Left Lane Ends

I’m back at my adopted coffee shop. I bought a mug and the coffee is on the house… why don’t others care as much!? Time to learn…

…BUT - before I do, I have to share a thought I had during my run on the Town Lake trail this morning. Coming down the elevator to exit the hotel (and minding my own business I might add), there was a man and bell hop taking his stuff down to check out. He was built, aged and dressed in a suit like you might expect Ross Perot to be and they were talking politely about the weather. As I was about to step off the elevator, suit man said, “I always say that the weather is like a woman in menopause - you never know what your going to get!” Chuckle, chuckle, chuckle. I cocked my head, glared with my meanest teacher look (and ask my wife, I have a pretty mean teacher look) and walked off the elevator. I wanted to say back, “I always say the weather is like an old, white-haired [XXblankety-blankXX] - easy to predict because they’re always showing you what an idiot they are. (or something to that effect).

So, then I had the thought - with the advancement of GPS enabled social networks, what if we had human tagging?!?! This would be great, because then I could add some choice tags to this guys profile (that floats above his head in my imagination) so that the next woman he encountered that was going through that part of her well deserved life would know how this chauvinist SOB really feels about her. Enter tags here: ____ , ____ , ____ , ____ .

Then I started wondering what my tags would be…

So, the argument goes that if we don’t block YouTube, our students will go home and video tape themselves going for a ride in the dryer like the video that they saw online. Point taken. But, there are fallacies to that argument:

1. The same ‘ride in the dryer‘ video is available on multiple sites, not just YouTube.com
2. Students were creating these videos the day after they got their hands on a camera - well before the creation of YouTube or other social video sites. (we’ve seen some creative ones here in our 1:1 environment that is going on its 6th year)
3. Even a block of the general category (video sites or social networking or network file storage/backup) will not prevent someone from creating their own website (like back in the olden days … remember those days??) and posting the video there

At this point, you may be asking ‘what’s the point?’. Well, the real power of sites like YouTube are demonstrated at places like Global Voices Online (go ahead - check out the chinese demonstration video that their government is trying to erradicate from the online world!!). I just don’t see how it could NOT be powerful education to draw similarities and differences between a current demonstration video in China and our American system of government. How can our students participate in this live history that is taking place before our lives if we block them out of it? Or is the simplistic history as outlined in a textbook the real way to go?