Tag Archives: “David Truss”
T.I.C – “This is China” – Midnight Chinese New Year Fireworks
I was in Beijing for New Year’s Eve, December 31st, and midnight came and went without a single firework going off. I looked out my window of the 20th floor and saw one building that had a “Happy New Year” Sign down it’s side… that was it! Last year we were home in Dalian from our holidays on the Saturday after the Chinese New Year, the first set of fireworks went off at 4am, the constant noise of fireworks started at 6am, and I think at about 2:30 in the afternoon I looked at Ann and said, “I think we just went 3 minutes without hearing a firework go off”. Seconds later they started again, and I don’t think we had another 3 minute break until 1am! But, we were not treated to the visual bonanza Heather got at midnight in Beijing on Chinese New Year this year. Thanks to Heather Davis for sharing the video!
T.I.C. – “This is China” – Community
There is a Chinese school right behind ours, and their main entrance to our shared field and school is at the side of our building. It snowed last night and when I walked by their entrance there were about 15 parents and a few older students shoveling the front walk.
Many hands make light work:-) I’m sure there are a few small communities around the world where this could happen, but living in a city of 6 million and seeing this community effort makes my morning!________
*Update: There is more to this story… See the rest on my Pairadimes blog.
Thinking about positive thinking
I’ve been thinking a lot about thinking today. I recalled my sister telling me about a Japanese Scientist who froze either pure or distilled water drops to examine the ice crystals… except that first he treated the water in a special way. He would ‘apply’ thoughts, and words, to the water containers first: things like ‘joy’ and ‘happiness’ or ‘sorry’ and ‘anger’. The results were remarkable! Beautiful patterns with positive thoughts & words, and patternless, blocks or ‘broken’ patterns with negative thoughts & words.
It makes me wonder about all this talk I hear about broken schools and our ‘failure’ to prepare our students for the future? It makes me wonder about all the negative self-talk our media perpetuates… We aren’t pretty enough, we are too fat, we look too old, we aren’t rich enough, we can buy happiness, our future is bleak! How much of this is real, and how much of it is unintentionally willed by our own (weak?) thoughts? If we could accumulate a day’s worth of thoughts and place that on a frozen water sample, what shapes would we get? Beautiful patterns or broken formations? What if we did this for our family, community, city, nation or world? I know what it would look like for every newspaper & news media stream that exists, and find this disturbing… a reason why I avoid the news altogether! There are some amazing things happening in this world. Kindness, generosity and love can be powerful and potent catalysts in changing what our daily thoughts accumulate to. At the end of today, think of what the crystallized accumulation of your daily thoughts would look like. If you see something beautiful, congratulate yourself! If you see something less than beautiful, know that you have the power to change that, and also know that begins with acceptance, not blame… with forgiveness, not anger… with love, not self-loathing. Gandhi was right, we really do need to be the change we want to see in this world. And that starts with our thoughts that drive us. Think good thoughts,Say good words,
Do good deeds.
I don’t do FourSquare but…
Luddite Doctors? Luddite Teachers?
The 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.
Alan November: “Do learning”
We aren’t in the ‘teaching business’, rather we are in the ‘learning business’.
Please help me with my “Parenting in the digital age” presentation!
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.
Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!