homoLudens

It has to be fun. All the other stuff is nice: significant, socially
conscious, politically progressive, intellectually challenging, emotionally
engaging, artistically pleasing; but for the long haul, professional development has to be fun. Like playing
music or gardening or cooking or exercising or arguing. If it gets too
serious or dull, the pension and the summers are the only things that
keep you hanging in. Pensions and summers aren’t worth it, even at my age.

We’ve been having fun. A camirilla has formed around Manila
adoption at Gal, gathering haphazardly in the cluttered and unswept library
office. Folks appear and disappear - Brodie, Moffett, Heskin, Arquillos,
Banos, Barrios, Chiu / Grinell (dynamic principal and secretary duo), O’Brien, Barrett, Zimberhoff, Carter, Matsumoto,
Marshall, Machtay, McDowell, Ring, King, Mar-Beshears, Gill (shy), Aramendia, Olea (who’s threatening Craig’s List with local competition), et al. They camp out in the
research nook or the main room during a classroom-denied prep period,
borrow or return a video, read the Chronicle or a magazine, grade papers, make a cup of coffee, store a lunch
in the refrigerator, look for a book, ask to order something,
search for a hiding colleague, or wonder again how to include a picture
in a web page. At some point, we laugh.

We’re collaborating on the No Laugh Left Behind act. (The White House
is contributing.) It is the most overlooked aspect of professional
development.

The above gathered from ABC_CLIO ‘This day in history’ and supplemented with a Nettrekker search.

In Georgia, “an amendment adopted without objection added ‘piercing’ to
the list of things that may not be done to female genitals??? Amendment
sponsor Rep. Bill Heath, R-Bremen, was slack-jawed when told after the
vote that some adults seek the piercings.” And the list goes ever on
and on.

Of course, male piercings go unmentioned. As least in the legislation.

more…

“??? Rarely do we focus on the eponymous role of blogs: keeping a log of useful resources on the web. I mostly read blogs that point me to good stuff on the web??? On the other hand, centralized directories of resources mostly suck, because you lose the personal element??? I don’t care if something simply exists. I want to know that someone I trust created it or likes it. Period. Similarly, jacking into another school’s feed of useful ‘learning objects’ is of limited use to me, if I don’t know anyone at the school, in person or through their blogs. Encouraging teachers to subscribe to a decontextualized list of learning object feeds or aggregating a bunch of learning object feeds is not in my opinion good practice, and it does not reflect proper analysis of why weblogs are useful and successful.” See also. [Tuttle SVC]

Amen, amen, amen. Local, local, local. My school is filled with subjects - real, harried, struggling, and mostly offline people and they object to learning objects. They even object to being fed, unless the sandwich is really good. Our bandwidth-narrowed, ISP-exhausting domain of weblogs is gradually developing into a digital hallway, a place where friendly partners in teaching (and learning) run into each other check things out, at its best an informal blog commons. Occasionally a couple of folks will talk for a while in the ethereal hallways. If it gets really good, though, they generally move into a real room (often the library office) and talk f2f about what they used their website for. They share ideas, practices, student work, teaching tales, weekend plans, and sandwiches. Good teaching is good teachers, the relationships and conversations between them within a real physical community, not good feeds.

Unless we’re talking about shared sandwiches.
more…

From Christina Cantrill on the NWP list serve: “Reading ??? a really important book. Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide by Mark Warschauer ..”

Re: yesterday’s post about RSS feeds being left behind. Jenny’s right. (See comment.)
Apologies extended. She’s done more than enough to highlight the
efforts of educational bloggers everywhere. (Hey - she’s even got the
badge on her site.) Mean-spirited of me to nitpick a pointer to a
school out of our socio-economic experience of the digital world. I’d
spent the day banging my head and keyboard against the increasing
limitations of our server and bandwidth circumstances, talked to three
teachers who’d gotten lay off notices, and finished the ‘relatively
good day’ planning a summer program with a new Arts and Tech non-profit
partner of BAWP’s. We started the session with the lead teacher referencing the murder of a former student. Should have skipped the blog and found my own beer.

“Monty Python’s film The Life of Brian is to return to US cinemas next
month following the success of The Passion of the Christ.” [BBC]

Does the circus solemnize weddings?

So I hear there are wealthy private schools with recently
available RSS feeds. I’m impressed. The ones below come from an urban
public school in a state that has forgotten how to fund public
education. The domain, active for 9 months, has over 30 sites with RSS
feeds.

Who do you have to know to get a beer around here?

Well, that’s probably overstating it, but there’s a chance for some interesting trans-Pacific connections with our school’s impending delegation to Shanghai. So, kind readers, please pass on this link to any and all bloggers / educators who might want to meet with us face-to-face in the city by the sea.

Traditional:

Simplified:

BBC Reynolds opines: “???The overall lesson to be drawn from these events is that
there is really no prospect for peace, that the roadmap has been rolled
up and that another 20 years of war is the most likely scenario???”