-a-Dimes blog for 16 years and I only blogged 356 times… less than what I did in my first year blogging daily. That said, Pair-a-Dimes was much longer in format, and much more focussed on education. And although I still write about education and learning on Daily-Ink, I will miss the educational focus of Pair-a-Dimes with the tagline, “Reflections on Education, Technology and Learning“. But committing to blogging daily, and adding more to another blog is too much for me… especially as I think about reviving my podcasts this summer, after an almost 2 year hiatus.

I absolutely loved the community I built around Pair-a-Dimes. This blog is the reason I got to present both for Alan November, and with his team. This blog got me connected to Connected Principals, a now defunct site where principals shared their learning (these are the posts I also shared there). This blog became a learning space for me.


This blog is where I learned to do html, it’s where I learned about wikis, it’s what inspired me to blog with students. It helped me become a better educator and a more reflective leader.

I may come back here to post again, but it’s unlikely. However, because I host both blogs on DavidTruss.com, this blog will stay up for as long as I choose to keep blogging or keep my personal website, so it’s not going anywhere… it’s also not going to be updated.

I realize that I have a significant number of email subscribers to Pair-a-Dimes who might enjoy getting 1-3 minute daily reads via email. If that’s you, I’m truly honoured. On your computer you’ll find the subscribe button on the right hand side column, near the top of this page. If you are on mobile, scroll down below the comment section to find the subscribe button. I’m going to try to transfer over the WordPress subscribers, (whom I don’t have an email address for), but I won’t send an email to the 450 people still subscribed to Pair-a-Dimes on Feedburner after all these years. Instead, I’ll post this and hopefully anyone reading via email will subscribe to Daily-Ink. Whether you choose to transfer or not, I want to thank you as a reader of my Pair-a-Dimes. Whether you read posts dating back to 2006, or if you found one post that made you subscribe, you helped inspire me to keep writing. Thank you for being one of over 370,000 Pair-a-Dimes visitors since I moved to DavidTruss.com, I’m honoured that you joined me, that you took the time to read, comment, inspire me, and contribute to my learning.

The blogging adventures continue here on my Daily-Ink.

Doing something special

I don’t know how to write this without sounding like it’s bragging, so I’m just going to say it… We run an awesome little school.

It’s not perfect. We have a lot to improve still, but in 10 years we’ve had 10 iterations, tweaking and improving each year. Yes, covid was challenging to deal with but the changes to the way we integrate courses and have students do SCRUM project management have been pretty amazing these past couple years. Student inquiries and their ability to present and make incredible visuals to present with have levelled up considerably. We keep getting better and we are all excited about more updates to our program next year.

So when we finish off a year and our staff get letters and emails like these, it feels pretty good:

There are no words to convey how much we have appreciated all your efforts. Reinventing high school is no small thing. We have had highs and lows but the skills my kids are learning are going to serve them well in college and life. Thank you.

And:

Hi! I’m sure you already know this, but as another school year ends I still feel the need to say what an amazing, life-giving, and nurturing place IHub is and to express my deep thankfulness to everyone who works so hard to make IHub what it is! You’re not simply saving some students from being chewed up and spit out in pieces by a more traditional high school experience for which they are not well suited, you are opening doors that would have been invisible, facilitating adventures of self-discovery that would have been impossible and changing futures. Deep thanks to all of you!!!!!

And this from a excellent student who would be successful no matter where they attended school:

Thank you for a wonderful first year at ihub! I can now say firsthand what an amazing school this is and how it is a perfect fit for me!

Sometimes I end the year dissatisfied that we, that I, didn’t do more. Wishing I’d somehow given more of myself, and contributed more to our students and our community. This year these notes hit me at the right time. I realize that we are doing something special, and while I know there’s more to do, I will head into summer holidays in a couple weeks feeling great about what we’ve been doing and what’s still to come.

Missing the point

“The meaning of your communication is the response that you get.”

This is a quote I heard in a communication course that I took in my early 20’s, more than a half of my life ago… but I remember it and it is a bit of a mantra for me. So, when I share something and the message isn’t clear, I recognize that I need to take at least partial responsibility. An unexpected response tells me that my communication was not clear enough to get the response I expected.

Yesterday I was mad. I actually expected a shooting like the one in a Texas school to happen. I didn’t know it would be a school, but I saw the publicity the supermarket shooting in Buffalo the week before got and I figured another high profile shooting was coming. When it happened, and when it was a school, I was angry. That anger came through in my post, Enough is enough. But writing it wasn’t enough for me. I don’t pretend I have an audience big enough to make a genuine difference. So, I sent it to some local and some US reporters that I have access to via Twitter. It only went to accounts that allow Direct Messages, so that I was sending the messages privately.

One reporter responded. I won’t name him, because I have a lot of respect for him and I appreciate him responding to me… he was the only one. These were his words:

David, I don’t agree with you one bit. The rate of mass shootings in Canada (and MANY other countries) versus the US is so vastly different, with practically no difference in the way media treats the subject. That in itself is evidence of a flaw in your logic. I am in the businesses of shedding light on the issues that erode our safety and security because ignoring a problem never makes it go away. Do I wish these events never happened? Am I heartbroken and traumatized by what I see and hear and have to filter for our audience? You’re damn right I am. I hate every minute of it. But am I to blame? Not at all. Why don’t you direct some of your energy at those who refuse to put restrictions on killing machines and those who pull the trigger?

And this was my response:

I’m only saying don’t report their names. Don’t highlight their lives. Yes this is a US problem, I’ve mostly sent this to US news. But how hard would it be not to dignify the killers. To remove any mention of their identity? The stats tell us these are more likely to happen after a high publicity act. The people doing the copycat act know they will be (in)famous like the other killers before them. I know gun laws in the US are a big problem… but that doesn’t diminish the fact that all news outlets are making it worse. Apologies if you think I’m blaming you, I’m not. I’m blaming a news system that glorifies killers. That’s the part I am struggling with. Stop naming the killers. Stop highlighting their lives. That’s my point. It’s not about you, it’s about this:

That is the part media outlets play. And all of them can do better.

He took it as a personal attack, and he missed the point. I blame myself. I should have written a plea, not a condemnation. The irony to me is this line he shared, “I am in the businesses of shedding light on the issues that erode our safety and security because ignoring a problem never makes it go away.” The simple fact is that by glorifying the killer, he and his colleagues are eroding our safety and security. They are publicizing to the weak and the disturbed that they too can become famous.

“Am I heartbroken and traumatized by what I see and hear and have to filter for our audience?” He said. Yes, filtering for the audience is part of being a news reporter, and what I’m asking is for him and his colleagues to filter out the names of the idiots with guns. I’m not saying, ‘Don’t report the news.’ I’m not saying, ‘You are responsible.’ I am saying that highlighting and profiling the idiots with guns erodes public safety and security. How hard would it be for news media to have a simple code of conduct:

  • Do not mention a mass shooter’s name.
  • Do not share images of them.
  • Do not investigate their lives, profile them, or quote them.

That’s what I wanted to say. But that’s not what I communicated. I can’t blame anyone for missing the point, when I failed to make the point clear.

Spam and the end of my contact form

I’ve had a contact form on my blog since 2007. For the last few years, this has only been used to spam me: ‘Improve your SEO’; ‘I notice the content of this page and think you’d like to backlink to us… we’ll pay you’; ‘Would you like to become a distributor for…’; and even; ‘I’m horny’ with a link to some porn, dating, or mail order bride site. I can’t remember the last time someone used it to actually contact me for any legitimate reason.

Instead of deleting my contact page, I just deleted the contact form, and the first line on the page is:

Would you like to contact me? Great! I’m @datruss on Twitter. You can also leave a comment on my daily blog, “Daily-Ink“.

Hopefully I don’t drive spammers to my blog, in which case I’ll have to change that too. It’s a shame that there is so much spam that I need to do this. I’ve read that as much as 85% of all email is spam. I think responses to contact forms would be much higher than that.

I wish there was a way to spam spammers such that their job became unmanageable. Instead of them filling our inboxes with a waste of time and energy, we should figure out a way to send them ‘smart’ spam back. If they want a back link from my site, they get hundreds of responses from hundreds of fake email addresses saying, ‘Yes I’ll add a back link to your blog’ and linking to other spammer’s websites and fake PayPal accounts. Drown them in so many fake but positive responses that they can’t determine what’s worth pursuing and what’s not.

Spam the spammers.

Without a definitive attack on their livelihood, they don’t have an incentive to stop.

But for now, they win… no more contact form from me. Fortunately, I’m pretty easy to get a hold of on social media and here on my Daily-Ink, and so while removing my contact form won’t affect people’s ability to connect with me, it will reduce how much spam comes my way.

A place for everything

There is a saying, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”

Right now that’s not the case in our household. We are moving back onto our main floor after an extensive renovation, and now we have to find a place for everything. When it comes to the kitchen, that’s a real challenge. Our new fridge doesn’t seem as big as our old one, and the shelve sizes don’t seem to work for us. Our new cupboards and drawers are slowing becoming the place where we keep things, but I still find myself going on scavenger hunts to find things I usually find easily.

The good news, I absolutely love the new look. We took out the walls between our living room, dining room and kitchen and have a fully open concept. It looks awesome, and it already feels like home. But for now, we still have a lot of things to put away, and while we might find spots for everything, remembering where everything is kept will take a some time.

The Great One

I went to the game for a single purpose… to prove to myself that Wayne Gretzky was the most overrated player. I left thinking he was a hockey god.

I lived in Toronto and was a fan of the Maple Leafs. I was a diehard fan, believing that one day I’d see them win the Stanley Cup, despite the fact that they haven’t won one since my birth year, 1967. But every hear I expected them to win. They didn’t.

As a huge Maple Leaf fan back then, I wasn’t a fan of Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers. And in fact, I was sure that the hype around Gretzky was just that, hype. He was surrounded by a great team and they helped him shine. I was sure of this, until I saw him play. I paid the most I’d ever paid for hockey tickets and sat 2 rows behind the Leaf bench. After years of sitting in the nosebleed level ‘Grey’ seats, I felt I was right in on the action.

If I remember the game correctly, the Oilers beat the Leafs 9-6, and Gretzky got 6 points. But the reality is that he should have gotten 12. He was amazing. Every time he was on the ice it felt like something exciting was going to happen. Here are three examples I can remember:

1. Behind the Leaf net: Before Gretzky, behind the net was where defenders took the puck, no office ever chose to intentionally take the puck back there, but Gretzky did. And when he did he controlled both teams. He froze the defence, unsure of where he was going or where he was passing next. Watching him control the game from behind the net was a sight to see.

2. The boards: Gretzky wasn’t a big guy compared to many other players, but when he went against the boards, he owned the puck. I can remember two specific times he went into the boards with other players fighting for the puck, then the puck would come flying out and land on an Oiler teammate’s stick. I was close enough to see the surprise on their faces. I watched as they shot on half empty nets, the goalie equally as shocked to see the puck shoot across to the other side of the ice. When this happened a second time I realized, if there was another Gretzky on the team, that would have been a goal… he wasn’t rising to the level of play of his team, he fully surpassed them.

3. Defence: He disrupted so many plays on defence. When the puck was dumped into the blue line he got to the puck on the boards first, knowing where to be, and then there would be a pass and the play was going the other way. In one amazing move a favourite defender of mine, Leaf’s number 9, Stuart Gavin, was taking the puck out of the Leaf’s zone and he skated towards the Leaf’s blue line. I was watching Gretzky on the other side of the ice, also near the blue line. For no apparent reason he skated in a circle, spinning tightly. Then he sped in behind Stuart, lifted his stick, and went in for a breakaway goal. I felt close enough to say, ‘look out’ but I was too surprised to do so.

It took me a while to realize what Gretzky’s little spin did. First of all, if he skated directly to Stuart without the spin, he would have been in Stuart’s line of sight and would not have surprised him from behind. Secondly, if he had paused rather than spun, he would not have had the momentum to catch him. An absolutely brilliant little move on the opposite side of the blue line away from the play, that led to a breakaway goal.

I went into the game thinking I was there to debunk an overrated player and I left with the conviction that he truly was The Great One, and I felt honoured to have watched him play live.

Champions model but don’t always lead

It’s great to have champions of technology who can really show you what’s possible, but they are often operating at a level that’s far too intimidating for other educators, and so they don’t necessarily make the best technology leaders. If you really want to find innovation, yes it’s important to help those front runners who are capable of doing amazing things with technology. However you won’t take everyone further unless you invest in making sure that everyone in your learning community is moving forward.

A few things can help here:

1. Everyone gets access to the same tools. Sure, your tech champions may ask for access first, but once a tool is valued it needs to be accessible to all.

2. Access doesn’t guarantee adoption. With access, there needs to be two things also shared: need and training.

Why is the technology needed? What problem does it solve? What does it achieve more easily, faster, more effectively? Or what does it allow you to do that you couldn’t do before?

How easy is it to adopt? Who can help with training? When can training happen? What’s available for support when a roadblock arises?

3. Collaboration. How can the community support itself, what opportunities are there to share and learn from each other? How can this be embedded into meetings and when can time be given within the current schedule, without adding to it? How can the team use the technology themselves in a meaningful way to become more effective?

4. Recognition and/or appreciation. This doesn’t have to be public, but it does need to happen. How does leadership recognize adoption and use of the new tools? How do people on the team share their success? How are those that support others be supported themselves?

A technology champion can be a leader, but they aren’t inherently leaders. They aren’t always aware of the struggles of others. They don’t always see the roadblocks or pitfalls others do. They don’t always use tools or strategies that others see value in. The trick isn’t to adopt everything they try, or to have them lead by trying first. The trick is to harness their lack of fear and innovative spirit, to learn from them, and to figure out who else on the team will be able to find and share success with the same tools.

And finally, who are going to be the resisters? Who on the team will be most likely to struggle? If you know, then you know who to go to, and support, even before the full implementation starts. Help the resisters understand why. Help them see the value. Help them be part of the positive change.

We need the technology champions to bravely challenge the status quo. But, we also need others on the team to help lead the adaption and transformation of the team, of the learning community. That’s not necessarily the job of the technology champion. It’s the job of leadership to recognize who else needs to lead, and who needs to be supported.