I enjoy the online tools that I use, being able to share photos with family and the ability to do many tasks now on my phone. But I have divested from the Internet a great deal this past year. My professional learning is the same, if not better. My personal life is more real world and focused on the people in my life. With all the hype, hyper self promotion and extreme micro electronic tribalism, I just may not be ready for the Internet. It may just be over rated.

My folks were in town this weekend and I had just so happened to have ordered ‘You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train‘ from Netflix - simply because I have been a fan of Howard Zinn for some time. We enjoyed the film for broad connections to peace and Zinn’s overall philosophy as well as for some more personal connections. If you are not familiar with Howard Zinn, you can read about his WWII experience as a bomber in the Air Force and his life long mission to disrupt war and tell the truth about history. The website is chalk full of reading as well as clips from appearances on the Daily Show w/John Stewart (and the like).

Zinn is well known for his published book, A People’s History of the United States - used in classrooms across the U.S.

[image: http://flickr.com/photos/wadem/3021215855/]

Professional looking logos are overrated. I’m rather pleased with my initial drawing and in the interest of a web where all can contribute, I offer this logo with no rights reserved. Heck, I’ve seen worse out there…

So I just got back from getting almost hit by a bus. No, this is not one of those ‘I saw a guy in front of me almost get hit by a bus and I’m turning it into my own story’ types of things. No. I was almost hit by an 8 ton (that’s my eyeballed estimate) D.A.R.T. bus over lunch. She had a red light, I had a green light - anti-lock brakes engaged as I swerved into an empty oncoming traffic lane to avoid getting wrapped around a light pole by AN 8 TON D.A.R.T. BUS!

I rate the experience 4 out of 5 stars. Let me put that in a graphic for you Amazon.com junkies out there:

Why, you ask, do I rate this experience so highly? Well, after a verbally assertive phone call to D.A.R.T. management (AND after the shaking started to subside) I began to realize two big lessons from the experience. As you may have guessed, I will elaborate on those lessons and try to get you to believe that this life changing experience can have impact on all of us:

Lesson 1, Deep Remorse. Firstly, and foremost, I deeply regret that I recently turned down an option to surgically attach 24/7 audio-video broadcasting onto my head. This event COULD have been brought to you live and quite possibly been commentated on in-the-moment by some unrelated person in Australia. Surely this would have some kind of valuable learning outcome in the Web 2.0 world that we live in. Dammit Froese - An opportunity missed that can never be reclaimed.

Lesson 2, Hyper-Awareness Preparedness through Unexpected Shock (or HAPUS). Probably the most important of the two lessons I learned, it immediately became clear to me how much better we perform after such an engaging situation. We think quicker, stay awake longer and are hyper-aware to the point that we brainstorm out loud better (You should’ve heard the ‘out loud brainstorming’ I did in my truck while I dialed 411 to get D.A.R.T.’s number!!). Folks, this is an easy connection to education: if we want teachers to be ‘on-their-feet-thinkers’, if we want administrators to really focus in on what’s important at a meeting or if we just want a principal to stay awake instead of dozing off at a staff meeting, then let’s catch them when they least expect it with an 8-ton bus!

Now, before you raise your hands in opposition, this can all be done without anyone getting hurt. Sure, the timing would have to be worked out, insurance would be a must and a few bystanders might get hurt in the process - BUT REALLY, we should do what’s best for our kids.

<<This could’ve been me. Except I don’t drive a Hummer, it wasn’t a school bus, it was the bus drivers fault and there were no firemen. But this could’ve been me. I’m not overreacting.>>

Darren Wilson pointed out how listening to a conversation (to learn a topic) is much more engaging than being fed information. I immediatley brought up RadioLab as the two hosts of the show are always in some form of dialogue about any given topic. However, it isn’t really an inteviewer vs. interviewee type of exchange. No, it is a teacher vs. learner dialogue… one of the hosts is clearly ‘trying’ to understand the topic at hand while the other has done research or interiviewed an expert that answers the learners questioning. THEN, the tables turn - the roles switch when the topic is tweaked and the learner has the greater knowledge and begins to teach his co-host. Finally, interspersed in-between this continual boucing back-and-forth are stories (well told stories!) that support the learning exchange. The stories always have more than one perspective (narrator, additional characters, topic experts) and always have multiple levels of audio (sound effects, music placed at the right times to allow the brain to pause and reflect).

So, now the trick is to figure out how this approach can benefit my online modules - how do I work in:

• Teaching/Learning Dialogue
• Storytelling
• Multi-Layered Audio

And how do I do that in an environment that feels like an online course/online learning module. The thoughts are rolling…

Angela Stevenshas written about our current revisioning of our one to one laptop program in Irving, leading to some nice discussion about what the Academy of Irving ISD will do to take the next steps with community funded bond monies. Additionally, each High School campus has been asked to think about how they can revision their programs to make what we do with students more powerful and more effective.

One High School campus is seriously talking about the option of ditching Microsoft Office and installing only Open Office (open source software) on their laptops next year. This has me wondering if this change could be a rallying point for the campus. ‘We do laptops, and we do them differently.’ I hear a lot of talk about moving to open source, but 2200 students using Open Office may make a big statement.

More than just looking at installing a different software package, plans being discussed include:

• Adding a week of staff development focused on lesson development/technology integration at the beginning of the school year
• Integrating quality one-to-one styled lessons into district curriculum
• Scheduling a class of students that can work on projects to benefit the technology integration at the school
• Developing once-a-week teach sessions that have two components: 1) skills/ step-by-step on how to use something, and 2) idea generation time or thinking about how to use something in context. Teachers could be allowed to choose not only the topic to attend once a six weeks, but also choose whether they wanted the skills or the think piece.

Innovating is not just about doing something new, it is about making a decision to change. This campus is in the initial phases of thinking through that change, and it will require administrator support and a lot of work. But, it is clear what they are going to choose - and that sure ain’t ‘quit’ or ‘complain’. Those two don’t get you very far when the left lane ends.

This is yet another piece of reading provided by Global Voices, and yet another example of issues that I think would get our kids riled up about learning.

The other night, I came across an episode about how milk is produced. Being a born/raised Kansas boy, I though - hmph - I know THAT already. But, OH, how times have changed! You’ll see the episode below from YouTube (don’t know how long it will be there) and there are a few other episodes on the How It’s Made website.

It hit me last night, for one reason or another, that these cow’s actually have more choice and self management than what we give many of our students. AND, on top of that, it is entirely thanks to the technology involved. I’ll stop there and let you make the rest of the connections … let’s start treating our students less like kids and more like cows.