Bud the Teacher

  Good Job, Ani. 
  Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher.

  It’s never too early to get your children helping out around the house.  After our twenty or so inches of snowfall — more if you count the massive drifts throughout our neighborhood — we sent Ani, almost two, out with her shovel to get the driveway done.  It only took six hours and two diaper changes.
  (I’m kidding, obviously.  But it was quite a day for snow removal here.  Here’s a link to our "Holiday Blizzard 2006" photos.  Isn’t it great that, thanks to television, every major weather event has a cool-sounding name now?)

    I received a couple of e-mails this week from a gentleman that, unintentionally, caused a bit of a ruckus within my quadrant/corner/big ol’ network-section thingie of the edusphere. 
    This gentleman created some content and, like most folks who create content, wanted other people to see it.  So, he wrote to some people that he thought might be interested and told them about the content he created.  Now, he might be trying to generate traffic, or to share a good thing, but either way, he’s basically created something that he wants to share.
    Nothing wrong there. 
    Maybe it’s because I’ve worked in and around newsrooms for a while, but getting e-mail telling me about stuff is a very common occurrence.  When we would get press release type e-mail in a newsroom, we’d check it out.  If it sounds interesting or useful to ourselves or to our readers, we’d usually put a reporter on the story.  That reporter would check out the release and the information and generate a story from both the release and the fresh information that he or she got from doing some actual reporting.  (That’s pretty much just what Darren’s done.  And the gentleman’s responded with some more helpful information.)
    If it didn’t sound useful (and most press releases didn’t), we ignored the information.  Usually, we ignored it while pushing the delete key.  We certainly never admonished the sender for attempting to share something with us — that was their duty if they thought they had something good. 
    I get a lot of press release-type e-mails because of this blog.  Most go unanswered and unfollowed up, because they don’t really sound all that interesting or useful to me or to my readers.  Some go right up to the blog as a link, if I can verify that I trust the source or the information that I’m being pointed to.   Some get a "Hi.  Who are you?" response.   
    Such stuff comes with the gig.  We need to read our e-mail very carefully and critically.  Sure, maybe a blog post would be a better way to send me a message — but I think e-mail is a better way to target particular folks.  Could people who want me to know stuff notify me that I’m being mass mailed to?  Sure, but usually, I’m able to tell.  When the resource is good, I don’t much care if I’m a target in a mass e-mailing campaign.
    In this case, I’ll let you know that I’ve been listed on this gentleman’s organization’s list of Top 100 Edublogs .  That’s cool — it’s always nice to be noticed.  It’s also always nice to check out other edublogs — there’re a few new ones (to me) on that list.  As for whether or not any wrong was committed by mass e-mailing people to let them know about that list or any other service the site provides, well, I’d say no.
     E-mail away.

PS:  Why did the Infinite Thinking Machine blog make their post on the Top 100 list disappear?  Curious.  Update:  Here’s the cache of the missing post.  Seems innocuous.  Why’d it go away?

    I’ve been tagged into the five things meme by Doug Belshaw.  In a better attempt for you, dear reader, to get to know me better, I’m to "reveal" five things about myself that you otherwise wouldn’t know from reading this blog.  Here goes:

1. I have a twin sister who teaches Kindergarten in the same school district where I work.  In our first year of teaching, five years ago, we had a buddy program where, once a week, my students traveled to her classroom to read and write together.  (And no, we’re certainly NOT identical.)
2. I am a pop trivia, um, freak.  My students and colleagues know this, and, so whenever there’s an essential question involving who played in what movie or sang on what film soundtrack or what the name of that one character’s sister’s dentist was, I get interrupted in class.  I don’t mind, and I actually enjoy being able to come up with an answer, most of the time, on the spot.  One teacher has dubbed this frequent questioning "Stump Bud."  She sometimes keeps score.  Sometimes, students challenge me to tell them whether or not some bit of TV trivia is true.  I was stumped when one student told me recently that MacGyver once fought Sasquatch.  Turns out that’s true. 
3. I dabble in music sometimes, and was the frontman of a band called Clockworked in the late ’90s.  If you need a song to add to your Christmas collection, try this one (iTunes link –   All others click here).  I’m singing lead vocals.  (I don’t receive any money from the purchase of that song or album — it goes to the label and to a local charity.)  I also wrote and recorded the song that my wife and I shared our first dance to.  She was pleasantly surprised.
4. I’m not the handiest guy I know.  But I like the idea of being handy.  I have a love/hate relationship with Home Depot/Lowes-type stores.  I go in amazed by opportunity and potential — and leave empty handed, frustrated by my limited manual dexterity.  It’s entirely possible that I just spent several hours destroying the flat rear tire (and possibly wheel) of my snowblower.  I have the same love/hate relationship with cooking shows, particularly Alton Brown’s Good Eats.
5. I think that This American Life is perhaps the best regular attempt at storytelling on the radio right now.  (Here’s a link to their podcast, in case you aren’t already a listener.)  I’d love to tell stories like this, but I can’t.  Yet.  I love great storytellers like Ira Glass.  I put him on a short list of favorites, people like Garrison Keillor, Charles Kuralt, and Walter Kronkite.  I’d put newspaper columnists Bill Johnson and Lewis Grizzard on that list, too.  I’d love to tell a story as well as these guys do or did.  They tell real stories about real people in amazing and entertaining ways. 

And now, it’s my turn to tag some others.  How about Karl, Cindy, Donna, Josh, and Tom?