Tag Archives: daily-ink

The story of an ebook thief

Dear eBook Publisher,

I read 'Book 1' of a great series from a great author and thought… 'Wonderful! I want to read the next book! 

I wanted to read these digitally on my ereader, as I'm heading on holidays and don't want to lug around bulky books. I went online, found the books in my favourite ebook store and clicked "add to cart":

"Warning: The eBook you just added to your cart has geographic rights restrictions. The billing country indicates that you do not have the right to purchase this eBook due to restrictions by the Publisher of the eBook." 

I really WANTED TO PAY for, and read this book… I really did. So I tried another online ereader seller and guess what? I can't buy it there either. 

I shared this frustration with a friend and he was on his computer, typing as we spoke. Moments later in the discussion he asked me, "Do you want all 4 books in the series?"

"I just need the last 3."

"Done! Do you have a zip drive?"

"Yes, here it is."

And so, dear ebook publisher, your restrictions lost you a sale, not on one, not on two, but on 3 books that I would have been very happy to pay for. Instead, my friend 'found' a copy online.

Why does it matter where I live… take my money… please.

Kind regards,
An avid reader. 

ps. I notice that the author provided an address at the end of the first book. I think I'll send him some money as thanks, thus just leaving you out of the equation, but giving the author, the artist, his well-deserved payment.

I don’t do FourSquare but…

…I’m pretty happy about these squares! 

We have a huge surprise planned for our kids and I’ve got my phone loaded with more books than I can read. 4 weeks off, then I’ve got a 4 day work-week when I return before heading to the flat classroom conference where I finally get to meet Kim Cofino, Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis and many more amazing educators. But before that happens, I’ve got to work my way through a few mango shakes… life is good! 

Feb-2011-holidays

Luddite Doctors? Luddite Teachers?

Imagine if a doctor’s first instinct was to ban new technology from hospitals…

Imagine if a educator’s first instinct was to ban new technology from schools…

Miss_management
4408321697_6f7bbd9aaa_b

See the full gallery on Posterous

Ellyn Schaffner said, on twitter, about this Warning poster: 
“http://flic.kr/p/7HxNsv @datruss Read your poster again this morn and thought about how it needs revamping to include handheld web devices”

I think filtering and a ban on handheld devices are two separate ideas, but the cartoon above shows my thoughts on banning technology. I would love to see someone put both ideas together into one cohesive poster or cartoon, but my creative juices just aren’t flowing at 4:30am this morning. 🙂

This cartoon by RRMurry on bitstrips makes an insightful comment related to both ideas:

Related posts: 
• Is the tool an obstacle or an opportunity? (older version of the Miss Management cartoon)
• The POD’s are Coming! BLC09 (POD’s – Personally Owned Devices)

 

The MASTER of LIVING

James-a-michener-master-of-living

This quote seems very Zen Buddhist to me and I think the image goes well with it. I don’t think this is about blending work and play, I think it’s about finding joy in everything you do, and if your work is also a joy, then it isn’t something you clock in and out of. I’m interested in what others think of this quote?

Photo, ‘Behind Buddha’, taken at the Famen Temple near Xi’an, China.

Give a man a fish…

Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll overfish for profit and diminish supply at an alarming rate, teach a man to learn and to critically access a network of all human knowledge and he just might contribute to a solution to over-fishing or to feeding the 7 billion people on this planet.

I came up with this fun little adaptation of an old metaphor in a comment on Will Richardson’s blog post: ‘A new culture of learning‘… thought I’d share it here too:-)

Alan November: “Do learning”

Alan-november-tweet

Forgot that I had made a screen shot of this until I decided to clean up my desktop, (which at the time looked very much like Alan’s when he presents:-)

This goes well with my recent pairadimes post: 

We aren’t in the ‘teaching business’, rather we are in the ‘learning business’.

…and yes, Alan, we aren’t in the technology business either! 

Please help me with my “Parenting in the digital age” presentation!

This is a humble request for help!

In early June of last year I created this presentation and wiki (details below). The sessions went well and now I’ve been asked to present again. This time the audience is Chinese parents and I have a translator. My slide show is heavily text based because I tried to make it work as a ‘stand-alone’ presentation to support the wiki without me presenting,
(I even added presentation notes to the slideshare if you view it on their site).

…As a result, I am feeling like I almost have to start over before getting this translated.
…Furthermore, I feel like there are definite Western biases to the things I say.
…And finally, there are things that I wanted to add to improve this anyway such as:
• More multi-cultural examples
• Links to creative work done by students (outside of school)
• Include a video of a kid while he is in the role of a World of Warcraft guild master
• More advice and strategies for dealing with kids that are addicted to (or at least highly consumed by) video games – (What strategies work to deal with this?)
Any suggestions or examples would be greatly appreciated!

Be honest, be critical, be brutal if you need to be… just please offer suggestions to help me strip this down to the essentials before I get it translated.
(I’m presenting next week Tuesday:-)
– – – – – – – – – –

 

For this presentation I created a wiki: http://raisingdigitalkids.wikispaces.com/

These were the learning intentions:
  • Examine children’s use of technology
  • Increase awareness of the potential challenges around technology use
  • Learn practical, proactive parenting strategies to maintain connections with children using the media they are using.
  • Learn how to guide children in appropriate and safe interactions on the Internet.
  • Find support and resources to better understand these issues

A key part of the presentation is the handout called ‘Engaging with kids‘.  It is made up of a series of questions based on the presentation, but not necessarily in the presentation. The point is asking questions and finding the right balance or ‘fit’ for each family rather than offering any kind of prescribed answers.

via pairadimes.davidtruss.com

Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!

7 Billion is a BIG Number

via youtube.com

This reminds me of ‘The Miniature Earth’ that I shared here: http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/caring-across-the-curriculum/

I wonder what 7 billion grains of sand or rice would look like or weigh?

The biodiversity game on the site is also a great conversation starter: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/biodiversity-game

So are the photos: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/seven-billion/olson-photography ~Very powerful!

Balance and a river of information

Almost 2 years ago now, I had to seriously shift my attitude around online information. I was gullibly trying to read every tweet in my ’stream’ and diligently trying to keep my unread items on Google Reader at a handful. I saw these as pools of information and I wanted to hold on to the information that came into the pool. It was too much. The shift for me was seeing information as a river. Now, I’ll paddle along the stream, but when I get out, I don’t feel the need to pay attention to the stream of information that goes by. It has been liberating.

The key is finding balance rather than being inefficient as I tried to demonstrate in this 4 slide presentation I did for a Connectivism course:


That was the first assignment for the course and it helped me decide to drop out of the course as I tried to seek balance.

I think I’ve made a few points, but if I could make one more it would be that my life still lacks balance and I still spend too much time online… but 3 years ago I would have ‘wasted’ that same amount of time, or more, watching TV. In the wise words of the Comedy Network’s tag-line… to me my online life is ‘Time well wasted’.

via a comment I made on weblogg-ed.com – ‘The Choices We Make’

~ The idea behind a post I’ve written in my head about 50 times… some day I’ll really expand on this idea on my Pairadimes blog.

The original post for the slide presentation is here: Connectivism, Relationships and Balance. But it is in the comments that the ideas behind the presentation really came out. 

Will Richardson ‘Almost Live’

So it didn’t quite work as planned, but then things seldom do.

I started to watch a recorded Will Richardson presentation and he had a backchannel going. I went to the link, but it had expired. I thought to myself, ‘wouldn’t it be great to start a new chat with some people and have our own backchannel conversation while we watched!’

 I decided to go on Twitter and invite others to join in and watch Will ‘Almost Live’ (#WillAlmostLive) with me. Patrick Larkin in Burlington, MA, USA joined me, Beth RG popped in, and Shannon Smith from Ottawa tried to join us. It was bad timing since although it was 8:30pm here in China, it was the start of a work day back in North/South America, and 11:30pm in Australia, where I seem to have most of my connections. 

Will Richardson said on Twitter: “@bhsprincipal @datruss Let me know what I say. ;)” – It would have been great to actually have him join the back-channel though I’m not sure I’d want to relive my own presentations in that way. 

Problems arose: Although I pre-loaded the video, (my connection here is painfully slow), it still stopped at about the 11 minute mark with over an hour to go. I couldn’t get the video to reload, and Patrick couldn’t get the slide show on Google documents. 

Solutions: Patrick Skyped me in and I copy-pasted quotes and points into the backchannel chat. I listened to Will Richardson’s Minnesota presentation from China, via a Skype call from Massachusetts, while Patrick in Massachusetts was getting the content of the presentation from China. 

We typed rather than talked so that we could listen to Will. We still had a good backchannel conversation. Although it wasn’t quite as planned, it was enjoyable to share in the learning. 

I still think this is a good idea. Why not run a conference session after the conference session? It’s far more engaging to have the backchannel running and sharing thoughts and ideas with digital colleagues. 

Asynchronous to the actual event, but synchronized to other learners. An ‘Almost Live’ presentation.