THERE IS NOTHING WRONG HERE

lab03

Originally uploaded by manz1964

We made the big decision to get another dog 1 1/2 years after Hannah died. After a couple of months of looking and talking about it we contacted Adoptalab.org and within a few hours we were signed up and decided to take Hera aka Pudge who we will call Willa. She is a yellow 4 year old lab and we could not have picked a better dog.

I have had a Netvibes account for about a year, ever since Will Richardson demonstrated it at a conference I was at. My interest in Netvibes was increased when I saw how Michael Wesch uses it in his classes, but I never took the time to really learn it. Now that I have read  how Jeff Utech uses Netvibes I want to dig in and really learn how to use Netvibes. Give Jeff’s blog post a look and see what you think.

I am visiting my 96 year old father and 85 year old mother who are both in poor health. It is important to stay mindful of the drama that plays out in families so that divisions do not become wider. It is amazing how quickly children can divide into camps about what is the right thing for mom and dad to do. Spouses of children are not spared the trama and can be deeply involved also.

I have been working on developing an online geometry Moodle course as part of the grant that I am currently working under. Every time I develop another Moodle course I learn more and more about the power and versatility of Moodle. The Assignment block is a Moodle function that I was familiar with but had not used. It allows you to design the course so that students can not proceed to the next lesson unless they pass a quiz at the end of each lesson.

I am also using Geogebra, an interactive math website. This will give the students real experience in constructing geometric shapes. They will be able to discover geometric rules by manipulating the geometric shapes they build.

On Saturday, May 2, I was fortunate  to be able to attend the New Media Literacies Project conference at MIT. When I first saw the email about the conference I was integrated, but little did I know how important this conference would be.

At NML’s May 2nd conference, we will share our new web-based learning environment, the Learning Library, and host a series of conversations and workshops about the integration and implementation of the new media literacies across disciplines. Workshops include “The Complexities of Copyright: Shepard Fairey v. the AP,” “Mapping in Participatory Culture: Boundaries,” “Using Wikipedia in the Classroom” and many others. Henry Jenkins’ closing remarks will address the future of NML and participatory democracy.

As happens in most conferences the workshops were great but too short. Most of the workshops were based on research that is current or ongoing so I feel like the participants were exposed to a scholarly discussion. At times the workshops fell into research jargon that you had to listen carefully to to gain understanding.

I was also struck by how young many of the researchers were. MIT does attract some of the brightest young minds in the world. The Learning Library and teaching resources they have created will help the classroom teachers and tech directors begin to infuse new media literacies into the curriculum.

I had heard of Henry Jenkins, but I had never heard him speak before. He is leaving MIT for USC so it was a gift to be able to hear him in. Here is a link to a talk he gave at USC in 2007. The MIT conference was recorded and will be available on MIT’s Techtv.

If you do not know who Bill McKibben is you need to lean about him. Bill is an environmentalist and writer who writes about global warming, alternative energy, and economics. Nena and I attended his talk on 4/2 at Mt. Holyoke College. It was standing room only as Bill started the talk by telling us he was there to depress us.

Bill is touring the world to let us know how important the number 350 is. 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is the upper safe limit for humanity. Right now the measurement is 387 ppm, so we are past the level of CO2 that is safe for us.

Bill, and others, are organizing A Global Day for Climate Action on October 24, 2009. So go to the web site and find out how you can join. Bill is also on FaceBook and Twitter so that you can stay connected.

I have been working with some brand new right out of college teachers the last couple of weeks. I am really enjoying their energy, work ethics, and eagerness to learn. But, I am surprised at their lack of Web 2.0 skills. They can text, use My Space and Facebook, download music and images, and IM, but they don’t know what a wiki is or don’t have a blog.

The schools of education in this area have done a great job of making sure the new teachers can write lesson plans with goals and objectives, but not how to incorporate Web 2.0 tools in the curriculum. When I introduce the concept of a wiki or Google Doc to a new teacher they get excited, but often just want to make the wiki another way for the students to do their homework, which is a certain way to kill the wiki. I am reminded of Michael Wesch’s “A Portal to Media Literacy” where he reports that the way education is structured students only want to know what is on the test and how do I get an A.

I am encouraged that by working with new young teachers it is possible to get them to start thinking differently and not repeat their educational experience.

This blog has been bouncing around in my head for two weeks. (This has taken me 3 months to post) The Winter Soldier event finally happened at at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst on Oct 1. This event was conceived and carried out by the local chapter of Iraq Vets Against the War IVAW. I became involved through a friend who was a member of Vets for Peace.

The term ‘Winter Soldier’ is a spin on the opening of a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1776: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

The original Winter Soldier event was held Jan. of 1971 in Detroit. For three days Viet Nam vets testified about the war crimes they committed or saw committed. The press did not cover the event, but a film was made and a transcript was entered into the Congressional Record, which led to Senate hearings on the war.

The IVAW Winter Soldier was held in the Student Union and about 100 people attended, mainly students. Four different Iraq area vets gave testimony about their military experiences in and out of Iraq. One of the themes that emerged for me was that most of the vets had “a job” to do. When I talk about my experiences in Viet Nam I explain that I worked the swing shift from 3 pm to midnight, six days a week. The idea that as a soldier they had a job to do was a constant theme. I realized that doing your job will not be enough to win a war of occupation. The occupied are fighting for their lives, families, and country. Soldiers who are “dong their job” can not win.

After the testimony by four Iraq War vets a group was lead by a group of Buddhist monks to a mock grave yard.

The grave yard listed the names of American soldiers and Iraqi children killed in the war. Chanting and silent prayer helped us focus on the sorrow of the war.

Last week one of my co-workers asked me if there was a way to use technology to persuade people to vote for a president of the U.S. who would be a good manager. His argument was that what the country needed was some one who could identify problems and then delegate the responsibility of fixing the problem to competent people. I told him to read Wikinomics because it points out the “perfect storm” of the technological revolution that is changing the way business is and will work. This may give him some insight to use the same concepts in Wikinomics to change government.

I then said that the problem with thinking of the President of the U.S. as the manager-in-chief is that the majority of voters don’t vote with their brains, they vote with their emotions. The president is the father-in-chief for many people. Our national political dialogue is fundamentally metaphorical, with family values at the center of our discourse.

After reading George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant and Michael Lerner’s The Left Hand of God I started to understand why it seems some people voted against their own self interest. My own self interest is not another person’s self interest. As a liberal I see the world as generally a safe place with few absolute good vs. evil forces. I see the world as complex with only a few absolute answers. Force does not make right and should only be use when absolutely necessary. I don’t need a father/mother figure telling me what is moral and defining my values. Man and nature are deeply connected and what affects one affects the other. Communities work best when we all are responsible for each other through a responsible government.

A conservative sees the world as a dangerous place and we need a strong father to protect us. There are absolute good vs. evil forces and we need to be strong to attack the evil in the world. The father will define what is moral and punish us if we stray. Man was put on earth to control nature. Each family is responsible for its self and the government is only responsible for protecting the country.

As Lakoff points out, the Republicans have been very good over the last 25 years in identifying the fundamental metaphors of politics and exploiting them. The Democrats keep talking about real problems and how to solve them, but people vote for the person who taps into their need for a father to tell them “I know you are scared and confused, so I will take care of you so you don’t have to look to yourself for any difficult answers.”

I am working on developing a Web 2.0 course I will be teaching for Holyoke Community College starting in late September. I am using my Moodle site to teach the workshop. The course will only be five weeks long and two hours each class. It is frustrating trying to get any depth in these short time workshops. I decided to approach the workshop as tools in a Web 2.0 toolbox. What are the essential Web 2.0 tools? Firefox, gmail, iGoogle, Google reader, wiki. In 10 hours about all you can do is teach the basics.The Moodle workshop will be online so the students will be able to spend some extra time working with the tool box.

I am hoping that a variaty of people sign up for the workshop. I would like to work with people other then teachers, not that I don’t like working with teachers. But, I will spend the the school year with teachers. I am interested in finding out what people can do with Web 2.0 in other careers and in their privent lives.