Silent Running

I loved the 1972 sci-fi movie on space exploration with Bruce Dern. This is where many classroom teachers are right now - under the radar, behind the sonar... running silently in classrooms, working hard to wrap up another school year - and still keep exploring.

This blog has been very silent lately. Here's what's running in one classroom:

• My third graders blog regularly, and they do so very easily - to post a blog article is just a couple more (easy) steps they take independently when they finish writing.
• Counting our 4 XO laptops, we have 21 computers in my classroom of 25 third graders. None of them is a donated junker.
• We just finished coordinating the largest educational activity coordinated on the Internet, for the 15th year.
• In a few days, we will have 8 XO laptops in our classroom, to demo a project developed by some U. of Washington students - an exciting new XO program.

Some of this may be news to readers here, but it is definitely news to my school and district colleagues.

I encourage school district leaders, tech administrators, tech integration spcialists - anyone who cares about technology in our schools - to visit as many classrooms as possible as the school year winds down. Check out what's happening first hand. What's under the surface may well surprise you.

For me right now, it's good to run silent, run deep. It is quiet, the water is very cold - but it is oh so exciting.

Coming up for air

It's not that I've given up on this blog - far from it. I am pitifully backlogged with ideas and partially written drafts. But Earth Day was a couple of weeks ago...


The Earth Day Groceries Project now has a record 174 pages on Pictures for 2008 - and there are 5 more that came in today. Last weekend I caught up. At an average of 10 minutes to transform each of them from an email with picture attachments to a school web page - well, it was a big task.

This is certainly the last year I will continue picture inclusion the way I have for the last 14 years. From now on, it'll have to be "links only" - where pictures will have to be on a school server or Flickr or something.... This is not an easy decision, as I know it means so much for so many schools to have their pictures "on" the site.... I just cannot do it anymore - because of the time it takes.


In the meantime, what or who lit a fire under Romania this year?!! Nearly 30 reports from schools who participated - and nearly that many picture submissions from those schools. Man, I wish I spoke the language...


Anyway, it feels very good to pull even and come up for air - temporarily. I look forward to getting back into the web 2.0 mix again, real soon.

Swamped, but Saved

I am swamped, overwhelmed in the midst of dealing with a massive deluge of email (pictures) and database entries (reports) for The Earth Day Groceries Project. Now, this kind of thing happens every year, this huge spike in activity, but this year seems different. Here's what's happening:

• there are way more people sending in pictures to be put on the web site
• people are sending in multiple, huge image files - like emails with three - 2MB images. I had several of those today - a total of 75 MB (so far) of images via email, yikes
• there are currently 81 reports waiting to be individually edited and approved for addition to the website database
• this all happened in one day. Way more than this has come in already. MUCH more will come in in the next few days...
• I'm looking at 15 hours of work that landed in my lap today - hard, intense, coding...
• Tomorrow that total will be added to... more the next, etc. It is that time of year.

Swamped, I am.

On the other hand, today there was a first in my third grade classroom. I gave a writing assignment this morning (Earth Day), and by the end of the day, every single student had posted an article to his/her blog, and they were all approved. To the non-teacher, this may not seem like any big whoops, but for the teacher who understands the differences in ability and individual motivation in each and every child in today's classrooms, well....

I'm saved.

Maybe part of their sucess in writing had to do with the fact that they saw themselves on a video on the Internet for the first time. If so, I'm getting a new video camera and filming every day!

Anyway, they ALL wrote, and many wrote very well. They had like 15 minutes, and they wrote off the tops of their heads. Check their posts on 4/22 on the left side of roomtwelve.com. One more time I say thank goodness for the kids.

Live event - Earthcast 2008 - join in!

On Earthday, April 22nd, there will be a 24 hour webcast about the health of our planet, planned and implemented by educators. I'm very honored to be participating as an invited guest, talking about The Earth Day Groceries Project. I hope other project participants will join in the conversation!

The event is called Earthcast 2008, and it will be broadcast/shared in a variety of ways for 24 hours. Be sure to tune in and participate, if you want, on Earthday. It begins at 12:00 AM GMT on Earthday. (that's 9 PM April 21 on the East Coast of the US, 6 PM on the West Coast, etc)

I'll be there on April 21st, from 6 to 7 PM, West Coast time.

"If you can't say something nice..."

"If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all."
- Thumper, quoting advice from his dad, when admonished for being critical, in Bambi.

So I have been very quiet here lately. I've been trying to put together a single positive sentence about my experiences with technology and education right now - and I just can't.

I will be able soon, I hope - but for now, I had to go to a different place to leave something nice. Here's a sweet love song from Alison Krauss that brightened my day:

XO Users - Connect!

There is a new jabber server set up on Bainbridge Island (near Seattle), and it's working great. It is one of only FOUR in North America currently functioning.

Briefly, a jabber server is a place XO laptop users can connect to that will allow them to share anything (pretty much) on their XO laptop with anybody else connected to the same server. This includes chat, video, write, and more... incredible technology!

Here's a link to the forum discussion with the location of the server: http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=2094.new#new

tags: xo olpc

I talked with my brother today

This is a break from educational technology - to personal technology. So...

I talked with my brother today. He called me, and we talked. I called him back and we talked some more.

My brother Dave lives in Connecticut, and I'm in Seattle. He's deaf/blind(legally), and I'm lucky enough to still have those senses.

Today we spoke on the phone - well, I was on the phone at least. Dave was watching an interpreter on a TV (up really close) who signed to him what I said. His TV is hooked up to a camera, so the interpreter can see what he is signing, and relay that back on to me. Yes, in the middle of all this technology there is a person (maybe hundreds, I don't know) who makes it meaningful for the people on either end.

Just amazing technology. Carried over the Internet. Getting him a big new TV was only part of it - he needed high speed Internet access, too.

But he needed somebody to set up the hardware and software to make the magic happen. Someday I hope to meet James, from the HKNC, in person. We've spoken, via the same video relay system before, and we've exchanged lots of email. James, if you're reading here, a big shoutout thank you!

So I spoke with my brother today, but for the first time, I could not reach out and touch him. I'm ever so grateful for the people with the vision to make this happen.