Monthly Archives: August 2009

Aug 15 2009

The Fall

On the drive home yesterday, the change in the colour of the leaves and the heavy dew on the grass this morning is a reminder that Fall is on its way here in South Western Ontario.  It’s a real shame because there’s a strong sense that we didn’t have much of a summer.  Our normal hot and incredibly humid weather just didn’t arrive in July.

On the drive, it’s not uncommon to see farmers and agricultural workers our in the fields.  I must admit that I’m not completely unbiased as I type on here.  I grew up in some of the best farmland in Ontario, in Huron County, and had a great deal of related jobs as a student at elementary and secondary school.  Over the years, I have:

  • pulled weeds;
  • picked mustard;
  • picked asparagus;
  • caught chickens;
  • caught turkeys;
  • worked as a second hand;
  • planted, weeded, and picked cucumbers;
  • milked cows;
  • bailed straw and hay;
  • fed cattle;
  • cleaned barns;
  • and probably other things that don’t come to mind now.

It’s hard physical work but has given me a real sense of what back breaking work, with little regard to hours that farming can be.  While some of my friends have taken this as a calling, I elected to move off and do what I do.  I don’t regret any of the decisions that I made but am glad that I had an opportunity to experience this huge and diverse industry first hand.  In fact, I think that it’s a placement that all students should experience.  We rely on this industry universally as meat and produce doesn’t magically appear at the local store.  It’s part of a big chain that starts literally at grass roots.

Of all of the jobs in society, farming is the most selfless.  Activities are started when they are needed and are done when they are finished.  There is little regard for punching in and out on a timeclock.  Many activities are governed instead by the calendar or the needs of the livestock.  Holidays?  Hah!  Do you think that you can ask a dairy cow to hold it while you take a weekend trip?  It doesn’t matter whether it’s December 25th or July 17.  Milking needs to be part of the routine  So does feeding and livestock know it.  In their way, you are welcomed to the barn when it’s time to eat.


Thanks, canadianguy78 – cc

Community and learning from each other takes place in this profession as well.  Drop into a local coffee shop during break, or watch a gathering of pickup trucks alongside a fence for some impromptu story telling or sharing of techniques.  It’s there.  Farming is no small business.  Have you priced a farm, a greenhouse or a combine lately?  It’s huge business.

So, as the Fall arrives, it’s only natural to celebrate another year of contributing to Ontario society and we do that well with fall fairs.  A PDF file listing Ontario fairs is available here or you can search by date or region here.  I would strongly encourage all to support your local agricultural culture by taking the time to attend.  On a personal level, we’re so fortunate being so close that we can annually attend the Harrow Fair.  Now, when you attend, it’s easy to be distracted by the bright lights, the midway, and the food.  Those are typically services provided by travelling shows and can be great fun.

But, the highlight is to dig into the local efforts.  Check out the arrays of flowers, arrangements of fruit, the baking, the chickens, the children parading their cattle, the school exhibits and the livestock displays.  This is the point where you can appreciate and show your acknowledgement for the hard work that feed us all.  This is an industry that is local and difficult to out source.  Despite this, it’s an industry that is facing economic challenges as well.  Higher priced equipment have the farmer dealing with caps and quotas.  Nothing is easy these days.

But, for the weekend that the fair is in town, you can take a few moments to enjoy yourself and say thanks to those who do their job so well and allow us to go to a store where we can purchase high quality Ontario products and produce.

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Aug 15 2009

links for 2009-08-14

Aug 14 2009

Week Wrapup

It’s been a very long, tiring week.  As a member of the OSAPAC Committee (Ontario Software Acquisition Program Advisory Committee), we have been together for the last five days comparing software evaluation results from our calls to vendors for our current requirements, evaluating our current services and determining where we may go in the next year, devising communication plans, and so much more.

The mandate of the OSAPAC Committee seems very simple:

  • consult with the publicly funded education system (e.g., annual survey, attendance at conferences, liaison with subject associations)  to assess provincial priorities in the areas of required software titles recommended by teachers in support of learning;
  • review software titles submitted under the Ministry’s Requests For Proposals (RFP), Request for Tender (RFT) and Request for Qualification (RFQ) processes that meet the indicated needs of all Ontario publicly funded schools and forward the resulting recommendations for province-wide licenses to the Ministry of Education;
  • maintain for the Ministry of Education, a web-enabled database, in both official languages of all provincially licensed software;
  • inform educators of the OSAPAC process and of the licensed software titles available to all publicly funded schools;
  • provide additional support, including professional development opportunities, where appropriate and available for the implementation of provincially licensed software;
  • maintain a web site and a conferencing system to keep all interested parties informed of the business of the Committee and to provide a feedback mechanism for software related issues;
  • maintain a web-enabled database of Ontario curriculum expectations linked to provincially licensed software titles.
  • consult with the publicly funded education system (e.g., annual survey, attendance at conferences, liaison with subject associations)  to assess provincial priorities in the areas of required software titles recommended by teachers in support of learning.

Our group of 14 does this in addition to our day jobs.  We are spread throughout the province, representing geographical areas and both official languages.  The payoff for the students of the province is what is important and one of the reasons why I’ve been such a fervent member of this group.  By licensing software titles, preferably in English and French, Windows and Macintosh, teachers and students have access to the same products – teachers can share common resources and techniques with the result being a community with supports for meeting the Ministry of Education’s curriculum and educational requirements.

In addition to committee membership, we also pick up additional responsibilities for the committee.  For a number of years, I was the webmaster for our web presence at http://www.osapac.org. It was a communication vehicle to let teachers and vendors what was up and where the committee priorities were.  In addition to maintaining the website, last year I took on the role of repository manager to collect learning objects for teachers to access to support titles licensed by the Ministry of Education.  Starting yesterday, that will be one of my committee commitments for the upcoming year.  I managed to get a lead on some resources even last night and so am off to a good start.  If you have a resource that would support the use of a Ministry licensed software title, I’d be happy to take it and add to the repository.

Membership is so rewarding.  In addition to the formal agenda, there are professional conversations with members during breaks and in the evenings.  I had a chance to have a few of those “King of the World” discussions this week.  While we’re a long way off from such a dynasty, we’re on track on so many aspects.  All that is required is more money, more equipment, more software, more professional development, more hours in the day … but the one thing that typically is not missing is the enthusiasm and commitment that is found in the teaching profession.  Kudos to all educators for doing your best for providing the environment and learning opportunity for students.

What have we done lately?  The following titles were added this past year.

Not a bad year’s work!  Every student in the province has access to these titles to support their educational efforts.  Teachers have takehome rights so that they may learn and practice before going live.  The entire list appears here.

As this week concludes, I’m exhausted.  I want my own pillow and my own bed.  I want my own television.  I want to see Bubby.  I even want to walk the dog.

But, I leave with a hightened sense of excitement from what we’ve done and what we’re about to do in the upcoming year.  Ontario educators, stay tuned.  There’s a great deal more on the way for this year.

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Aug 14 2009

links for 2009-08-13

Aug 13 2009

Photographing Fireworks

Every Wednesday night throughout the summer, there is a short Fireworks display at Niagara Falls.  I went out for a walk last night and decided to head over and see what they were all about.  After all, everyone likes a good show.

I wasn’t the only one there – there had to be everyone in the city that wasn’t playing at the Casino crowded onto the sidewalks along the river on both the Canadian and United States sides.

Before the show started, there was also the incredible setting of the lights shone on the American and Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian side by Niagara Parks.

So, it was a very touristy moment and the tourists didn’t disappoint.

Like most touristy things, every other person had a camera.  It was quite amusing watching people with their cameras and their actions.  I had mine because, hey, I’m a tourist too.  However, I’ve done enough photography to know that I didn’t have the tools.  There is some really good advice about photographing fireworks here, here, or here.  There’s some great advice here for the amateur.  A single bit of advice is to use a tripod and that sure doesn’t work well when you’re in a crowd of thousands with kids who should be in bed running around, screaming, crying, and you probably get the picture.  It’s really not a setting conducive for a positive “Kodak moment“.

New portable technology is very forgiving and, as I stand there trying to be part of the background, it’s natural to see what people were doing.  Carefully, they hold their digital camera up and snap a picture, bring it down to try to fumble in the dark to switch from camera to playback.  What they got were some really bad pictures!

There was some great amateur advice too.

  • “Turn off the flash” – “I don’t know how”
  • “Turn on the flash” – “I did but it didn’t work”
  • “Hold it steady”
  • “Give it to Mikey – he’s closer to the edge”
  • “Give it to Mikey and he can sit on your shoulders”
  • “Does anyone know how to switch this thing over?”
  • “I should have brought a tripod”
  • “Can you buy me some popcorn?”
  • “We should have gone up the Skylon“
  • “Here, you try it”
  • “Why are all the pictures black?” “Did you take the lens cap off?”

The comments went on and on as folks tried their best to capture the moment.  Modern cameras have made things very convenient but even they can’t handle the optics and the conditions here.


Thanks, Mutantlog
I’ve got a few friends who might have the skills and patience to pull this thing off.  I’m thinking of my friends Ron and Diane.  Awesome pictures do require knowing what you’re doing in addition to being in the right place, at the right time.  However, common sense would indicate that this wasn’t the time and the place to grab that one in a million shot.  Thankfully, there’s Flickr!  Even in the image above, the photographer shot the picture from the hotel room as opposed to trying for a lucky shot in a crowd.
Hotel rooms and public, semi-private places where you have the time to set up as an amateur are great.  From the Minolta Konica Tower, I was able to get this shot.
Niagara Falls from the Konica Minolta Tower
My complete set with a little Photoshop Elements experimentation is here.

Planning and patience and knowing what to do seem to be the keys for success.  It doesn’t hurt to also know your own and your technology limitations too.  Letting Mikey hang over the fence is probably not going to get the job done.

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Aug 13 2009

links for 2009-08-12

Aug 12 2009

On Going PD

At a meeting yesterday, there was a break for myself and a friend who was sitting beside me.  We seldom get a chance to meet face to face but when we do, I feel like I get some of the richest conversations around education, educational technology, futuristic visioning, using the tools instead of the tools using us, etc.  When we don’t get to meet face to face, we use technologies to continue this discussion.

In this case, we were discussing our use of Twitter and Facebook to make connections and to keep the learning fresh with new ideas and new insights to old ideas.  As we bounced around, it became apparent that our approaches to learning using the network were quite different.  For one, he used the Twitter website as his launching pad for Twitter and I use Seesmic Desktop.  We were doing much the same things – looking for inspiration, just in different ways.

He asked me how I was using Seesmic and we ended up downloading and installing it on his computer and I gave him the nickel’s tour of the features.  Even today, after using it for a couple of years, it feels very strange describing the concepts of Twitter.  Unlike many other things, the terms and words don’t easily roll off the tongue.  It seems bizarre somehow to talk about “friends” and “followers” and “timelines” and “Twitpic” and “yfrog” and “tr.im”, etc.  Even though they’re part of what it means to use the technology, the words and contexts don’t seem to be a natural part of speech yet.

But, we get through it.  As any teacher will tell you, there’s nothing that requires you to know your stuff thoroughly than to explain it to someone else.  So, we get things up and running on his computer and we’re having fun talking about how to use the software to get the most from it.  One of things that’s powerful for me is to have filtered columns for “Ontario Educators”, “Non-Ontario Educators”, and “Just Favourites” where I plop different people into for easy monitoring.

We got talking a little later about setup and I noticed that he had added some additional columns to his setup.  We started talking and his columns weren’t about people; they were about concepts.  So, there were searches for “ipod education”, “smartboard”, etc.

There are two significant differences between the two approaches.

By following people, you lend credibility to those people knowing that they’re going to have a discussion about anything in their world.  So, if you’d followed “me” yesterday, you’d have seen a picture I posted, a shoutout to Leslie Fisher who was doing a present


Image by luc legay via Flickr

ation in New Orleans, notice of my Delicious bookmarks postings, notice that I had blogged about a first day of school computer activity, a couple of smart aleck comments, and some good mornings to some online friends.  However, they were all done by me.  Similarly, as I scan my Ontario educators column, I find out what @redfearn, @fryed, @aforgrave, @zbpipe and @thecleversheep were up to yesterday.  None of us were just focused on a single activity.

By following concepts, you get a wealth of information focused on the one thing that you’re searching for.  So, if the column search was “ipod education”, you’re filtering from the public timeline on comments with those terms.  They may come from people that you know, but they’re more likely the wit and wisdom from folks from near and far, usually far.  One of my standing columns, is filtered on “teach” and there are all kinds of conversations where that word shows up.  Some are K-12, some are college, some are just pleas for information or assistance.

In both scenarios, there is really rich and interesting conversation.  In both scenarios, there is also noise.  The detractors of this sort of medium for professional development will focus on the concept of noise.  But, in face to face Professional Development activities, there is also noise.  I think it’s just part of the human condition that we draw inspiration from conversations with others.  We’ve heard and read all kinds of thoughts about what 21st Century Skills (if they exist) are.  Perhaps “noise filtering” or “learning from noise” could be some of these skills.

Of one thing, there can be no doubt.  No matter how you attack the information that is available thorugh Twitter, there is a richness of comment and resources to inspire further learning.  To ignore this richness is to say no to on going professional development.  If you know everything, then just ignore this and go happily on your way.  If you still feel the need to learn, figure out how to harness this technology for your purposes.  It’s your call.

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Aug 12 2009

links for 2009-08-11

Aug 11 2009

The “Hey You” Project

Once you make sure that your computers and network are up and functional for classroom use, it’s time to turn your thoughts to what you might have students do the first time that you bring the laptops into your classroom.

A simple, scalable project that really services a lot of purposes is what I call the “Hey You” project.  With new names and faces to learn, students can face a period of anonymity until you get them all reliably identified.

Until that happens, Jimmy may become Ronnie and get away with all kinds of things that Dougie should be blamed for.

Why not have the students create their own desktop name plates to help in identification?  It’s long been a technique using folded card stock and magic markers or crayons to have the students carve out their own little personal identification.  In a computer world, it can be that and so much more.

From the inception of the activity, you can get a pretty good summary of prior computer skills.  I like the flexibility that a program like Microsoft Publisher offers.  Right off the bat, the open ended activity can tell you a great deal about a person’s computer skills.  For example, my Level 1 effort might look like this.

Depending upon the class, that might earn me the opportunity to sit in the front row or to get a little attention because this shows that I probably don’t have a great deal of design or computer abilities!  But, it’s a start.

There are all kinds of ways for the student to “spruce it up” and demonstrate just where they fit on the continuum of computer literacy.  Depending upon the class, some things that this activity offers would include:

  • font changing;
  • changing the WordArt Effect;
  • inclusion of clipart;
  • little snippets of wisdom arranged attractively around the card;
  • a digital picture;
  • the URL to the student’s blog or website;
  • incorporating or embedding web elements;
  • and the list goes on depending upon the computer skills and abilities of the student.

Learning names is crucial in the first new days; a person’s name is the most important thing that they own.

By watching, you’ll get a quick and fairly accurate assessment of just what basic computer skills brought to your classroom.  The simple activity opens the doors to many powerful and exciting things for the year.  It’s also a pretty non-threatening way to shake down the network, connectivity, activities, and printer functionality in your classroom.  In the short term, it will help to learn student names and when collected and reused.  In the long term, it can be a life saver for those days when an occasional teacher is in the classroom and they’re meeting your students for the first time!

In a source for inspiration, the website Spell with Flickr offers an online way to generate some interesting ways to spell names.

letter D letter O letter U g L is for textiLe A S

Looking at this would give you confirmation that this student is going to need constant support and supervision!  But, hey!  I can copy and paste with the best of them.

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Aug 11 2009

links for 2009-08-10