I’ve been interviewed again (click here for the previous interview) by the awesome @jessebrown for TVO’s Search Engine podcast. Click to listen: Notes from a Digital Classroom.

I’m not a fan of (most) single-purpose technology. It perturbs me that most cameras can’t immediately tweet photos. I don’t like alarm clocks that can’t connect to my music library. I’ve even had difficulty adopting the immensely innovative Livescribe technology because I just don’t get why it won’t make me a double shot Americano. Hence, my love for contemporary mobile technology. I was basically waiting for the iPhone since exiting my mother’s womb. I won’t deny that it is the realistion of a childish, sci-fi dream. It’s nerd heaven in my pocket. The rise of the multi-purpose, however, simultaneously reminds us of the value of the single. Take coffee, for instance. The more a coffee making device can do, the crappier it is, period. Coffee don’t like digital. Or what about bicycles? Could they be made to do all manner of digital tasks, much like our ridiculously multi-tasking cars tackle? Yes. Do we care? No. My wife and I were observing our iPad-loving 4 year-old (pictured above) today, and were admittedly surprised as he simultaneously seems to be developing a passion for books. We’ve bought book apps and created homemade eBooks, but never saw the equivalent of what we see when he grabs a book and sits on the couch. Maybe it’s because he can’t change his mind, click a home button, and kill some green pigs with antagonized, egg-laying vertebrates. Perhaps it’s because he can’t press words and make them do things only a hip-hop DJ should do. I don’t know what it is, but, I’m telling you, it’s different. The level of focus is different. The breadth and depth with which he reads is incomparable. The time of reading is contradistinct. His eyes and posture look different when he’s reading from a paper based book. Books are special, still. Have you noticed something similar or different? I’ve started it. Now join my meme! Write about an amazing piece of analogue technology that you use professionally, personally, or both. Why is it so awesome? Why can’t it seem to be replaced by a digital counterpart? Tweet it out with the #analoguerocks hashtag!

I had such a blast the other night meeting some of the people from Idea Couture Inc. How did this boring ol’ school teacher end up being invited to the offices of drippin’ with cool? Social media, that’s how (it never fails to amaze me). So I walk in the door and it’s basically my dream office/classroom/home. Gorgeous, ergonomic furniture, design magazines everywhere, workshop rooms, lounging areas, funky lighting, Helvetica, the best technology, vintage bicycles, and - wait for it -whiteboards everywhere full of indecipherable doodles. I’d always read about and seen photos of places like this, but it was like I always thought they were elaborate fantasies. Beautiful is the only word. The most intriguing thing, however, were the people. I could’ve talked to the Idea Couture peeps all night long. So open minded, curious, well-informed, and innovative. I just couldn’t believe that, for them, thinking divergently was the norm, rather than the subversive. Moreover, none of them had titles or job descriptions that you can put into one of these children’s books… To be honest, I still couldn’t tell you exactly what they do in a coherent manner (check out their site and blog if you want to know more). I think this is the case because their ‘jobs’ are perpetually evolving, constantly shape-shifting to meet the needs of their clients and the permutations of the world around them. Today they are this, tomorrow they are that. Why aren’t our schools and systems like this?

How many people do you know that write for metacognitive purposes? I don’t know that many. How about ones that write for pleasure? Sadly, if I wasn’t connected to a network of amazing bloggers, I may not know any. As I sit here taking a break from making revisions to my awful report card prose, I’m reflecting on the myriad of ways we turn our students off of writing, in some cases, for life. I’m wondering if it is caused in part by the shear volume of mind-numbingly uncreative, bureaucratic writing teachers are either mandated or implicitly pushed to do. We all know that math classrooms around the world are frequently sabotaged by us teachers bringing our own math anxiety and baggage to the proverbial table. I wonder if it’s the same thing with writing. Why do we always bring our own adult issues with writing into our classroom of writers? And by writing, I mean writing words into sentences and paragraphs. I’m not talking here about the amazing ‘writing’ we do when we are making infographics, comics, or movies. Few kids are held in at recess to create an Animoto slideshow apology for kicking Timmy in the shins, yet we litter our schools with implicit messages about the torture that is writing beautiful sentences with words. You write when you have to. If you are an educator in a school or similar organization, I challenge you to, first, look at the ways in which you either model or teach the people you work with to develop an aversion to writing, and second, please stop doing it. Here’s one place I think we could start. How about providing more time for kids to just write for fun? Write something, share it, and have people respond to it. That’s it. Keep the literal or figurative red pen in the pencil case. Why do we have this double standard in which we acknowledge the need for kids to ‘play’ in almost every other area except writing? When it comes to writing, we micromanage, we scrutinize, we almost interrogate. Even with our move towards assessment for learning frameworks, I feel we are overly obsessed with standardization in writing. Am I just a hopeless romantic here when it comes to the art of prose? There your go, your rant for the day:)

CC licensed photo shared by Flickr user theclyde I saw the funniest thing today while picking my son up from kindergarten. As I stood waiting for Jackson to come out and yell "DADDYYY!!!" (no better sound in the world), I witnessed one of the dads collect his son a bit earlier and scoot off as fast as he could. As he exited the gates with his boy, he inexplicably admonished his son not to step in the patches of mud that were a few steps away, yet not even close to the path they were walking on. What did the boy immediately do? He stopped walking quickly with his father, stood, and gazed longingly at the mud. The man had not noticed his son had stopped, so ended up a few meters ahead. When he finally realized the boy was far behind him looking at the mud like it was a naked lady in a magazine, dad began shouting at son to vamos. The boy would not respond. So the man sighed, ran up to his son, but was too late. The boy stuck his foot in the mud. He had to. Insert analogy here.

CC licensed photo shared by l2k85. I’m about to geek out on you, so if you don’t like geeking out, then I would avoid reading this post. I love Voltron. Voltron was a cartoon I adored as a youngster. It’s a totally ridiculous animation about some sci fi kids protecting the universe from evil with their giant robot lions. The most amazing thing about the lions, however, is the way they literally come together to form one large robot that, quite frankly, totally kicks butt. I currently use it as a metaphor in my class to convey a couple of things about collaboration and technology’s role in it. I know, this analogy could be broken into bits on closer deconstruction. After all, it’s just your everyday kids cartoon full of stereotypes and misrepresentations. It’s just that I like trying my best to speak to my students in their language. The language of ’21st Century Learning’ means nothing to them. It’s our adult language. Sometimes you’ve got to talk in giant-robot-lion-turns-into-humungous-ninja-samarai language. I tell them that, like Voltron, we are strong as anything individually, but we go to an epic level together. I also tell them that, although we are supreme without technology, with it we are downright untouchable (they can’t touch us when we’re in our lions!) And the reason we want to get this awesome? Because we need to save the world is all. Is that cheesy or what? Click play below if you dare!

The instructional video project was so fun! I’m very proud of how my video looks. I love how the voice over that I did didn’t have any sounds that I didn’t want. (the room was VERY LOUD). I had to record over and over to get it the way I wanted. I also love the way the music went so it didn’t stand out. I just wanted it to be background music. If I could change anything from my video, I would change the lighting. In some parts, it’s too bright and it looks orange, and in the other parts, it’s too dark. I would also change the clip where I finished my bracelet because it wasn’t clear and it was hard to understand what I was doing. Maybe next time I’ll add my face. I was just kind of shy but noticed how cool it was to see people’s faces in it. We’ve just come to towards the end of an inquiry project in which my students created instructional videos for the internet using the painfully simple to some, but beautifully limiting in my view (a subject for another blogpost in the near future), iMovie on our iPad devices. Above you see one of the awesome student videos (I wish I could give you access to our full walled-garden to see the videos, but this was one of the very few who did not show their faces in their video, thus making it much easier to receive permission to share publicly) and an accompanying reflection (what we called The Director’s Commentary).  It was one of the most rewarding learning experiences I’ve ever been involved in as a teacher. When you see a collection of seventy-five students take creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and reflection to this level, it reminds me of how our schools can do great, magical things. But, I’ve run into a problem that recurs for me like hives. Have you ever tried doing movie projects with students and found it to be immensely unsatisfying? Have you noticed how common it is for students to lose their initial excitement when they realize how arduous and minutiae-filled the process of movie making is? Have you experienced that anti-climax at ‘the end’ when few movies turn out as initially envisioned, due in large part to all the technical aspects of filmmaking? Ya, I’ve experienced that too. But that’s not my problem. My dilemma is that I don’t know how I should grade/evaluate them? Actually, no, that’s not the issue. The real problem I’m having is that I just don’t know why I should. You see, my students have been keeping project journals on their blogs, writing reflections before, during, and after the process. I had them do this to put the emphasis on the process, rather than the final result. This is one of the ways you can get around the lack of resiliency you often see in our schools, such as the problem with movie-making I described above. When everything’s about the result, then you’re basically setting yourself up for doom. When process is king, then there’s only rich learning, regardless of the perceived value of the ‘product’. The blog reflections have been wonderful. Moreover, the fact that they are open for one another to read and provide feedback on has taken the reflection into an epic, collaborative sphere. Sometimes I feel like a metaphorical flash mob is breaking out in my learning environment. Here are just a few more snippets from their reflections: As you all know, within the past few weeks, I have been working on my instructional video project. After 4 or so weeks, it is finally finished! Although I think I did well, and am proud of myself, there are still SO MANY things I can do to improve my project for next time! First of all, the editing. I do like how it turned out, but I could have done better. The music I put in was too loud. I rushed the credits and titles, so they’re a bit boring. I love what Flower did in her video with the coloured credits. The acting I did could have been so much better. I didn’t know it would be so weird to be in front of the camera. I wouldn’t be as nervous next time. Well,I don’t know if I can make myself NOT nervous, but I can hide it better next time. I spoke like I was shy, so that is also something i should improve for next time. Then again, there’s a lot of stuff I did well! I did like how well organized and prepared I was. I like the way my video actually accomplishes the goal of instructing someone on the basics of guitar. I also did a great job of working with my partner and sometimes I’m not so good at that. It was the best project ever. This week while filming I learned a lot. When watching other people filming, I would actually be quite jealous of some of them, how they handled themselves and the charisma they seemed to have around the camera. But while filming, I felt proud of myself as I tried to copy the things I’d seen. The experience was a first for me and it was amazingly fun but hard too. I didn’t expect to have so many retakes, mistakes, and slips of the tongue. Mixing up our lines was very common. I also didn’t expect it to take as long as it did. I really wish I could do over some of the "one chance" shots that we just had to settle for, but they were good never the less. Me and my partner ran into a couple of problems, and one was the lighting. We were filming in a space with windows everywhere, and our first few shots were taken after 5 PM so we had to use the lights, but the next day we had to cooperate with the natural light that gave us way more light than the first shots. All in all I love filming, editing with iMovie is an absolutely wonderful experience, and I hope I will get the chance to do this again. What I learned from watching and participating in the filming * To always listen to your partners ideas (make compromises) * You have to divide the script so both partners have a chance to speak What I didn’t expect * How many times we had to re-do some of the shots * How difficult it was to be relaxed, and natural in front of the camera What I wish I could do over? * To make numerous scenes that were good so out of all of them, We could choose which one was the best  (More choices than one) What was great * getting to hear your partners ideas which made the video overall amazing! * editing, and seeing the final product of the video (seeing what an amazing job we did) What was difficult * all the weird unpredictable stuff that happens, like the popcorn falling on the floorThings I would improve for my next video: -I’ll make the lighting better -I’ll film in landscape not portrait!!! -I’ll choose better colors so that you can tell what pieces goes where more clearly -Say the instructions at the right time so that I’m saying the part that I’m doing, so it all matches up -Get rid of background noises -Not let my hair get in the video -Not let my hand block the ball Thing I did well: -I talked loud and the background music wasn’t covering up my voice -I showed the instructions well -I did it slowly -I overcame my fear of doing a movie After watching people film their instructional videos, I learned that we all have similarities yet differences too. We each have a different way of making our videos special. For example some of us use humour others just be themselves but in some way we stand out from each other. We also all saw how everyone had different skills and strengths. I didn’t know all that stuff about the kids in grade 7. Some kids are shy but they still made great videos. Although we all make mistakes. I really enjoyed watching others film their videos, and filming my own because it is something I’ve never experienced before and I can not wait to begin something new again. I learned that school projects don’t just have to be something we do because a teacher told us to, but because its fun. I also did not expect that I could do everything so fluently and that really helped my self esteem. I could go on, but do you see my quandary? How can a grade do justice to this learning? Won’t it only do harm?