homoLudens

About time, I am told by various Writing Project friends, that I post again. Given that there’s a bit of digital fun happening at Galileo with an upgrade to Manila and some experimentation with Google’s apps for education, I might find some content worth passing on.

For example, this tidbit from Bud in Colorado:

NASA & Google Hooking Up: This press release announces an event to announce a partnership between Google and NASA. Hmm . . . . I’ll be listening to hear what the announcement actually is. In the meantime, anyone want to harbor a guess?

The spaceref page has this additional editor’s note from Thursday:

From what I have learned, this announcement will unveil a NASA/Google collaboration that is rather unique - indeed exciting. This agreement represents a significant advance for how the agency might collaborate with the private sector in the future - specifically as to how the agency takes its vast collection of data and imagery and makes it more easily available to the world. Among the details of this new cooperative project, Google will be contributing funding to support NASA employees - and not just at ARC - but at other NASA centers as well.

NASA and Google. So the public education and Google thing is inevitable? It’s probably better than Houghton Mifflin.
more…

A 15 year old kid, never in the library that I noticed.

And I complain like bandwidth and tech-shy teachers are the real problems with public urban education?

That’s what Ken Dow said to me way back in the Fall of 1999 when he generously offered help as we tried Manila
for school tech integration. Given the obstacles that come with the
TI territory, my optimism is limited. But hey - once in awhile it does do
some practical good. Example:

Celia Chan, Galileo’s model blogging counselor, posted a job opportunity on her weblog
at 8:00 AM on Thursday, Oct. 6. I refreshed NetNewsWire at about 4:00
PM and noticed Celia’s post. I remembered that one of my library
assistants, Marcella, was looking for a part time job. We had a staff development day
on Friday, Oct. 7. No students were coming to school. Teen outreach
worker Loan Ly was in IM at the time. Marcella is one of her proteges.
I IM-ed Celia’s job notice permalink over to Loan. She called
Marcella’s cell phone. Marcella called the employer to set up an
interview (the first!) before 4:00 PM on the day the job was posted.
Voila! Marcella got the job.

Asked what she was going to do with her $10 an hour income, Marcella said: “Pay my cell phone monthly charges.”

Bill and Melinda noticed us. Someone mentioned the NY Times coverage of our web work at the D.C. event. Does this portend adequate bandwidth someday? Our own web server?

Maybe just a banquet.

Galileo is sending another delegation / tour and several of us are
extending on the front and back ends, departing March 23 and returning
April 5.  More details as plans gel. We’ll be looking for digital
connections again, with a more realistic set of expectations.
Meanwhile, this BBC piece on N. Negroponte’s
vision of a $100 laptop had an interesting mention of the PRC:

??? where I’m promised broadband, air conditioning, and more linguistic humility. Blogopoly’s last two  days are in the capable fingertips of David Barrios and Joel Arquillos
and the rest of the crew. Sans major internet connection meltdown,
success is guaranteed. I knew it yesterday when I walked into the
library back lab and witnessed four students (3 SLAC-ers,
1 webteam member) quietly and patiently explaining things to six
silently rapt teachers. Some of it was tech arcana, but I also heard a
question like, “If I wanted to have the website do this for my second
and third period classes, how could I use this news item thingie?”

Limitless (teaching credentials come with a lifetime supply) kudos to Loi, Nate, Rafael and Zack. (See Zack’s slideshow
of the first day.) If we’re the pioneers in this digital reading and
writing stuff, they’re the scouts. They know the territory far better
than we EVER
will. Our gratitude is in our websites and in our work.

Nothing went too wrong with the Blogopoly training today. People laughed
alot. Very cool to watch 10 teachers open their new G4 iBooks while
more digitally experienced folks with older, weaker Powerbooks looked on
with envy.

So it should be: The non-pioneering prodigals shall have first seat at the well-wired table.

It’s not about the tech. It’s not even about the teaching. It’s primarily about the people

These are wonderful people.

If Murphy allows all to go well, and he won’t, 19 (yikes!) teachers will play the first round of Blogopoly tomorrow in the newly redesigned Galileo Li-Blog-ary.  That’s 13 more than I anticipated. Many are doing this without compensation.

I work with the best educators in the Emerald City.

SAN FRANCISCO / $5 billion city budget full of ’sacrifices’ / Balancing act includes 550 layoffs, sales tax increase

“Mayor
Gavin Newsom explains his proposed $5 billion city budget during a
session at San Francisco’s Galileo High School library.” Chronicle photo
by Eric Luse - SF Chronicle - June 2, 2004

Now
what’s wrong with that picture? Well, the window sun and overhead
lighting glares betray a certain amateurness to the photography. No
matter - a professional set of session photos, taken by our school
newspaper photo editor, can be found the school domain portal. (Congratulations, Zack B, at his best when in someone’s face.) What’s really wrong is
the absence of students, teachers, parents, and school in this photo. Next
time though???

I was told on Friday that Newsom would be in the library at 1:00 PM
on
Tuesday, after the three day weekend. His choice of our place for the
formal unveiling of the annual budget had something to do with his
commitment to getting the business of the city into the neighborhoods
and something to do with he beauty of the room. We had no time to do
anything in the way of community alerts. Next
time though???

Ugh. Still in the midst of renovation, with some furniture still in
boxes, and collection closing reports due, I enlisted three willing
SLAC-ers and spent six hours on Saturday cleaning and arranging the room and designing
a backdrop banner, announcing simply: www.galileoweb.org/liblogary. Kinkos’ screwed me on the banner. The
promised designer didn’t show to work. Next time though???

We were told to plan for 20 city officers and 30 press; 120 of same
showed up. It wasn’t  comfortable, but it wasn’t bad. With four hours of exhausting labor, the room accomodated the
press conference crowd.  Next
time though???

Pay off for all that labor and the disrupted library
schedule? I told his deputy press secretary, explicitly, that she owes us. This is
the plan.:

1. Signed commemorative 8 X 10 glossies of the best pic from our
   slideshow, one of which will inaugurate our wall of distinguished
   library visitors.
2. An exclusive interview with his honor conducted by our newspaper
   editors in the third week of September, focusing on politics and
   youth issues in the city, state and nation.
3. His honor’s appearance (welcoming remarks or keynote) at two of our regional, national and international conferences next year.

And the bigger pay off was a sudden recognition of what kind of space the library needed to be. Next time???

The game begins: Warm Up, Introduction, Expectations. More to come. WARNING: Players need a “Get out of school and be free” card to begin. Tick tock.