Only Connect

"Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only
connect...”-Edward M. Forster

In his blog today, Will Richardson admitted that he rarely reads his aggregator any more, is considering giving up blogging in favor of Skyping, and wonders at the new direction personal PD seems to be taking.

All of this bothered me on several levels:

• my Reader feeds are my first, best, venue for PD, alerting me to new technologies and best practices in the classroom
• blogging helps me to focus my thoughts, explore new concepts, and creatively express myself
• by reading and commenting on other blogs, I form connections and interact with colleagues around the world
• recognized educational leaders and authors are accessible via blogs
• Skype and Twitter are not well suited to my own learning style, which tends to be more reflective than reactive

Non-stop traveling and an exhausting lecture schedule has probably taken its toll. With a core group of stimulating and supportive friends, Mr. Richardson must feel no lack of connection.

Those of us on the fringe, newcomers to 2.0 and beyond, appreciate the chance to interact with key players in educational technology and the new literacies. Post once a week or once a month, if you must. But please don't leave us behind.

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as courses, and they come back to us as effects."- Herman Melville

Photo from Sketchzilla

Conversations

"Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears." -James Hillman

My Current Events class is still in low gear, waiting for our blog to be enabled (we have gotten administrative approval, so progress is being made!).

Inspired by David Warlick's Keynote for the K12 Online Conference 2007, I started some informal conversations with students today about their understanding, and every day use, of technology.

One senior told me that he wants to major in psychology in college and has some programming experience. He's quite adept at data manipulation but only has a vague idea of what "tagging", online collaboration, and wikis are all about.

A second, younger (Grade 8) student was doing some research for a career report on designing video games. He was initially puzzled when I asked him if he knew what "Second Life" is. He recovered quickly, though, and compared it to various Sim games he had played. Then, he took the discussion to a higher level by offering the opinion that businesses would really benefit by holding conferences in Second Life rather than in the "real" world. "You could save a lot of money on airfare to Japan and China!" he decided. You could indeed.

I'm going to keep my eye on that gentleman! He definitely has Flat World potential.


"What students lack in school is an intellectual relationship or conversation with the teacher." -William Glasser

Photo by spies and spying

Tentacles

"When they enter the classroom, we chop their tentacles off." David Warlick, K12 Online Conference 2007

It's an image I can't get out of my mind: school personnel ruthlessly hacking tentacles off the torsos of hapless students.

The sci-fi films of my adolescence featured monster squid with powerful suckers and deadly teeth. But some plants and mammals also have an "elongated flexible unsegmented extension".

The broader meaning of the word refers to "the ability to grasp or stretch." So by removing, "chopping off", students' "tentacles", we are restricting their reach, limiting their ability to stretch and grow.

“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?” -Robert Browning

Photo by Dawdles

Playing with Boundaries

The K12 Online 2007 Conference, "Playing with Boundaries", begins today with David Warlick's pre-conference Keynote.

This will be the first time I've "attended" this event, and I'm sure that it will be an engaging, challenging, and stimulating experience.

Set aside some time to visit the site and take measure of your own boundaries.


"Your current safe boundaries were once unknown frontiers." -Unknown

"I have reached no conclusions, have erected no boundaries, shutting out and shutting in, separating inside from outside: I have drawn no lines:" -Archie Randolph Ammons, Corsons Inlet

A Hundred Echoes

"When there is an original sound in the world, it makes a hundred echoes." -John A. Shedd

The following was the first posting on my new blog. Please stop in and visit, if you have the chance.

"Pourquoi? Pourquoi pas?"

When I was in college, I went to a screening of the French classic, "A Man and a Woman". During the film's most famous conversation, one of the characters asked "Why?"; "Why not?" replied the other.

Clay Burell directed me to Quotiki, a site for saving and searching quotations, but my efforts to contribute have been largely ignored or rejected. So I decided to start another blog solely as a repository for the quotes that are now clogging my document files. Why not?

The title and tag will indicate the theme. If Clay, or anyone else, can explain how to widgetize my offerings, I'd be happy to do so.

Until then, this blog will have to serve.

"Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless." -George Bernard Shaw

In October

"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October." -Nathaniel Hawthorne

Autumn has been a disappointment this year. Drought conditions and unseasonably warm temperatures have resulted in a very muted palette rather than incandescent splendor. On a pleasant ramble today through the Hudson valley region, my husband and I did manage to find some seasonal images. And the warm sunshine was rather nice...


"Corn and grain, corn and grain,
All that falls shall rise again."
- Wiccan Harvest Chant

View as a slideshow at flickr

In the Purple of Emperors

“He wrapped himself in quotations- as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”-Rudyard Kipling

I have no gift for clever or pithy sayings but appreciate that aptitude in others. Therefore, I use my skill at online research to locate appropriate quotes for my blog postings.

Clay Burell has suggested that I archive my collection of famous sayings on quotiki. Unfortunately, none of my submissions are showing up on the site yet. So for the time being, Journeys will have to serve as my quotation cache.

Literary luminaries seem to be divided on the question of citing other authors. Anatole France advised, “When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it.” Samuel Johnson firmly believed that “Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.” Pierre Bayle flatly stated, “There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.”

Not every author agreed with this philosophy. Dorothy L. Sayers' fictional detective, Lord Peter Whimsey, scornfully observed, “A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.” W. Somerset Maugham "compliments" a female acquaintance by commenting that “She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.” (I'm glad he's not around to read this blog!)

Ralph Waldo Emerson evidently couldn't decide whether or not he approved of this tendency to quote others. On the one hand, he warned writers, "I hate quotation. Tell me what you know." Yet he also said, "Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it."

Sophocles believed that “A short saying oft contains much wisdom.” My feelings exactly.

“The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages is preserved into perpetuity by a nation's proverbs, fables, folk sayings and quotations.”-William Feather

“I didn't really say everything I said.”-Yogi Berra

A Question of Censorship

"The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion." -Henry Steele Commager

I find it both ironic and disturbing that even as the ALA conducts its yearly Banned Books Week promotion (September 29–October 6, 2007), there has been an increase in educational blogging about incidences of filtering and censorship in school districts.

Despite being caricatured as "one-dimensional bookish-types", librarians are frequently on the front lines defending First Amendment rights and intellectual freedom. The American Library Association's "Freedom to Read" statement warns that "Most attempts at suppression rest on a denial of the fundamental premise of democracy: that the ordinary individual, by exercising critical judgment, will select the good and reject the bad."

Today, Tim Stahmer, in one of a series of posts on censorship, reminds us that "Schools are supposed to be institutions of learning where students gain the knowledge and skills needed to successfully live and work in the real world. And then we spend large amounts of time, effort, and money trying to block that real world from leaking through the electronic walls."

In other words, if teachers and librarians are not given the tools to provide instruction in the safe and ethical use of technology, how will our students evolve into effective collaborators, communicators, researchers, and critical thinkers?

Karl Fisch describes "two levels of override" which allow for some discretionary unblocking by his district's staff members. The trade off is that although teachers can gain access to "forbidden" sites like YouTube, students are no longer be able to "watch videos on their own, or find videos, or work on presentations that include videos, or upload their own videos."

Clay Burell takes filtering to its logical conclusion: if search engines permit students to click into pornography and other inappropriate data, then all search engines should be blocked.

Or, perhaps, all technology should be banned, blocked, filtered, suppressed, eradicated, wiped from human consciousness.

"We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still." -John Stuart Mill

"Fear of corrupting the mind of the younger generation is the loftiest of cowardice."
-Holbrook Jackson

"Censorship of anything, at any time, in any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always be the last resort of the boob and the bigot." -Eugene Gladstone O'Neill



Illustration by Isaac Mao

It's Elementary

"If help and salvation are to come, they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men." - Maria Montessori

It was a busy day today, with our youngest grades coming to the LMC for some stories and a book exchange.

The little ones are still excited by their library visits. They enjoy both the "true stuff" and the "made up stuff". They can barely contain their comments during listening time. Many of them beg me to sit and read their chosen books to them; when I oblige, a few friends drift over to join our impromptu session.

There is an astonishing range of skills evident: a few barely know their alphabet while others are already reading three grade levels ahead. Their classroom teachers are challenged daily to keep each child involved and motivated.

While I love my time with the high school classes, it is satisfying to be one of the grown-ups who shares books with the littlest scholars.

"Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it." - Horace Mann

"All children’s books are about ideals. Adult fiction sets out to portray and then explain the world as it really is; books for children present it as it should be." -Humphrey Carpenter

Bloggers' Block

"Only a mediocre writer is always at his best." — W. Somerset Maugham

Today two of the bloggers on my Reader feed mentioned "bloggers' block", an inability to compose a post suitable for public view.

Jennifer, a graduate student in the masters of library science program at Southern Connecticut State University, is frustrated with school and looking for positive motivation and material beyond her present situation.

Cheryl, on the other hand, has a wealth of interesting experiences to draw upon for inspiration but has been busier doing things than blogging about them.

No author, amateur or professional, is exempt from the occasional "psychological inhibition preventing a writer from proceeding with a piece".

American author Ernest Hemingway stated, "There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly: sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges."

Some focus on beginnings: French playwright Molière confessed, "I always do the first line well, but I have trouble doing the others."

While others think the finish is what counts:
Homer: "Marge, is this a happy ending or a sad ending?"
Marge: "It's an ending. That's enough." — The Simpsons

Ideas may come slowly. Writer and adventurer Jack London warned, "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club." Screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan moaned that "Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life."

Is it worth the toil and trauma?

"What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure." -Samuel Johnson

"I hear and I forget; I see and I remember; I write and I understand." -Chinese proverb