Dear friend,

I remember reading once that we, as human beings, have two consistent social difficulties, saying ‘hello’ and saying ‘goodbye’. Not in the general sense, but rather in getting to know someone and also in finding closure. This is easy enough to see with children getting to know one another. In the course of 3 hours two kids can meet, act shy and uninterested in each other, begin a conversation, start playing together and then on saying goodbye, feel like they are being torn from their best friend, before they even know each other’s last name. ‘Hello’s’ and ‘Goodbye’s’ can be difficult, and they can also provide us with new opportunities.
I’m writing this on a plane heading to Japan. My family will spend tonight in Narita (actually tomorrow night as we are not over the international date line yet), and then Sunday we are off to Dalian China where we plan to live for the next three years.  We made the decision to move in late April and so there has been a whirlwind of activity to get us here, and (finally) on our way. As a result we had to go through many ‘goodbye’s’ in the past week.

But ‘goodbye’ has a really different meaning in this day and age.

60 years ago ‘heading to China’, (more specifically for back then, Hong Kong), would have probably meant a boat trip and reconnecting with friends would have meant slow correspondence through posting letters that would take weeks to arrive back in North America.

Just over 30 years ago, when I was 10, my grandparents went with an Aunt and Uncle on a tour of Europe and Asia. Back then, a long distance phone call was quite expensive. So, Uncle Mike worked out a system to report back to us that ‘all was well’ for free. He would say he was my grandfather Leon, and call home collect asking for himself. When we got the call, we would reply, “I’m sorry, but he isn’t here” and the operator would hang up. Before hanging up, the operator would say, “I have a collect call from a Mr. Leon Burnstein for a Mr. Mike Woo from Tokyo Japan.” Thus we would be informed of their location and know that ‘all is well’.  A few times on the trip they requested to speak with us and we accepted the call, but numerous times we used this little strategy to get free trip progress reports. [Sneaky, and effective… I have a whole other post in my head about how students today can also be sneaky and effective and we should be rewarding them for this].

From avoiding costly collect calls 30 years ago, we move to the free flow of information today. Elaan Bauder is now coming home from a trip she took to Europe and the Middle East. My wife and I had almost daily email reports whereby she gave us a wonderful description of her journey. This included a voice memo from Egypt, (or some would say podcast). We shared in much of her adventure.

So essentially we are not saying ‘goodbye’ like we would have had to on a similar trip years ago. With Google Chat, iChat, Skype, Twitter and even Facebook (when they aren’t blocked), we are connected in ways we never used to be. As Bryan Jackson said in a post about my POD’s presentation, I’m “moving halfway around the world (while essentially residing in the same place).” To many people I’m a blogger here on Pairadimes, or datruss on networks like Twitter and Diigo… Places I will continue to ‘reside in’ regardless of my geographical location. A quote by Marcie T. Hull has stuck with me for a while now, “Access to the Internet has changed our very concept of geography; it becomes almost an idea like time. It has a construct but all the miles melt away when you are on the web communicating synchronously and asynchronously.”

And yet we did have some very difficult face-to-face ‘goodbye’s’ to go through this past week. But as hard as these ‘goodbye’s’ were, they were also very therapeutic for me. You see this trip has taught me a valuable lesson… I don’t make enough times for my friends and family. Why? Because I let ‘life’ get in the way.

As I head on a new adventure, I’m ready to share that adventure in a new way. I’m not going to leave my friends and family behind, and in fact I’m going to make a concerted effort to reconnect in ways that I didn’t make the effort to do when my friends were in my geographical ‘neighbourhood’!

I’ve already started. I seized an opportunity to meet with Alec Couros and Jen D. Jones since they were in town for OpenEd09. I couldn’t join them in the conference, but as I scrambled to leave, my good friend Heidi Gable helped to coordinate the dinner meeting. In meeting them, I had the opportunity to also meet a number of great educators as well. Previously digital friends that I have now met face-to-face… connections new and yet old to foster further!

I got an email from my sister, Sharon, who lives in Toronto, today while we were in the airport. Our correspondence went like this:

From Sharon
Hi All,
You are probably in flight right now… I just wanted to wish you all the very best on the “Truss Big Chinese Adventure”.
Love to the kids… hope it is a smooth adjustment for them.
Keep in touch… send lots of pix.
Luv Shar.

From Me
5 min. from boarding to Japan. Love to all,
funny but we will probably make more of an effort to stay in touch now, so in a way we are moving closer! ;-P

From Sharon
Love u… always glass half full!!

I have two important personal goals to work on in making this move. I need to work on my ‘hello’s’ as there are many wonderful people I’m going to meet in China- new friendships to discover and nurture.  And also, there are some great friends I must reconnect with and stay connected with as I move forward. My glass is getting ‘fuller’ by the minute, and I feel fortunate for the possibilities that good friendships bring! Perhaps I am simply avoiding the hardships of saying goodbye, but in this day and age, I don’t think geographical distance is a reason to say goodbye.

If you are reading this, dear friend, keep in touch.
Dave.

Educators new to twitter, here is a little walk down memory lane…

Remember your first days of university? You weren’t sure what to expect and you had to put yourself ‘out there’ to connect to new people?

Do you remember going to a class and not knowing anyone?

Imagine for a moment that you enter, for the first time, a small class and the teacher is trying to start a conversation. When you say something in that class you aren’t really sure who is paying attention… (That’s a Tweet). Someone says something and you respond… (that’s an @reply). The person next to you likes what you said and leans over to quietly tell you so… (that’s a Direct Message). Soon you have the confidence to share your ideas in a bigger classroom… (that’s how you build a following).

You jumped into a new learning environment and made it interesting. You can do that on Twitter too, but just like your new experience at university, you’ve got to put yourself out there, you’ve got to be willing to meet new people, and you’ve got to put some time into making new relationships that can be lasting and meaningful.

It doesn’t work if you don’t try.

It doesn’t work if you aren’t doing it for the right reasons.

But if you are willing to make the effort, you are going to find a community of learners that want to connect to you, and learn from you, and give you more than you could possibly give back.

- – - – -

A little over a month ago, a few of us started a conversation and it grew into Gr8Tweets. For the month of March, we would promote the use of a hashtag (#gr8t) in order to collectively share some of our favourite Tweets in one place. When we came across something we considered GREAT, we would retweet it with #gr8t.

I really enjoyed planning and launching this with Laura Deacs, Darren Kuropatwa, Sue Waters, Liz B. Davis, Heidi Hass Gable and Bud Hunt. Special thanks as well goes to the many wonderful -people - who - jumped - on - board - with - blog - posts - to – help - promote - the - idea. And even more thank you’s to those that contributed Tweets to #gr8t.

I think this was a great way to synthesize some of the links and ideas that people share on Twitter every day, and for me it highlighted why Twitter has become such a special part of my PLN. I plan to continue using the hashtag when I find something really worth sharing.

- – - – -

So for those of you that may still be struggling to ‘get’ twitter, check out the resource page on the Gr8tweets wiki. And remember your first days of university. Remember that it takes work and effort to build a meaningful community of friends… and when you decide to join in, put yourself ‘out there’ and give it a fair chance. Once things get rolling, the effort fades and the benefits soar!

This was written on a scrap piece of paper while doing some ‘big thinking’ with Heidi Hass Gable. I’m sharing it exactly as it was written, but adding links to some of my other posts to liven it up a bit… Feedback, as always, is appreciated.

- – - – -

Students Today

-> relate differently to toys, digital tools and each other, compared to just a few years ago.

-> are not digitally competent in the same way as each other.

-> connect, learn and socialize in online communities that are richer in content and engagement than traditional ways of classroom learning.

Relevance to Teachers

-> Students and teachers have different digital competencies and there is not an intentional  roadmap for students or teachers to follow in order to improve their digital literacy skills.

For the month of March, a group of educators and lifelong learners will be picking a

“Tweet of the day”

and Re-Tweeting it with the tag: #gr8t

Hopefully, you will join us in doing this too! (If you aren’t sure about what twitter is all about, start here.)

There are a number of reasons why you might want to participate:

• To share what you value about twitter.
• To see what others value about twitter.
• To celebrate the power and wisdom of your Personal Learning Network.
• To find interesting people to follow on Twitter.
• To commit to trying out twitter for a month.

My personal choice for what to retweet with #gr8t will be a Tweet that I find interesting, or insightful, or humorous. It might link to something I enjoyed reading, or it might have something profound or even fortune-cookie-like that appeals to me, like these tweets that I’ve ‘stared’ as favourites:

There aren’t really any rules to participate: Simply find a tweet you value, and share it!

For Example, here is a Tweet I’d like to share:

And so I retweet it with #gr8t:

Then this new tweet shows up on the Gr8Tweets wiki and on twitter searches for others to see and share.

I’m looking forward to sharing the Gr8tweets that I find, at least one daily for the month of March, and I’m hoping you will join me and share what you find.
Feel free to follow Gr8tweets on Twitter and Gr8tweets will follow you back, (this part is totally optional).

Even if you aren’t on twitter or you don’t want to participate, be sure to check out the Gr8Tweets wiki and see some of the reasons why so many educators are finding Twitter a valuable tool!

(Here is the story behind this all)

Questions?

Ask us: @datruss, @deacs84, @lizbdavis, @hhg, @suewaters, @dkuropatwa, @budtheteacher

A couple days ago Heidi Hass Gable shared this with me:

This is from her 10 year old daughter who said,
“Mom, I have mostly the same homework as yesterday, so I just circled it, wrote copy, then wrote paste on today’s page.”

Last week my 9 year old asked me a question. My answer was ‘I don’t know’ so she got up, walked over to the computer and asked Google.

Information is now easily copied, pasted, edited, added to, archived, and accessed. We can look at these two events above and think ‘how cute’, or we can think of them having a little deeper meaning.

Students today experience the fluidity and availability of information in a different way than we did. Unlike my parents, I’m not spending money on a Junior Encyclopedia for my kids. Their bookshelf is the same shelf you are reading this post on, and it is richer, multi-modal, more interactive, easier to access and freely available.

So how should this change what we do in education? How much focus should we place on rote memorization? Should we spend more time teaching kids how to find the information they want more efficiently? What do we want them to do with information?

What’s the purpose of school? How has this changed in the last 2-3 years? And how will this change in the next 5 years?

I’ve been tagged by 3 people, Liz, Alec, and Heidi, to participate in the “7 things you didn’t know about me” meme. Well, here it is… sort of…

1. I’ll start with a confession: I hate memes! As I openly admitted here, I was never really good at doing ‘assignments’ and this blog has never felt like that to me. I’ve thought about this post for days and couldn’t get my butt in front of the computer to write it because it felt contrived. Even when I last wrote a meme I sort of cheated and just printed something I’d already written, (my grandfather’s eulogy to be specific). So, the fact is that you won’t see me write too many of these. -Glad that’s out of the way!

2. I have bouts of insomnia. I’ll be fine for three to six months then I get hit with it. I’ll live off of 3-4 hours sleep for 5 or 6 days, then catch up with a 6 or 7 hour night, and then go another 5-6 days on less than 4 hours sleep. Even when insomnia isn’t hitting me I tend to need very little sleep. I slept in this morning and tonight, if all goes as planned, I will probably get 3hrs sleep. When people tell me, “You are killing yourself”, I usually respond with, ‘I might die younger than you, but I’ll be awake longer than you were.’ Oh and for no rhyme or reason sometimes I can drink coffee and then go right to bed, sometimes it wires me awake for hours, and the same holds true for medicines that are supposed to cause drowsiness.

3. I am not Tech Savvy! If I had a pair of dimes for every time someone said, ‘Dave, you are good with computers, can you help me with this…” then I could retire early. I’ll explain this with a tangent example: The fact is that I happen to be a very good driver. Put me behind the wheel of a car, even in a snow storm, and I’ll get you to your destination safely. However, don’t ask me to do anything more to the car than put gas or windshield washer fluid in it… maybe check the tire pressure… that’s it! Give me a working computer and I can do pretty good there too! Not because I’m savvy though… just because I spend hours trying things… see #2 above.

4. I’ve never owned a car. Both cars we currently have are in my wife’s name.

5. I’m am inventor. I commuted on my bicycle when I first moved to BC and I designed my own commuter bag. It was the first time I’d ever had something made that I designed and other than being a bit too small it turned out great!

From ’03 to ’05 I dedicated thousands of hours and created a patent for bicycle locks that connect together. At over 140 pages, 90 or so drawings (many requiring pixel-by-pixel adjustments), not to mention about $15,000, this was a huge undertaking! I flew to Boston to pitch my idea and a patent specialist at Kryptonite Locks liked it… But I pitched it to them just after this happened… their money was a bit tied up to be toying with a specialty lock. I also pitched it in my own back yard at Norco Bikes. They wanted it, but could not convince their foreign lock-maker to make it for them… a long story and moot after The World Patent Office rejected my international patent request because they thought my idea wasn’t ‘novel’ enough. This, despite two industry specialists liking it and finding it novel! I decided not to fight it and throw good money after bad, but I’m really proud of taking this as far as I did.

My ideas mostly come during my bouts of insomnia, when my mind won’t rest. I remember seeing Phenomena with John Travolta and in it there is a scene where he describes random ideas flooding his brain, like shortening the mailman’s route pattern and changing the layout of a parking lot to fit more cars. I really connect to what that feels like. I’ve fully developed ideas in my head for bike lights, an alarm clock and bed sheets… who in their right mind tries to revolutionize the design of bed sheets?

6. I was a Treasure Hunter! Some of my closest friends don’t know this… they thought I was doing ‘mineral exploration’… (this wasn’t really a lie). We never found any treasures, but we found some very interesting holes in some very remote places. Basically we always got there too late!

My adventures included: Nights under remote skies where Magellanic Clouds could be seen with my naked eye; Fishing in waist high water, catching barracuda and tying them to a rope attached to my leg -later on that evening called ‘bait’, when I found out that I was in shark-infested waters; An out-of-body experience, alone on spit facing the Atlantic Ocean with a storm passing by; Hiking a desert mountain only to be hailed on in a freak lightning storm- we had no choice but to take shelter under a tree to avoid welts from the marble sized hail… 20 minutes later we were sweating in blistering heat; Suffering from ‘mask squeeze’ on a 75 foot wall dive (my first dive ever)-I was relieving my ear pressure, but not the pressure in my mask and I ended up with the whites of my eyes almost completely red. Being bitten by over 30 wasps in a cave on a tropical island; Not being bitten by a 4 foot rattle snake I almost walked right into near the Superstitious Mountains; Dragging a boat for over an hour through methane-rich muck because low tide prevented us from lowering the motor; Spending 24,000 kilometers in a Jeep Cherokee in one summer… that’s 10 full days calculated at an unrealistic 100km/hr average; Thousands of false beeps on metal detectors and ground-probing radar; Too many holes dug; Watching the tide change in the Bay of Fundy; Horizon-less fog; Mesmerizing dust devils; Unbelievable hikes; Incredible sunsets; And fond memories to last a lifetime.

7. You didn’t really expect me to follow the rules did you? I’m done. And since I don’t like doing these, I won’t pass this on to anyone. If I’ve inspired you to share, leave a comment with a link and I’ll add my own link below this to give you some link-love.

My bias was intentional. In my last post, Girl Power, I highlighted two things:

1. The Girl Effect video

2. Women who are Inspirational Educational Leaders

Liz B. Davis said this in the first comment on the post: (I added the links)

David,
Thanks for including me in your list of inspiring women. I am honored to be included among so many great women. I also find Kim, Vicki and Sue to be important members of my learning network. Thanks also for introducing me to Heidi.

Now to stir the pot just a bit… I have been included in other lists of inspiring WOMEN and, while I am happy and honored to be recognized (especially by you since I respect you a great deal), there is also something just a tad condescending about qualifying the list by gender. What if it had been about the top black or Jewish or gay educators to follow? …

And, as she often does, Liz got me thinking! In response I commented and then Liz added (among other things):

When showcasing women, is it necessary to point out they are women? It might be just as powerful to talk about us as people and about the qualities you admire. I’m sure your readers would notice that you had only chosen women without you pointing it out.

What’s interesting about this is that I was very intentional with my wording. I used the term ‘girl’ just twice: In the title and to tie things up at the end of the post in reference to the video, ‘The Girl Effect’… beyond that I used the term Woman. Furthermore, in my introduction to these women, I said this: “So here are a few real educational leaders worth watching, and more specifically reading:” … Intentionally choosing not to reference them as being female.

But is that enough? Liz’s questions and comments are valid and worth reflecting on!

Well, I’ve reflected.

If I was writing a post specifically about educational leaders, then I’d have to agree with Liz wholeheartedly. Imagine me saying ‘here are my favourite educational leaders’ and then having two lists, one for women and one for men… personally I’d find that more than a bit condescending! However my last post was about the power of women to change the world. It was about the fact that not enough attention is paid to women;  not enough women are recognized for their accomplishments; and there are not enough significant role models for my daughters. In this context my belief is that a list of inspirational female leaders is appropriate.

But an appropriate list is one thing, and a necessary list is another. Why do we need another list of inspirational females?

…Because of unintentional bias!

From my own reading and personal experience, this is what I know:

* I read an article years ago that said women are far more likely to be cut off/interrupted when talking in a meeting than men are. Since then I’ve seen this time and again in meetings. I’ve even caught myself doing it.

* A few years ago I read Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. In the section about auditioning for musical orchestras, the number of women hired dramatically increased after screens were used to conceal the sex of the person auditioning.

* Last year I went to BLC08 with three male keynote speakers. This year I’m going back for BLC09, and what do I see? Three male keynotes.

* My kids loved Dora the Explorer. This is a great cartoon with a female hero. Dora relies on two animated objects: a map and a backpack. The male map always knows where to go and points the way for Dora. The female backpack always needs ‘your help’ to figure out what item in the backpack Dora needs.

I don’t think any of these things are intentional, but they are there… Subtle, but there.

I wish these unintentional biases were not around for my daughters to be exposed to. I wish these were not hidden behind more blatant biases that modern media exposes our kids to.  I don’t want ‘separate but equal‘ for my girls. But I also don’t want to pretend that the biases aren’t there, or think that they will go away if we just pretend they aren’t there.

If we are going to unintentionally shut women up, leave them out and give them submissive roles, then shouldn’t we intentionally and necessarily take notice of them when it is appropriate to do so?

I’ve always been surrounded by women. I grew up with three sisters, and I have two daughters and a wonderful wife.

Yet when I think of the people that I look up to as heroes and leaders, I inevitably think of men… I was tempted to list some here, but that’s not what this post is about.

The simple fact is that women should rule the world.

I’m not talking about Madonna or Britney Spears, I’m not even talking about Hillary Clinton… I’m talking about down-to-earth, community focused, compassionate women… I’m talking about the force of Yin in a world of Yang… I’m talking about women who lead by example and women who are nurturing and caring.

Two places where I connect to some pretty amazing women are in my Twitter and blogging networks. Tonight I came across a tweet by Claire Thompson about a post by Betty Gilgoff:

clthompson :

I met Betty when she invited me to present to a couple of her TLITE groups. Here is the subject of her post:

On Thursday October 30th, I had the honour of being interviewed by Alice Barr, Cheryl Oakes and Bob Sprankle on Seedlings hosted by EdTechTalk.

Here is my interview on Seedlings.

And here is the chat transcript. I couldn’t get onto EdtechTalk at school and rushed home minutes before we started, so that added a few kinks for me. One of the kinks was that my laptop at home should have been restarted first and so just opening a window sometimes took 10 seconds, and so I spent very little time paying attention to the chat as I tried opening links to share. Another kink was that I had these links open and ready to go at work… so it really was too bad I had to rush home.

Feedback? Questions? Please share them with me!

Alice, Cheryl and Bob were great hosts and the hour together disappeared. We started the conversation talking about how easy it is to connect with our digital neighbors when we meet them face-to-face, and that is something I really learned at BLC08 this year.

Thanks to these three wonderful educators! They deserve some kudos for working on Seedlings and also for offering support to new educators at their Seedlings Ning site. I’d love the opportunity to chat with them again, on or off the air.

—–

Links from the show:

• “Do Not Go Quietly Into Your Classroom” Video
  
• Related Post for Video
• Heidi’s Video: “What I Want for My Children”
• “How to Prevent Another Leonardo DaVinci”
• Leaderhips Paper (with usable appendix)
• Blog Rules
• Learning Conversations -Presentation 2, BLC08
• VoiceThread for Learning Conversations

Heidi Hass Gable has done something special!

Here is her presentation, What I Want for My Children:

Her post simply says this:

My hope is that it will move you, it will motivate you,
it will make you think and it will inspire you to get involved in your child’s education,
to support your teachers and to be part of creating great schools!

Her subtitle: ‘Creating Great Schools — Together’ gets immediately to the heart of the matter.

The power of the message comes from the action she asks from parents…

… and what does she ask of teachers and all other educational partners? The exact same thing!

This comes shortly after the 5½ minute mark. This is what changes this video from a parent’s perspective to an educational partner’s perspective.

“If we want these things for our kids, then we have to do them for our teachers as well.”

Doing what’s best for our students, our kids, is what education is all about. It is what a collective WE want.

‘What I want for my children’ is a move in the right direction of meaningful collaboration that can only make our schools better.