america as a nation reduces expectations of self

Obama Drastically Scales Back Goals For America After Visiting Denny’s

in all the chatter about slam poets

i never did embed the saul williams poems i was talking about early in the year.  so here it is…

he has also teamed up with trent reznor and gone on tour promoting an album they created together, which is interesting cause i never expected trent reznor and saul williams to be two people that would work together.  but who knew?  either way they’ve put this together, which you may recognize from some nike ads not too long ago.  it’s called ‘list of demands‘ and they’ve disabled the embed option so you’ll have to click and chase it a bit.  here’s the nike ad and you can hear a minute of the song in it…

i’ve got a list of demands too, don’t you?

so i guess i forgot..

to write about my reflection on social learning.  first off i was doubtful about how well this class would work; i mean, i’ve never taken a class online before or even considered taking any sort of computer course whatsoever.  But it was the social aspect of the shared challenge – technological newness, blogging, online tools – that allowed for an  exchange of ideas and discoveries to push one another on to learn together.  It was a nice environment. Normally in a class you don’t get to see anyone’s work, never mind progress.  But in this class when someone figured something out, we could all learn from it.  That’s a major difference between the classic university course – everyone for him/herself – vs this one – everyone for him/herself but building off of each other’s successes.

The class wiki was one component that could have been fleshed out as a group a little more, but i think the limitations of the shortened class combined with the reading load and the summer format changed how much time we all had to contribute.  But that’s not to say that even with our limited contributions to it one couldn’tsee how a class wiki would be great.  I’m not adding any links in this post cause i’m lazy but i think we have all seen some great examples of successful class wiki’s during the course of our mentoring and examples provided by dean and other guest lecturers. And of course, one last point about the success of social learning in regards to group wikis: how many times did i use our wetpaint site to find email addresses, due dates, tech tasks, blog addresses, links from our elluminate sessions (thaaaaanks aaaaambeeeerr) etc etc etc….  totally invaluable and for the most part equally generated between professor and students.

one last thing i’d like to mention is how strange it was to see everyone at our real life classes in regina.  We were all so quiet and hesitant to talk – that wasn’t the case during our elluminate sessions.  real life was weird.  Elluminate life was open, and i felt compelled to comment in our class chat in ways i wouldn’t have even considered during our face to face meetings.   imagine larissa and i getting loud during class about 911 in a classroom while the prof is teaching and a guest lecturer is presenting!  not going to happen.  But in the online environment it is a possibility.  And that may not be the most positive example but the point remains true: an online class was to my surprise easier to contribute in than a “normal” class.  interesting, no?

so to finish off i’d just like to thank everyone for making this class a great experience and for posting helpful how-to videos and links.  And for creating really compelling and interesting reading via your blogs.  also i’m not sure how many of you were reading dean’s blog but there are some interesting ideas being discussed by educators from all over the country and beyond.  and some funny stuff too.   so again thanks to everyone for a creating an awesome social learning environment and making this summer (ugh) class as enjoyable as possible.

My future classroom…

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that i’m never going to be a heavily technical sort of teacher.  Well not in a technological sense anyway…  I am still an old school believer in establishing fundamental artistic skills as a basis of expression, rather than the sort of expression first b.s. that was dominant during my first round of university.  As such my ideal classroom is a nice big  high school art room with access to a kiln and (at least) four sweet macs for photoshopping/editing work and (after seeing possiblities emerge during this class) for editing movies.  Definitely some of the tools that work for me are blogs (my own and student blogs where they can upload and share their work and their ideas/intent behind whatever it is they’re doing); google docs/forms/presentations/etc for assiting with student interaction; and of course  plenty of youtube tutorials (i’m thinking of grade elevens/twelves making videos of techniques learned throughout their time spent in my art class, which could be useful for upcoming grades and other students around the world).

The ability to network with people from everywhere via the internet/web/some-other-less-used-term is a huge plus for any classroom.  Doing a unit on Japanese style pen and ink work?  Why not try and get in contact with someone in Japan or wherever who could do a better job of teaching some tips and tricks to the students than myself (i’m no painter).  And with youtube or skyping being viable options the students will be actually watching and doing the work with instructors from (again) everywhere.  Just the interest such an endeavor creates in the students would be well worth the effort.

As far as concepts i want my students to understand… difficult question.  I want them to understand that some cliches are stupid (e.g. you’re an individual snowflake) and others are absolutely true (e.g. the world is at your fingertips).  Assisting students in developing stronger online identities is a must (whatever my previous posts might suggest i am in no way against developing an online identity – i am just saying we should all still have a choice) and obviously my future students are going to be light years ahead of me in social networking abilities.  What i would not do is limit them in utilizing that ability to further their educational development.  Of course monitoring blogs (especially when as a teacher you are encouraging interaction between students online) will be a difficult and probably sometimes downright ugly task, given the rise of online-bullying.  But i’ll cross that immense hurdle when i slam into it.  That said, i don’t think the fear of any online ugliness should dissuade teachers from taking advantage of technology; not to mention the fact that it’s going to happen anyway you look at it so you might as well be aware of how things work and not just bury your head in the sand.

Lastly, i’m definitely going to try and go paperless (textbook-wise) in my classrooms – if you haven’t checked out Michael Kaechele’s student blog you should for the video there. And as he says, going paperless is not about saving paper…

final project

So for our final project Karen and i collaborated and created something that would be useful as part of our mentoring component as well as useful for getting us some final project marks.  We were working with Jared Nichol out of Cold Lake, Alberta and his grade nine students who were just getting their feet wet with poetry.  As it turns out two of my friends are poets; Dan S Tysdal is a published poet and lecturer from the University of Toronto and Patrick Swan is a slam poet who has performed all over Canada.  The trick was to somehow create some interaction between the poets and the students that would get the students excited and keep the poets interested.  Of course all of this was limited by our (mine and Karen’s) ability to work in an online environment.  In the end we went with what we knew: the google form allowed us to get questions from the students that they would like directed to the writer and performer (you can also read the student responses); and youtube just requires a video.

Now that we had a way of allowing the students to take control of what information they were going to get from the poets we had to get the poets to respond to the questions.  We decided to accomplish this via a youtube short.  We planned originally to make a ten minute video of the two responding to the student questions but the questions we received were too good and the responses too interesting to edit it down and ended up making three short videos.  You can watch the first one right now

and link to the other two here(#2) and here(#3).  Jared even had his students write some poetry in a style Dan employed wherein you highlight words already present in text and create a sort of poetic subtext within the chosen quote.  Jared also said that the students loved the enthusiasm Patrick brings to poetry and his presentational style (though occasionally raw and often crass) had the students actually enjoying grade nine poetry class!

This project definitely gives me an appreciation of how creating work online and taking advantage of networking would assist me as a teacher one day. Jared and his students could have been half the world away and everything would have worked just as effectively.  Also youtube is a great way to allow a greater depth of interaction between people; being able to see and hear someone goes a lot farther than just reading what they have written for you.

what a week (self-indulgent post)

so it’s the evening before our big day of set-up for our wedding, and when we run out to the car the battery is totally dead.  (our alternator belt had broke a few weeks ago and our poor battery had been suffering ever since, but still – the night before set-up?).  but that was fine, a little delayed the next day but we were able to recover.  but then we had yet to totally get our music sorted out; we had planned on doing our own music just on our computer by making a big playlist and buying some songs we wanted but didn’t have from itunes.  no problem.  in fact my brother-in-law brought his hard drive down from calgary and it contained 15,000 songs (needless to say they weren’t all from itunes) so we were well equipped to dj our own wedding. after several late nights getting that sorted out, we go to bed the night before the big day as ready as possible…

next morning the computer doesn’t work.  won’t even turn on.  in the end i didn’t even tell amy because she would have freaked from the stress.  luckily some computer guys at intrex took pity on my relatively panicked call that morning and sorted the whole thing out for us.  apparently it was a fried video card.  but seriously all of our music and countless hours of work gone and then back again all in the morning of our wedding??  they do say things will go wrong  no matter how you plan…

then today was my 100 year family reunion because the original homestead has had Wolfater offspring living on it now for over one hundred years (the Wolfaters are on my mom’s side) and of course they did a bunch of family history research.  i’ve thought my entire life that my mom’s whole side was german.  but apparently we’re austrian and prussian and even a touch of russian so it’s all close but still not exactly german (especially the russian part!)  oh and my great uncle (maybe great-great uncle?) went to high school with babe ruth and apparently they used to “chum around”.  so yeah interesting stuff.  i like how one’s proximity to celebrity (even when it’s generational) becomes mention-worthy.

married!

so i’ve been out of the loop for a couple days and i see everyone’s been posting up a storm.  funny thing with the blogging – if you fall behind you’ve got a lot of reading to do to catch up.

the wedding went great, everything that could go wrong and more went wrong but we still managed to pull it together without a hitch.  because i’ve been posting about public versus private i won’t be providing pictures (what’s more personal than the day you were married?!!) but thanks so much to everyone who wished us well…

“private” people are…

…posting tons of personal pictures to their facebook account and essentially cyber stalking old classmates.  and being cyber stalked.  strange world hey?  **warning – there’s only one hyperlink on this huge post so you can stop reading now if you need the hypertext to keep things interesting.  **warning two – if you are a potential employer checking me out and this post came up know that i hate you and don’t want your stinking job anyway.  discard resume.  or probably just press delete.

so we are all nervous about employers checking us out and finding some dirt online and – god forbid – not hiring us for that job we wanted oh so badly.  i’m gonna go ahead and straw-man this argument for a bit and then get to the heart of the matter.

there are two ways i look at this.  the first: i say good, go dig up some s*** and don’t hire me.  there is no way that i would want to work for an employer who thinks checking my profile online is the end-all be-all of employee recruitment.  guess what?  i have a resume.  i can also talk, believe it or not.  and i’m pretty sure you can navigate your way to the top of my resume and figure out how to use that oh-so ancient piece of equipment called a telephone and actually schedule a time to talk to me face to face.  if any of the above doesn’t sound like an option to you (even if you are an employer who i have applied to right now in internet-forever-time and this right here is the dirt you have dug up) i don’t care.  if this colours your opinion in any way it should be that you can expect at all times absolute honesty from me.

i can’t believe that right there i was actually directing a conversation at someone reading this in the future.  and this is the insanity that this type of paranoia brings: you should absolutely not act as if you are on candid camera at all times (as dean’s quote suggested) even if you are.  i honestly can’t imagine a worse scenario for the future than all people at all times acting as if their boss is looking at them through the peep-hole of someone else’s camera phone.  if that same boss or potential employer or whatever was actually behind a wall looking through a little hole at me during my stag night (for example) and then confronted me about something he saw through said hole i would quit my job and break someone’s nose (possibly in reverse order).  but suddenly it IS ok to do the same through technological means.  look, i don’t doubt that this is a new reality but this is an issue that is created and governed by the actions of people – and WE are people.  don’t give in to this type of hyper-paranoia, and don’t contribute to it.  if you want to check some dude out online to get a taste of his lifestyle or whatever you will probably learn something, so don’t be an idiot and post weird pictures of yourself that night you were ______________.  essentially don’t divorce your actions from common sense.  but fearing these things is ridiculous – do you feel actual paralyzing fear every time you get behind the wheel of a car?  even though statistically you will actaully die or at least be horribly maimed a thousand times compared to the odds of someone finding that picture of the time you sneezed and accidentally head-butted your son and then not hiring you because they think you’re some kind of child abuser.  that sentence is clumsy but funny enough to warrant keeping.

the second thing i think about this is that we have personal lives and private lives.  and we do not at any time – as people here, remember (not employees/employers/consumers/citizens/etc.) but actual people thinking and making decisions – we do not need to participate in this sort of act.  just don’t do it.  stop your cyber stalking on facebook or google or whatever.  seriously how many of you went home and started googling people you know just to see what came up?  there’ s the basis of your fears in action – people doing to you what you do willingly to them.  take a stand.  delete the 100 people you don’t care about from your facebook account and keep the 20-30 that you actually make contact with.  like meaningful contact.  stop googling people.  and stop fearing being googled.  i remember that link to an article dean sent us at the beginning of the year said people who constantly check their email and update their status and monitor their various online contributions test at a lower iq than people who are actually high on marijuana.  so please at least have the balls to stand up to someone who outed you on google and say “society! i draw a line around my private life and my family here, here, here.  do not cross line or i will ___________ (fill in blank according to what your personality type or temperament allows).

of course your other option is to pepper the interworld with positive things about yourself so the possible (possible!) negative is well covered in a fuzzy blanket of self-perpetuated goodness.

puke.

like k’naan? how about somali pirates…?

k’naan speaking to the pirate issue in somalia.

the only podcast i follow…

…is Q with Jian Ghomeshi.  You can find the podcast here.  This show is great because Jian keeps you up to date with new music from across Canada and all over the world, plus he interviews all sorts of people from a wide and diverse range of interests and ideas.  The show itself is well paced and upbeat, with a nice mix of music and interviews.  Every friday he has live guests in his huge studio who play throughout the show.  As a primer here’s this hilarious video of Billy Bob Thornton (who is a total jackass) – they also film Q and it airs on CBC’s Bold tv and on youtube.

that’s probably not the best example of the show because thornton is such a jerk.  Here’s another of my favourites with Somalian-Canadian rapper K’Naan.  Check this one out, i love this guy.

and catch one of his songs.

working with the 50 tools

So i created my story in photoshow, and i have to say – pretty nice tool.  The restrictions for members who use the site for free are a bit limiting, but i think you can make some pretty decent stuff without shelling out a cent.  And once you start using the tool it is very, very easy.  Also they allow you to import your photos straight from flickr, which is sweet.  One problem i had though was embedding this into my blog.  The site provides you with a link once you’re done and if you click on my provided link it’ll ask you at the end if you’d like to embed it.  Unfortunately neither has worked.  This must be a consistent problem because Alan Levine doesn’t have his example embedded either.

The classroom implications… well, i think this would be a great tool for the classroom especially gievn its ease of use.  Even very young students could use it and make something pretty interesting.  The real advantage here (as far as using it in a classroom goes) would be the fact that you can make something pretty slick-looking with just a bunch of digital photos.  So any kind of class outing or project could be documented and then constructed into something watchable and accessible to/for the students.

In any case, I made this project sort of in response to a TED talk i watched recently wherein the speaker (who i mentioned a couple posts ago – James H. Kunstler - check it out) was talking about how poorly we create our public space these days.  Moose Jaw is a prime example.  There is no reason whatsoever to design the new areas in this town as horribly as we/”they” have.  It’s digusting, especially when compared to the older, established areas.  But it isn’t just a matter of the trees not having had a chance to grow yet – I’m talking acres of land turned into parking lots.  But before i rant on for too long, just watch the show and let me know what you think.

me in four

so this is my version of the four photos that show who i am.  i imagine i would use this as one component of an application for another contracting job rather than as part of my harvard application, but i think it works ok…

this is a portion of what i spent six months doing last year

new fixed version.  click on the image to see it larger.

more TED talks

i’ve been watching about a million TED talks and definitely have some favourites.  i’m going to add two more to my blog just because i’ve been telliing everyone i know to watch this or watch that so i might as well just go one step further and provide them right here.  plus then i can say “just go to my blog and check them out.”

schools killing creativity

and another of my favourites, shai agassi’s plan to give us the electric car:

so there you go.

TED Talk

so i went and watched the TED recomendation made by Chelsea H about growing your own air.   It’s only four minutes long if you want to watch it here.

I was particularly interested in this talk because i have many household plants but not any of the three that are mentioned specifically.  I am also a huge proponent for tropical plants to be kept indoors; especially in public places such as the university.  I’m pretty sure there are mother-in-laws tongue in that glass hallway between the education building and the riddell centre.

What i appreciated about the talk was that Kamal Meattle spoke of the study done by his group which found that in the building he describes in India (a huge 50,00 square foot building) where there are 1200 plants and only 300 occupants there was a noticeable reduction in all sorts of common afflictions such as headaches and asthma.   I’ve always said that plants make a difference but never actually had any proof, you know? But finally there’s a 15 year long study been done to prove it.  Having more nature around makes good sense and Meattle does a great job of presenting his information concisely and provided a good amount of  easy to comprehend slides/images.

I also watched another talk about how crappy our architectural landscape is in north america; the speaker – James H. Kunstler – relates this horribly designed environment to our disrespect for our surroundings.  Be warned – the speaker uses strong language and talks insensitively about subject matter that may be be considered sensitive to some of you out there.  If you’re still interested you can find it here.

I love two aspects of this presentation: one, Kunstler speaks unapolagetically and passionately about how degradated our shared spaces have become; and two, at the end of the presentation he says directly to the audience “Stop referring to yourselves as consumers.  Consumers are different than citizens.  Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings”.  I think we hear all too often the term consumer thrown around to describe people – like us, you, me.   That’s probably something simple that should stop.  Kunstler may come off as pompous, angry and self-important but the points made in this talk are valid and worth thinking about.

My summer job

This summer as i mentioned before i am working at the moose jaw museum and art gallery.  What i am doing specifically is running a program for students aged 3-18 which runs from July 1st through to the end of August.  Each week is designed around a specific theme which is based on an era or period of art (for example Egyptian art or the Middle Ages).   This is an awesome program for children or older students who enjoy art and want to have some fun this summer working on a variety of projects.  Our facility has a kiln so each group will definitely have a chance to work with clay but i need to come up with tons of fun projects that will keep everyone busy all week.  Each day is broken into a morning and afternoon session and each session is three hours long – needless to say, that’s a lot of projects!  You can help me out if you have a great idea for any of the themes by filling out my form. 

The teen program is sort of separate from the themed programs for younger children and will allow the students to work with a professional photographer, a professional airbrush artist, a ceramicist and myself (i have a sculpture background).  The morning program will focus on traditional arts (portrait drawing, sculpture, clay, printmaking).  The afternoon program we’re calling Lo-tech/Hi-tech and the students will work directly with the photographer and airbrush artists as well as myself with a focus on combining lo-tech techniques with hi-tech technology.

I know some of you have kids and many of you are from moose jaw so you if you could help spread the word about this program and/or possibly consider enrolling your kids in the courses i would really appreciate it.  The fees for each week are about $60 and that includes a snack and all the materials they need.  Not bad. 

If i did a poor job explaining the program or you want some more information let me know in the comment section below and i’ll either answer your questions or edit this post to make things clearer.  Thanks for all your help – this is my first chance to network with fellow educators via my blog so i guess i’ll see how it goes…

and now that i have flickr…

here’s a picture of my little guy jack.

my crazy son attacking the camera

here it is! an incomplete list of the places i’ve lived

so i sort of sketched out roughly where i’ve been for the last 30 years or so (but i couldn’t find my place in taiwan so i’ll have to add that when i find it) and there’s this weird 100_  thing going on lately.  apparently i can only live in houses on the ten-hundred blocks in the n.e. areas of cities.

View Larger Map

tied to the yard

so i’ve been trying to get everything i need done in the yard (garden and maintenance) this past week before it gets too late to have a successful garden.  i’m also getting married this summer (june sixth) so organizing music etc. is taking up pretty much all of my available time.  luckily i have this class to ensure that every waking moment is filled with accomplishment after accomplishment.  like today for example: plant tomatoes, cut grass, add this post, make google map and embed on blog (not done yet) and get music playlist sorted out for wedding (also not done yet).  oh and figure out getting a webcam and learn how to use skype so i can connect with michael kaechele (mentorship).  no wonder summers go by so fast…

tied to the nerd

the one thing i really don’t like about the advent of email and social networking via the web is this sort of underhanded pressure to check my email or see/say what’s up on my blog or moderate people’s comments etc etc etc…  ugh.  i’m the kind of person who doesn’t have a home phone and so relies on my cell phone but even then will turn the damn thing off for a couple days and just live un-attached.  with this class in mind however there is a more-than-middling pressure to be online (and by extension “visible”) on a consistent basis.  and that – in a nutshell – is not really my thing.

that said, i do have a real appreciation for my google reader set-up.  one stop destination for everyone’s blogs.  and i’m slowly coming around to my igoogle.  my national geographic picture of the day (gadget?  widget?) and my new calendar feature are both pretty nice finds…

amber’s shared knowledge shared

so i was reading amber’s blog  (in my google reader, i might add!) and she has this link to another guy’s blog all about how to use google docs (specifically forms).  Nice to have the tutorials around - just to keep things fresh in our newly blogging minds – so i thought i’d add it to mine too…

diigo vs google

so i went and asked lisa thumann what she thought of the diigo-or-google search comparison that was going on last night (may 13th) and she said:

“Bert – Diigo and Delicious both only index those sites bookmarked by users. Google indexes everything so it is not biased. I frequently go to Diigo to look at other people’s bookmarks. I especially like the Group feature and belong to several groups. I also occasionally look at my Diigo Dashboard to see what my friends are bookmarking. I tend to find new and interesting articles and tools there. I hope that helps. Lisa”

here’s the original post that contains the comments.

so i suppose they both have their pros and cons.

check this out

the moose jaw museum and art gallery has their own blog (a pretty nice one visually) and they also have a youtube video of a local potter throwing on a wheel.  i’m not sure if anyone’s much into clay work but it’s interesting so i thought i’d add it here: mjmag.

check it out if you’ve got some time…

working on blogs…

another nice thing to have would be at least a link to a nice results page for the forms that we have created.  like instead of a spreadsheet we were able to link to a graph or percentages results thing, something so that other people can see our poll/form results.  any tips out there?  if i ask the web questions does it answer?

working out the bugs…

i just finished sending dean an email asking a couple questions about editing my blog but i think it makes more sense to post the questions here – why ask one person via email when i can ask many on the blog?

so, does anyone know how to make my link to my form appear as just a word instead of the long link address?  i’ve tried a couple things but it just keeps showing up as you see in my last entry.  also, is it possible to allow comments to appear on my blog before i moderate?  or do i need to approve everything before they’ll show up?

class expectations…

i’m not sure what my expectations of the class are or were but i can say that they have already been exceeded. i’m not particularly computer literate so anything that gets/facilitates-my-getting more knowledge in this area will be great.

hello very small portion of world

to those few who wander in here expect little and just like when you go to a movie it might not turn out too bad…