It’s been great for me to reflect on one of my latest blog posts. In particular, the feedback and comments I’ve received in regards to it. In the post, I argue that BYOD (students being able to Bring Your Own Device to school for learning) is not for everyone and that certain conditions or foundational pieces should be put into place before even considering it. I also clearly state my misgivings with the notion that BYOD is a socio-economic issue. As someone who grew up in a low-income, immigrant family myself, and as person who travels in social circles where I regularly encounter social welfare and marginalization, I question the claim that technology (especially of the mobile variety) is an exclusivity reserved for the middle class and up (whether they have dental care, job stability, life insurance, savings for retirement etc. is another question altogether). As @mbteach says in her recent article "A New Understanding of the Digital Divide": As studies suggest, the problem isn’t access, it’s the kind of access [her italics]. In a near-decade of teaching, I’ve been at the front of the class with a wide spectrum of socio-economic groups. Currently I teach in an upwardly mobile, middle-class demographic. In our large school, I have yet to encounter a family without computers and mobile technology at home, yet only about 20% of the 250 students I have taught in the past three years of inviting BYOD actually accept the proposition. Also, I feel that some of my critics have actively avoided reading my post, because I clearly state that you should not invite BYOD if: You do not have enough school devices to supplement students who do not own their own. Should the income level of your school community not be an issue when contemplating BYOD? Of course not. Should it be the variable that determines a yes or a no response to BYOD? I don’t think so. The comments on the post really got me thinking hard, perhaps more so than any post I’d written before. I had to delete a few trolls because they were starting to attack me personally and were doing so anonymously. One of them suggested I was undemocratic and was not interested in engaging in dialogue. If this were true, I’m not quite sure why I would a) be blogging publicly and openly about it; b) inviting unmoderated comments on the post; or c) ending my post by asking people what they thought about my opinions. I have no problem admitting that there was a certain tone to my post. I know I could have called it ’10 Things Schools Should Consider Before Doing BYOD’ or something like that, but I was intentionally trying to be a bit more provocative. I feel comfortable enough as a blogger now (and feel I have gained the trust of my readership enough) to do this. I will also admit that it comes from a personal place of exasperation for me. As a proud leader of literacy and technology in my district, people often ask me implicitly for quick fixes or templates that can be applied in their schools or classrooms. There is no quick fix. I have no magic bullet. I can tell you of my experience, give you feedback on yours, and support you along the way. And then everything I said I was doing yesterday could be different tomorrow. I wish we could all get more comfortable with the idea that something can work with huge success in one place and be a monumental failure in another. Or that something which works a certain way in this location needs to be modified slightly or heavily in that one. We talk a good game when it comes to appreciating context, but we still run like wolves to One Size Fits All. BYOD works in my class. It doesn’t work in another classroom down the hall. And it might not work next year for me either, or in another school I may teach in down the line. I was in a great webinar session recently with some stupendous minds led by @willrich45 and @snbeach. We were tossing around our thoughts on the meaning of ’21st Century Learning’. Sure, maybe we are reifying or overly aggrandizing the concept a bit, but it’s still worth contemplating and engaging in dialogue about. I wish I’d remembered to say one thing. Perhaps I am grossly wrong about this, but I feel that our current time in education is one that demands more of an appreciation of paradox and contextual difference than ever. We may live in a globalized, even standardized, world, but customization is simultaneously the rule of the day, as is the skill of navigating a multitude of contexts on an almost a daily basis. Cognitive dissonance rears its beautiful/ugly head every day in our time. Developing common language and nonnegotiables are often a great tool for local collaboration and leadership, but it can be very problematic, or even destructive, when used in a more global sense. I’m really hoping we can get to the stage where we can read a blogpost, listen to a keynote, or attend a workshop where someone tells the story of success, and not feel that the person is simultaneously calling for a new template to be applied as an all-encompassing panacea. As some of my favourite hip-hop MCs would say, can you feel me?

 CC licensed photo shared by svintus2010 I can’t imagine being an educator without blogging. It’s taken my ability to reflect, collaborate, and lead to another level. If you’re someone who struggles with the process, or is thinking of starting a professional reflective blog, here’s something I do that may or may not help you. I try my best to go from birth of idea to published in as little time as possible. My ideal is 12 hours max. The longer the timespan is from spark to online, the more likely it is I will: lose the reflective moment; forget why the idea/message was important to me; focus more on reader perception than personal reflection; over-think it; become paralyzed by analysis. A blog is not the same thing as a peer-reviewed journal. It does not need to be vetted a million times. Sure, you don’t want to post in a flippant or overly impulsive manner, but it’s still important to remember that you should… Just post it. Time of idea: 10pm-ish, October 31 2011 Time of post: 9:16am, November 1, 2011 (on my prep at school) Time of writing: 15 minutes.

Are we proud? Amazed? Blown away? All of the above. Click here or here to find the book online for purchase. Click here to read me and my students’ chapter (with permission from David Booth himself).

There are few people I admire or look upon as a co-learners more than @gcouros and @neilstephenson. These two exceptional leaders are spearheading a very special event. In May 2012, a new annual Canadian educational conference is starting and the Calgary Science School has been asked to be the first host! This exciting event will be taking place at the school May 25-27, 2012. ConnectED Canada will be a yearly educational event that brings together teachers, administrators, students, parents and other stakeholders with the purpose of sharing innovative practices and building a national collaborative network. Rather than traditional conferences which are usual held at hotels of off-site conference centres, ConnectED Canada will be held in different schools across the country each year . The purpose of hosting the event in a school is to allow participants to experience living examples of innovative practices and classrooms. Hosting it in a school also allows for a student voice to be included - a key element of ConnectED Canada. Additionally, as opposed to more presentation-driven professional conferences, ConnectED Canada will be built around conversations and discussions. The event will provide time and space for educators, students and parents to discuss various topics, share current practices and ideas and built relationships that will extend beyond the three days. Are you interested in hosting a discussion? Right now they are collecting proposal for conversation topics that attendees would like to facilitate. If you are interested in facilitating a discussion, please complete this form. ConnectED Canada will be accepting proposals until December 8th, 2011. Those who submit proposals will be notified by December 22nd. General registration for the event will begin on December 22nd. Due to the limited size of our school, we are capping the event at 300 participants. For more information contact George Couros or Neil Stephenson. And be sure to spread the word! See you in May (hopefully I will find some way of getting there myself)!

It’s been so much fun to be part of this little meme started by @shareski. We’re all sharing what we’ve started using this amazing new tool ifttt for. I’m in the early stages of playing with it. Currently, I’m using it to basically send everything to my social bookmarking tool of choice, Diigo. I’ve always wanted every link I ever post/favourite/bookmark/star to be archived, shared, and easily searchable in one place. Hallelujah. There are two ‘tasks’ or ‘recipes’ (as ifttt so ingeniously calls them) I’m dying for. One is for my pics that I tweet to end up on my Flickr stream. The other is for a way to cross post on Twitter and Google+. Here are the tweeps riding the meme at the moment: Will Richardson Danika Barker Doug Peterson Royan Lee Jim Pedrech Brian Ball Join our ifttt meme!

One of my favourite blogs in the world is @shareski‘s Ideas and Thoughts. Above all else, the thing I love most about it is Dean’s ability to be so honest, transparent, and vulnerable in his reflections. He doesn’t wait until he feels he is ‘right’ or ‘expert’ about a topic. Rather, he often throws ideas out for contemplation and discussion in a way that always probes and inspires me. In one of his most provocative posts (I urge you to take a break from this post and read his here), Dean ruminates on whether or not we really need to vet every paradigm shift we seek in education with each and every stakeholder. Wondering whether people even know what they don’t know, he reminds us that innovators such as Apple don’t ask their customers what new device should be invented, and that constantly involving laypersons in decision-making is a comment on how educators are often not regarded with the same professionalism afforded other vocations. Below is my cross-posted comment on his post: I agree that it is problematic (and in some cases, even a cop-out) to group-think every decision that could be made with all stakeholders. This is a case where the wisdom of the crowd usually leads to the inertia of the crowd, or, worse yet, an amplification of unreasonable but loud voices. Educators are professionals. Democracy is not about ‘voting’ on everything. What’s next, permission forms for pedagogy? I would say, however, that it is absolutely vital that parents and the community are actively brought along the ride of change and process of learning. Just yesterday I had a meeting with a parent who expressed reservations with what I see as an innovative and transformative approach to learning in my class. I invited them in for a classroom observation and had a long talk with them about their child, learning, and the ‘whys’ of what is happening in our room (and beyond). I have had to do this sort of thing quite a few times in my relatively young career. There have been moments where I felt resentful, thinking to myself, "Here I am, trying so hard to make change and make as dynamic a learning environment as possible for my students, and I’m having to continually justify my position to all manner of stakeholder, while some others rarely have to do so. Maybe I should just swim downstream like some others. Maybe it’s not worth it. I’m the expert here. I’m not being subversive; I’m just trying to do everything you’re supposed to in its fullest extent. Why can’t I just say, ‘tough, live with it, I know what I’m doing’?" The problem is that every time I’ve felt that way, it has been an emotional reaction, not necessarily a productive one. It’s so vital that we assert our professionalism and autonomy in everything we do, but I do think the work we do is different than technological/scientific innovation or, the common comparison, medicine. Our students’ parents really are the experts of their own kids. Those parents I speak of left my class expressing gratitude and trust for my role in their child’s life. They just needed to fill in some gaps of understanding. The more I see this happen, the more I’m thinking they are, in fact, the key, and that it is a small flapping of a butterfly’s wings which leads to bigger things. And, to top it all off, I received this amazing email on the same day from a parent who also expressed trepidation about my program at the beginning of the year: Dear Mr. Lee, As my technology education journey improves, I feel I am no longer a techi immigrant. I owe that to my daily check-ins to [your] Website. I learn so much from [you] just by looking it over. I am so impressed with the upcoming video project. What a way to incorporate procedural writing into the students real world. As a parent, words cannot express my gratitude to what this school and staff are teaching me and [my daughter]. Keep up the superb work. It was one of the greatest days of my teaching life yesterday. I don’t know if it’s so much that we need to give parents, students, or other community members the proverbial 50% of the business. It’s more that they have to be part of the learning, and be nurtured to become the biggest advocates of whatever change we are seeking, not because they read it in a book or watched it on the news, but because they literally see the effect it is having on the thing they love more than anything else in the whole world - their children. Thanks, Dean, for always pushing my thinking in new directions. I’m humbled and honoured to be a co-learner with ya.

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?

DISCLAIMER: This is definitely not an ad for the Kobo. In no way is that product affiliated with me or this blogpost. A few days ago, I was intrigued when I came across one of my student’s blogposts: Ever since I was young, I did not really enjoy reading. Until I got my Kobo that is. A Kobo is a type of eReader. An eReader is an electronic way of reading many different books. Now that I’ve got it, I really enjoy reading. I do not know what it is, it is just that I prefer reading electronically. To me, it’s just more fun. If you have trouble reading maybe you could try using an eReader of some sort. It really helped me! As someone who has taken a little while to understand the value of eReaders myself, I was so curious that one of my own student’s saw it as a literacy lifeline of sorts. I had to interview her. Kim (not her real name) is a 12-year-old grade 7 student at my school. She comes from a suburban, middle-class family. So Kim, when did you get your first eReader? I just got it a couple of months ago. Is it true that, before getting your Kobo, you didn’t consider yourself a reader? Ya, that’s right. Can you explain what you mean? I didn’t enjoy reading. I would do it for school or if someone made me do it, but I would never choose to read just for myself. So what’s changed? I just like the fact that it’s digital. It’s more fun for me. How much, and what, have you been reading since getting it? I read a lot now. I have tonnes of books on it already. I’ve just finished a few series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Do you think you would have read them before getting your eReader? Probably not. It takes me a long time to read, so I don’t think I would have stuck it out with a book. Really?!? That’s fascinating. So are you reading faster than before? No not really. I just find I worry about it less. Before, I used to think that I was a bad reader because I read slower than everyone else. Is there something about not turning real pages that makes you worry about that less? Ya totally. But I don’t know why [laughs]. Do you like the fact that you can put a bunch of books on your one device? Ya, I love that. I used to have so much trouble carrying books around. And, besides, I just prefer things to be digital and electronic. You also own an iPod Touch, right? Ya. Why didn’t you just use the Kobo app on that? Why is it better on the device? Well, it’s just not the same on the iPod. My eyes hurt when I read it on there. I squint more. It’s also hard to read outside. Plus, I get really distracted with my other apps on it. What are some things you can do on your device that you use? If you don’t know a word or something, you can search what it means while reading it. It helps me understand the book better. I also really like the way it tells me the percentage of how much I’ve read, and time it’s taking me to read, and my behaviour and stuff. I like being able to write notes too. It helps me go back and stay on track with my understanding. So you’re reading more, understanding more, and enjoying the experience more? Exactly.

When’s the last time you acted upon a challenge from a trusted peer to change a normalized part of your practice for the better? Check out my reflections on Carmel’s blog.

One of my students created this visual using her iPod. I love the simplicity of it.

Wow, isn’t this cool? The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 31,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it. Click here to see the complete report.

Equity is about voice. It’s not about Christmas Trees or Kwanzaa. It’s not about posters with a black girl standing next to a redhead standing next to an ethically ambiguous is-he-Spanish-is-he-Asian-is-he-Middle-Eastern boy. It’s not about which songs play over the public address speakers. Sure, those things can be important too, but more for marketing purposes, or just for manners’ sake. We should never forget that political correctness is more about exercising power than it is about distributing it. Equity is about powerful voices and marginalized voices, and the entire spectrum in between. Equity is fluid, not fixed. It is political. It’s implicit, rarely overt. Equity is about voice.