Tag Archives: nostalgia

Ashtrays and Newspaper Racks

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If you are Gen X, then at some point in your schooling you probably made your parents an ashtray out of clay. I did, and my parents didn’t even smoke. And if you were in a woodworking class you probably made some sort of newspaper or magazine rack, which was something your parents might have had in your living room. Depending on how good it was, this wooden creation may or may not have been as prominently displayed in your house as the ashtray. But these were a couple ‘practical’ things we made in school ‘back in the day’.

Both my daughters, who went to different middle schools, made gum ball machines out of wood, which used a mason jar to hold the gum balls. And I think for both of them the other option was a birdhouse. These were their versions of ashtrays and newspaper racks.

I bet most kids today will come home from school at some point with a 3D printed keychain. Most houses don’t have ashtrays, or newspapers or even magazines. Most parents wouldn’t know where to go to buy loose gum balls to put in a school made gum ball machine. Times change and so do the crafts students create at school.

Some of the other things students might (and do) create at school these days include: Apps, websites, and online businesses. These are the modern day ashtrays. A bit more practical, and a lot more relevant. That said, I hope kids still get a chance to work with clay and wood. I still want to see art that is 3D but not 3D printed. No one needs a newspaper rack or gum ball machine but bird houses can still be made.

There are cookie-cutter style ‘everyone makes the same design’ kind of bird houses, and then there are versions of the same project which are open to design thinking and personalization. And it really doesn’t have to be a bird house… just a hands-on creation using tools rather than a keyboard. But when I said, “I still want to see art that is 3D but not 3D printed.” I also should have mentioned that I want kids to also 3D print things.

The message of this little, nostalgic visit down memory lane isn’t just to say bring back the old hands-on projects, and do away with the new ones. Rather it’s to say we need both. We need students creating physical crafts, with their hands, at school and we need them designing new digital products with new tools as well. I’d be a bit concerned if kids today came home with ashtrays, but I’d still love to see them producing creative works that involve building and creating physical things with their hands.

I also wonder what the 2050 version of the school made ashtray will be?

Do not go quietly

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16 years ago, January 28, 2008, I shared a presentation I did in with some SFU student teachers. Here is a clunky version on Slideshare. Here is the post I wrote about it. And here is the video I made out of it for a presentation at BLC 08 in Boston.

Do not go quietly into your classroom! 

The video had close to 100,000 views on BlipTV, which died in 2011… like many of the place I shared that you could find me online at the start of the video. A lot of those links are dead now. But this slideshow and video were pivotal in sharing my transformation as an educator who empowered students with technology. I remember the hours I put into timing the slides with the music, and the the relief of finally thinking it was good enough to share.

A day or two before the original presentation to student teachers, I found out I was going to become a Vice Principal. I was inspired to share the things I’d learned and started another blog, “Practic-All – Pragmatic tools and ideas for the classroom.” Where I shared a weekly series called Dave’s Digital Magic. It only lasted for 19 posts, but it was my way to stay plugged into what was going on in classrooms and to have good learning conversations with some of my staff.

So hard to believe this was 16 years ago… And I’m still exploring the Brave New World Wide Web and sharing what I learn along the way.

Ice, fog. and snow

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Before moving to Canada, I had no idea what winter was. Sure, I’d seen it on TV, and I was told snow was cold, but I had no concept of what it was really like. The biggest block of ice I’d ever seen was a block you put in your cooler to make your drinks cold.

I still vividly remember the first time I saw fog, I was 9, and had only been in Toronto a couple months. A dense fog rolled in overnight and on my walk to school I couldn’t see more than 15-18 feet in front of me. Everything was draped in a grey-white void that kept me connected only to the grass field underneath my feet. It was eerie, almost frightening. I couldn’t understand how clouds could take over the world.

Shortly after that I saw my first real snowfall. It was a mind blowing experience to see white puffy snowflakes for the first time.That snowfall was the start of a close friendship with a kid who I threw snow at in the snowball area of our school. It’s funny how some friendships can begin.

Shortly after that, an outdoor hockey rink was put up on the school field less than 1/2 a block from my front door. I went from only ever seeing ice that made drinks cold to borrowing friends skates and having a hockey stick put in my hand. I went home that night with a bruise from my knee to hip… every time I took a shot, I’d topple over and whack my right leg on the ice, with no protection since my arms were fully committed to holding the hockey stick and swinging it.

It’s amazing that I remember this all from 47 years ago. But that’s the way memories work. These were novel first experiences that were at the edge of what I found comprehensible. Whether I was standing in the field of fog, or surrounded by slow-moving snowflakes falling from the sky, or wearing metal blades on my feet to travel across ice, I was in awe of the experience I was having. How did this little kid from a tropical island end up experiencing these things?

Small moments that left a lifetime of memories.

Paper maps

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I remember driving from Toronto Ontario to Phoenix Arizona over 3 days with only paper maps. That’s over 3,500 kilometres of travel before the era of ‘Sat Nav’ and GPS. A wrong turn wasn’t met by auditory instructions to turn around, or automatic rerouting. No, it was followed by being oblivious until you saw a highway sign that told you that you are on the wrong road, or looking for the name of an exit you saw, only to realize it’s on a different highway.

You’d drive into a city at night and then start looking for a hotel. No google searches or cell phones to call anywhere in advance. No instructions to get back on the highway unless you asked at the front desk.

But it was usually the last 5-10 kilometres that were the toughest. Highways are well labeled on maps, but side streets are a whole other story. You could spend 4 hours traveling at the maximum speed limit and make great time, only to flounder in the last few minutes and spend 20 minutes lost and frustrated.

I remember being lost in a suburban community with my wife once and we gave up, just deciding to follow another car out of the maze of houses we were in… only to be disappointed when he turned into his driveway. We were quite embarrassed after circling the cul-de-sac and the person we followed was standing outside his car wondering who we were and why we followed him?

It was a different time, and one I’m not yearning to repeat. I’m happy to have Waze or Google Maps take all the mystery out of driving somewhere I’ve never been before. I am glad my daughters don’t have to navigate with a paper map, although they will never know the joy of driving over the paper crease where you folded the map, leaving a section that you spent hours driving through. Unfortunately phones can be as big or bigger a distraction than a paper map, but make no mistake, when it came to trying to read a paper map, your attention was definitely not on the road.

We are over the fold now, never to return to the era of paper maps. There are no creases on a digital map, no more folding, unfolding, and refolding. No more getting totally lost with no clue what to do next. We can always have a little voice telling us that we are rerouting, and always have a digital line we can follow.

Blast from the past

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Yesterday I went to a friends house. I knew he was trying to gather some old friends I haven’t seen in a while, but did not expect to see so many, including 6 people I haven’t seen in over 25 years. To put this in a bit more perspective, of these six, the oldest is 49, so I hadn’t seen them in more than half their lifetimes.

They were all from my water polo coaching career, and I knew them all as high school students, when I worked at a highschool as lifeguard as well as swim and water polo coach, and also coached a club team that many of them played on. Reminiscing was so much fun! It was shocking to me how young some of these (almost 50 year old) ‘kids’ looked. It was a delight to hear about their families, and lives since I knew them.

I find it wonderfully heartwarming that I can meet someone I haven’t seen in so long and yet it’s almost like no time has passed since we last met. Sports does that, they build a comradery among players and coaches that can last a lifetime.

Those 6 were not the only people gathered. There were several others who were there whom I haven’t seen since before covid, and so while the gap wasn’t that long, it was still amazing to spend time with them.

I marvel that so much time has passed since my coaching days… since I trained and coached with these dedicated, young athletes. They were my extended family. They still feel that way. That so much time can pass and yet I feel so connected, is very special.

This gathering is something I’ll remember for a very long time… and hopefully it won’t be another 25 years before I see them all again.

Post card from a train

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I’m on a Go Train heading to visit a buddy. He offered to pick me up but it would be about an hour and a half each way, and only a 30 minute walk for me to get to the train and less than 5 minutes for him to get me from there. So, I’m on a train heading to his place.

I bought the ticket online, and it has a live countdown showing how long it’s valid for on my phone’s browser:

I just finished listening to a podcast that comes out of Great Britain, and now I’m publishing a blog post to readers from as nearby as Toronto and Texas to far away countries like the Philippines and China… and probably a few more in the Vancouver Lower Mainland.

I’m travelling on a technology developed in the late 1700’s to transport people and freight, while simultaneously connecting to the world with late 1900’s technology. It makes we wonder, will there still be trains in the late 2100’s? I think so. They might be hovering on a superconductive rail, traveling at high speeds with zero cost to run them, but there will still probably be people regularly travelling by train. They will probably still be roughly the same size too. After all, they will likely still use the same infrastructure and track routes that are laid down.

In many ways, trains are like post cards from the past. No, in fact that’s a terrible analogy, because post cards are almost never sent anymore, yet trains persist. I’m writing a kind of post card now. I’m on a train, that is using tracks laid before I was born, but my version of a post card is a relatively new novelty… I can share words, images, videos, and even sounds if I want. I can ask an artificial intelligence to create an image to go with this post card, and share an image of my ticket. And no stamp is required, no waiting for postal delivery.

So in true post card fashion I’ll sign off by saying,

Love to all, and hope to see you soon, XOXOXO

Family from far away

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Tonight we visited with my mom’s brother and family while they are in town. I saw them just before COVID, with 2 of their now 3 grandkids. Before that short visit, it had been over a decade since I’d seen them all. I also met some of my aunt’s siblings and one of their kids, now a full adult. I hadn’t seen him for over 30 years. I remember playing with him and his sister when they used to vacation in Barbados, my childhood home where my uncle and aunt, and their son and family still live.

It was so wonderful to reconnect. To reminisce, and catch up, and just be in the presence of distant family. There were times when we were all so loud, with kids being louder in the background that it was hard to hear the conversation. But instead of being a distraction, it was a reminder of family gatherings at my grandparents, where we had regular get togethers for dinner, in a large 2-bedroom condominium. For those dinners we’d have at least 20 and sometimes 30+ people filling the place.

I remember the first time I took my wife to one of these gatherings, it was absolutely overwhelming for her. She grew up with just her siblings and parents, with her closest relatives, her grandfather, living an 8-hour drive away. To her it was chaos, while to me it was a typical Friday night.

Tonight was a reminder of those gatherings. It was a reminder of how blessed my grandparents were to always be surrounded by loving family. It was a reminder that while geography can keep us apart, family are a treasure to spend time with.

Communication gap

A decade ago I had a digital network that was pretty amazing. There were educators from many distant places, across Canada, the US, and the world, who I knew through Twitter conversations and conferences. This network was pretty amazing, and while we were seldom, if ever, in the same geographical location, I felt connected to these people.

But Twitter changed and I changed. I ended up not participating in this network nearly as much, and the gap between conversations with these people widened. Sure I still consider these people I met through rich conversational exchanges friends, but I don’t chat with them like I used to. I don’t know them like I used to.

It’s easy to get nostalgic and want the old connections back, but the network isn’t as easy to maintain. The conversations don’t seem to be as rich in learning opportunities. The value for time ratio seems lower. But I do miss those deep learning opportunities, the long blog posts with 15-25 comments, and the subsequent Twitter dialogue that continued the learning.

The connections I miss were rooted in learning conversations. Conversations that I might now have in person, but seldom have online. I don’t engage in online conversations like I used to. I auto post this blog to Twitter, LinkedIn, and a Facebook page, and then I really only go on those networks to respond to comments but I don’t go to them for conversations… unless someone responds to my post, then I respond back.

That’s not the way I used to engage. I used to read and respond, I used to question and compliment. I used to actively seek out conversation and connections. So, while social media has changed, so have I. I’ve started seeking videos to learn from, not conversations. I’ve moved to searching for content and viewing, rather than using Twitter like Google, asking questions and letting my network help me.

I miss the conversations that used to happen, but I don’t imagine I’ll ever rebuild what I had. The effort seems too great at this point, and even the people I see still making those connections tend to be ones who travel and maintain those relationships with face-to-face connections… the relationships purely connected by social media network engagement just don’t seem to be there anymore. It’s not a mutual relationship, but a network of influencers and followers, not friends.

Perhaps that will change in the future but for now I see a gap in the way conversations happen online compared to how they used to happen, and I don’t see a social media network that is changing this any time soon.

Family gatherings

A week ago we celebrated my daughter’s 21st birthday. This weekend we celebrated my father-in-law’s 90th birthday, and the engagement of my niece. It’s wonderful to gather and celebrate these milestones. Next month I will be travelling across the country to visit my parents and sisters. While we won’t be celebrating anything specific, we will have an opportunity to spend time together.

As a kid I spent almost every Friday night at my grandparents with aunts, uncles, and cousins. Now every gathering is planned weeks and even months in advance. The spaces in between visits, gatherings, and special events seem wide. Nobody ‘drops by’ to say ‘Hi’, there is no “I was in the neighbourhood’ visits, no last minute invites for dinner.

Distances apart play a role in this distancing between gatherings, but so do changing norms. Maybe it’s time to rethink the way things have changed. A spontaneous dinner invite, a visit between meals that requires no extra work. A phone call to say, “what are you doing for the next couple hours’ followed by a visit.

Gathering with family and friends could be done far more often, with far less work and preparation. It just takes a little spontaneity, and an attitude that time spent together is too valuable to wait for special occasions.

Milestones

Today my youngest turns 21. It sounds so cliche to ask ‘Where does the time go?’ And yet it feels like a legitimate question.

One day you are bringing a bundle of joy home from the hospital… The next you are making sounds for them to repeat.

First steps, first time on a bicycle, first time without training wheels, first big fall from a bicycle.

First day of school, first day of middle school, high school, university.

Thousands of firsts, thousands of milestones, skipping past as fast as a skipping rock across a pond.

The firsts may come farther apart now, but they are to be cherished. Each ripple, a new moment, a new milestone, a new memory.