Bud the Teacher

    My desk is messy — so is my job.  Susan Ohanian writes in this piece that teaching should be messy — and that we should resist those who want to oversimplify it.  It’s coming up on the end of a very tumultuous year for me — Ohanian’s essay reminds me of why the fight was worth it.
    Take five minutes.  Read.  It’s worth it. 
    Use the time you would have used to straighten up your desk. 

    This morning, after reading Will’s "script" for talking about safety concerns, I realized we’re looking at safety the wrong way.  Hopefully, this story helps.
    Last week, we took our students to the local recreation center for an all-day school-wide retreat.  The focus of the day was to do some community-building.  As part of the day, we allowed the students to use the various resources of the center.  Some staff were in the gym, others were in the swimming pool.  I was at the skate park. My choice.
    Many of my students are skateboarders, and I wanted to see what they could do.  I was blown away.  They knew an awful lot about skateboarding.  I asked to borrow a board and give skating a try (I last used a skateboard in middle school.).  They were more than happy to oblige. 
    What the students got for their kindness was a good laugh as I took two or three immediate spills and then decided that I was done for the day.  We shared a laugh or two, in fact.  I was so glad that we had shared the experience. 
    Then one of my skate-savvy students landed wrong and hurt her wrist (a serious sprain, but no permanent damage).  I was devastated.  In the first few minutes of her injury, when I could tell that she was in pain, I second-guessed every decision that got the students and me within five miles of the skate park. 
    But then I woke up.  Certainly no one would advocate removing students from all future activities involving recreation centers because a few people would be hurt.  If that was the case, schools would have done away with athletic programs years ago.  Too many kids have the potential to get hurt playing sports, don’t they?
    That’s absurd.
    Why, then, do we block websites?
    Bad things might happen.  So might some good ones.  We can’t prevent all harm — but by preventing all use, we can definitely prevent the possibility of future success.   By teaching our students about the risks and how to minimize them, we can prepare them for a world where skate parks — and online  environments — exist. 
    It’s the only reasonable way to go.  Isn’t it?

Dan writes:

Bud,

You’ve told us you used Audacity to record Skype calls. But how?
I’ve tried and failed several times (with a PC running Windows XP). I’d
love to know your secret!

Best,
Dan
(I’m an English Prof in South Dakota who uses blogs - and Audacity - with his students)

It’s a good question.  Unfortunately, Dan, you’re not going to like my answer.  I tried to use Audacity on my PC to record Darren and my conversation — and it didn’t work well at all.  While Audacity has a feature for recording the stereo out of a computer instead of the microphone, the levels are wildly different and hard to regulate. 
    The simple solution, in our case, was to let Darren and his Mac record our discussion.  Apparently, as I’ve been learning from listening to the Daily Source Code on my drive to work, PC sound cards are not the best when it comes to recording.  But Macs are.
    Dangit. 
    So, Dan, it seems that the easy answer is to buy a Mac.  There are other options, though.  Lots of folks have posted their suggestions.  I’m just not sure which one is going to work for my PC.          Anyone else know a universal PC Skype-recording solution?  Darren’s got better things to do than record all of my phone calls. 

Will has written the safety message that every teacher considering blogs in the classroom should read and share with their students.  His concluding remarks are down right inspirational:

Blogs can be wonderful places of learning and connection. They can be places to think, to reflect, to dream and to plan. But like anything else, we all need to learn how to use them effectively, appropriately and safely. We think many of our teachers’ and administrators’ personal blogs provide some great models, and we’d urge you to check some of them out. But we also understand that ultimately, you decide what you do and don’t do in your spaces. We hope you learn to use them well, and if there is anything you think we can do to help accomplish that and to help keep you safe, we hope you let us know.

He concludes by asking what should we tell the parents about safety.  I say we tell them just what we tell the students.  Head on over to his place, though, and tell him what you think. 

    After many delays that taught me a great deal about hosting media and recording audio, I am pleased to share with you the first of three conversations with Darren Kuropatwa, a math teacher and blogger who is discovering with me out here in the edublogsphere.  My goal, in recording our conversations, is to document what we’re learning and to bounce ideas off of one another. 

    Let us know what you think. 

All the show links are available here.

Via the experiment . . .

Michael said this a while ago — and I’ve been meaning to post it since.  It’s too good to forget.
  We were talking about the differences between blogs and online journals.
  He said something like:
 

An online journal is somewhere someone posts their thoughts when they hope that someone will see them.  A blog is where someone posts their thoughts when they hope that someone will think about them.

  It’s a subtle difference — but an important one.  Thanks, Michael.

Susan is an elementary computer specialist in Malaysia.  She’s started blogging with some of her students, and has created some very handy resources to do so.  She’s also been kind enough to post them to our wiki.  Check out her parent letter there, as well as how she uses Blogger to preview the students’ posts before they go "live."  Very cool stuff.

    Is there another repository of resources out there for teachers who are beginning to blog?  I think collecting and sharing these parent letters, permission slips, handouts and other stuff to share really makes a lot of sense.  I guess such a repository is one of the more practical pieces of an Open Source Curriculum that some others have been talking about as of late.  Another piece is a place to offer practical ideas and strategies.  Darren’s set up a fine example of such at his wiki.
   

    Yesterday, in honor of my 100th blog-day, I asked how long it takes for something to become a habit.  I got several comments on the subject, so I thought it was worthy of a bit more attention.  The word habit, it seems, is tricky.
    Specifically, the tension, as I see it, lies somewhere between Nancy’s concern that she doesn’t blog enough:

    I find I am only able to blog every two or three days. I am trying to
not see this as a problem, but I am afraid of getting out of the habit.

    And Steve’s concern about one connotation of "habit."

   

I hope that blogging never becomes just a habit. A habit is something
that you do regularly without thinking. I’d much rather see you not
blog for 5 days and then post something that really makes me think,
versus just every day for five days in a row just because it’s a habit.

    Good points in both cases.  I want to develop a healthy habit (insert happy and positive thoughts here) of checking in, reading and thinking in a transparent way through my blog.  But I never, ever want to use this space in a non-thinking or critically-negligent way.  I agree with Steve that it’s far better to take some time off and come back with something tot say rather than to blog drivel for the sake of keeping my blog fresh.  Steve said it this way at (or is it "on?") his blog:

   

I do have to admit, as much as I love writing and blogging and sharing
and collaborating, I do find it refreshing to take a mental break from
it as well. It may sound crazy, but NOT learning for a few days does
sort of recharge the batteries. I do feel a little out of it. I’m sure
that there have been some amazing things written in the past week which
I missed completely. But that’s alright, there will always be more

    The smiley face, by the way, is his — not mine.  I wouldn’t know how to create one of those things if I wanted to.  And that’s a pretty big if.
    Anyway — Is there a better word than habit?  Practice, maybe, or process?  I want to be a blogger — not a habitual drivel offender.  Mrs. Ris said it best in the comments when she said that blogging "feels right."
      Just wanted to clear that up.

    Spent some time tonight in conversation and collaboration with Darren Kuropatwa, a blogger, high school math teacher, and really neat guy up in Canada.  He and I have been emailing back and forth on the idea of putting together some conversations on blogging and other tech stuff.  Had a great chat about blogs and our classrooms — I did an awful lot of listening (and fiddling with my recording equipment — luckily, his Mac came to our rescue!).
     We’ll be putting the podcast up soon — but we both were so jazzed by the conversation and the potential of all of this technology and what it can do to connect people and facilitate learning — that we couldn’t resist a quick post to share our excitement. 
    Look Listen out for the podcast in the next few days.  In the meantime, go and see what Darren and his students are up to — you’ll be impressed AND you’ll learn a lot.

I can’t make it this year, but maybe next.  Thanks to Mr. Sizer for the link.