Category: Status

I Love Dan Bricklin’s Note Taker HD App


You can use Note Taker HD to take notes, sketch diagrams, quickly and easily jot down names, phone numbers, to-do items, directions, and more. Pages are flexibly organized by date/time last modified, tags, favorites, and more, with thumbnail images of part of each page to help you find them later. Pages may be grouped together as multiple “sheets”. You can also email one or more pages as a single PDF file. VGA output is supported with zoom and pan.

via softwaregarden.com

I’ve been using Bricklin’s Note Taker app on my iPhone since last December, but the Note Taker HD app on my new iPad is simply extraordinary.

I cannot wait to get into the lab with my 8th grade students and jot down notes and observations that we can use to better communicate their findings in our Physical Science class next year.

Thank you again for all you do, Dan.

Architectures of Participatory Learning

But the meat of the argument is about how the best explanation for many of the group phenomena we see online, from ICanHazCheezburger to Wikipedia, is that people like sharing with each other and collaborating. Not always, of course. But there are architectures of participation that encourage the kind of sharing and generosity that enriches us all, and by experimenting with them, we can create media and social change that harnesses millions of people to help and amuse each other.

via boingboing.net

Just got this on my Kindle/iPad/Desktops/iPhone (have I mentioned I love the type of portability the Kindle platform offers and hope that iBooks can replicate that type of cross-platform experience?) and can’t wait to dig in today.

I’m a big Clay Shirky fan (click the link if you need a sample), and I’m hoping this book, along with Daniel Pink’s ongoing work, becomes a pointer I can use when folks ask about the “effectiveness” of my teaching style.

I love the idea of the Teacher/Learner as an Architect. There’s something inherit about teaching that lends itself to the type of mystical and very practical practices of masons-meet-Howard Roark.

We’ll see and I’ll, of course, keep you posted.

Steve Jobs on Educational Entrepreneurism

When you have
kids you think, What exactly do I want them to learn? Most of the stuff
they study in school is completely useless. But some incredibly valuable
things you don’t learn until you’re older – yet you could learn them
when you’re younger. And you start to think, What would I do if I set a
curriculum for a school?

God, how exciting that could be! But you can’t do it today. You’d be
crazy to work in a school today. You don’t get to do what you want. You
don’t get to pick your books, your curriculum. You get to teach one
narrow specialization. Who would ever want to do that?

These are the solutions to our problems in education. Unfortunately,
technology isn’t it. You’re not going to solve the problems by putting
all knowledge onto CD-ROMs. We can put a Web site in every school – none
of this is bad. It’s bad only if it lulls us into thinking we’re doing
something to solve the problem with education.

Lincoln did not have a Web site at the log cabin where his parents
home-schooled him, and he turned out pretty interesting. Historical
precedent shows that we can turn out amazing human beings without
technology. Precedent also shows that we can turn out very uninteresting
human beings with technology.

It’s not as simple as you think when you’re in your 20s – that
technology’s going to change the world. In some ways it will, in some
ways it
won’t.

via wired.com

Thanks to 37Signals’ blog for the link.

And amen.

I’m lucky enough to teach at an amazing place that allows me to do amazing things like pick my curriculum and textbooks and breadth of study (even though it’s technically Physical Science).

Fatherhood and Teaching

I have found that one of the most difficult things about being a high school teacher is being a high school teacher with two small children. It’s not that having two small children makes it harder to get work done at home, which they do, or that my teaching and coaching keeps me away from them more than I would like, which it does. Those aren’t really difficulties as much as they are inconveniences. No, the thing that makes this job difficult for me is seeing all of the possible outcomes for my children.

via mrogle.blogspot.com

Such a great post that sums up many of the feelings I’ve had about being back in the classroom again this year…

This is the first year I’ve been a teacher since having children. Now that we have #2 (2 girls… ahhh! and no, her name is not Commander Riker, although that would be awesome) on the way, I’m sure this feeling of anxiousness about the future of my children will only amplify.

I just daily try to keep in mind the lessons I learn and observe from the many good parents of my students as I navigate this utterly terrifying and always wonderful world of fatherhood.

Old News in the Classroom

The News Archive Partner Program provides a way for Google and publishers and
repositories to partner together and make historical newspaper archives discoverable
online. As part of Google News, the News archive search function provides an easy way
to search and explore historical archives.

via news.google.com

I’ve used this feature a couple of times in the past week with my 8th graders… they did seem to really enjoy seeing historical newspapers presented this way.

I remember being so excited to find a copy of a “moon landing” paper from ’69 at an antique shop when I was high school, so I had to buy it.

Funny how some things never change.

Anyway, this is a great resource for teachers in all areas/grade levels.

ABC Drops Linux Support for Online Viewer

I really enjoyed catching up on shows that I missed via ABC’s streaming online viewer.

However, I use Ubuntu (a flavor of Linux) and now ABC has dropped it’s support of that…

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That’s just stupid.  It’s a flash based player, and they are actually having to do work to exclude Linux users since it’s an OS agnostic player.  Wonder how much Microsoft payed them?

As the users in this Digg thread about the subject point out, Pirate Bay and tvtorrents.com are still working on my Linux world wide web, so I guess I’ll be watching ABC’s shows that way (and without the ads).

Wildflowers

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I’m listening to Tom Petty’s Wildflowers tonight.

It’s an album that still just as relevant and awesome as it was in 1994. I remember the first time I heard “You Don’t Know Kow It Feels”… Petty was on Letterman and had altered lyrics (“so let’s hit another joint…”) and it was an epiphanic moment for me.

It was one of the first albums I looked forward to coming out (along with In Utero from Nirvana that same year). I was a geeky dorky high school sophomore and not quite sure of my place in the world. I was heavily into Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots at the time, but I knew that I’d like this album. I’m glad I stuck with it 13 years later.

I know it’s cheesy to like Tom Petty… but this album kicks my ass every time.

“Sometime later, getting the words wrong, wasting the meaning and losing the rhyme…”

Thoughts on Redneck Liberation Theology

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Earlier this week, Rion sent over an article on the concept of “Redneck Liberation Theology.” I was and continue to be floored by the piece. It reminds me of the first time I heard Thelonious Monk in a beer stained dorm room in Spartanburg, SC.  “Fiery little apocalypses.” Stuff that grabs you by the kidney or some other random but needed interior organ and won’t let you go. A gnawing realization that something is different after having read it, and no matter what you do, you can’t undo what has happened.

Perhaps that what life and fate really mean. Instead of living in the present, our minds are constantly focusing on what just happened or what happened hours, days, weeks, months or years ago. That’s what seperates us from the other animals, right? We can remember back beyond just a few seconds and form decisions based on those experiences. I doubt some of that theory, but in this case, that fiery little artice really did influence all sorts of future decisions in my head.

It doesn’t help that I’ve been re-reading WJ Cash’s The Mind of the South at the behest of my friend and mentor, Larry McGehee of Wofford College. The themes and clever positions Cash takes are echoed very much in Joe Bageant’s piece referenced abov. Cash was indeed a tortured soul with a troublesome spirit, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t share more in common with him than I’d prefer. The constant self-doubt, the stubborn inability to find a suitable profession… the constant gnawing to speak out about the virtues and vices of the people that you love and identify with in a grand meta-context like “Southernor.”

After all, Cash wrote THE Mind of the South, not A Mind of the South. There’s a huge epistemological difference that goes beyond semantics there. He was speaking on behalf and against all of us in very much a country lawyer meets hellfire preacher fashion.

Bageant picks up Cash’s alter call and reverberates it through our (my?) ribcage. It’s downright scary because it makes so much sense. Redneck liberation theology. What a goddamn blessing and a curse all at the same time because that is the essence of where my academic career has been heading up to this point. All the Old Testament infatuation with the prophets, all the wonderments over the reception theory behind ancient Assyrian artifacts in the context of a evangelistic 19th century call to the ministry… and the Golden Leaf of tobacco that still hangs on my wall to help me not forget Mullins, SC.  It was all pointed there. A Rose Line in the Asheville clay.  Wonderment.

It’s a curse because I’ve got to go out and develop this now. You can’t sit on something like redneck liberation theology and study it from a left wing academic point of view or from a country pulpit.

Al Gore and the Internet as Conversation on the Daily Show

I’m watching the Daily Show with John Stewart and Al Gore just called the internet the “greatest hope to cure the ailments” of the modern media and to “bring back the conversation” that is lacking.

Has Al Gore read the Cluetrain Manifesto?

Or has Steve Jobs turned him on to Winer, Scoble and Rubel?

Great interview… hopefully the video will be on YouTube Comedy Central’s site soon.

Dell’s Shipping With Ubuntu

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I love Ubuntu. I’ve made a number of posts about Ubuntu that you can see here.

Basically, it’s a free and open-source Linux distribution that replaces your Windows operating system (and is 10 times better in my opinion).  I’ve been using it full time since last summer and have not looked back.

Today, Dell announced the initial laptops and desktops that will be shipping with Ubuntu pre-installed instead of Windows.

This is a huge day for open source, for Linux and for Ubuntu.  If you need a good, cheap and reliable computer that won’t get gummed up with viruses, spyware and adware but is easy to use, then this is your chance!

Modern Tech

While watching tonight’s season finale of Lost on ABC (the only show I watch regularly on TV these days), I was texting back and forth to my college roommate and long lost brother, Rion.  Amazing that we can watch the same show and communicate while being seperated by hundreds of geographical miles.

Not all tech is bad.

Week O’ Injuries

On Tuesday, I decided to try a nifty trick and use our exercise ball (basically a large blow up ball about 3 feet in diameter) for my desk chair. The benefits are that you are constantly forced to sit upright and it’s good exercise for your abs, etc.

So, it was a little flat and I decided to blow it up.

In the process, the plastic stopper (below) blew into my throat and went partially down my trachea (wind pipe)…

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I put the quarter in the picture for scale.

It was a scary minute as the stopper did it’s job by stopping up my wind pipe as well. I finally got it out by an incredible hack in my throat (which also scrapped my throat up all to heck). I don’t remember it popping out, but it was close.

What a horrible way to go that would have been!

To top it off, I cracked the toenail on my big toe today while playing soccer with Schaefer…

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It’s only Wednesday, so let’s hope the rest of the week goes a little better!