“He said it. I can show you a video!”
technology
Showing, Not Telling
What do you do when you come into work to find that a tool you’ve used for almost ten years, a tool you’ve created yourself and spent probably thousands of hours over the course of almost a decade, a tool you use now daily as a result of the initiative of your principal and his vision of turning your school into a true tech academy — what do you do when that tool is suddenly, inexplicably, and without any notification made completely unavailable to your students? It was the situation I found myself in this morning, as my first group of students filed in, logged on, and one by one said, “Mr. Scott, the site is blocked.”
My first reaction, of course, was fury. For the briefest of instants, I took it personally, as if my web site was specifically targeted for blocking. That took only a few moments to clear up in my mind: surely it was just a new filtering rule that had been applied, and like dolphins caught up in a net trawling for tuna, my poor site just got dragged into the mix. In the end, I’m really not sure what was going on, and I’ll likely never know the cause. What’s most important is not the cause but the effect: one of the most useful tools in my classroom is unavailable because of the actions of unknown people who work for the same organization as I.
At this point, the astute reader is probably thinking, “Surely that is a mechanism in the school district through which teachers can request that a site be unblocked.” Indeed, there is. I’d made such a request a couple of years ago and another one at the beginning of the school year. According to the district records, those requests are still pending. There are many different ways to explain this, but none of them are particularly complementary of the school system’s mechanism for unblocking web sites. Still, I filled out the online form, and even sent an email, CC’ing my principal, explaining the situation and the fact that “all of my requests [for unblocking] are still pending” and my worry ” that it might be several months before any action is taken on this issue,” requesting that the powers that be “process this request immediately,” and expressing how much I “appreciate [their] prompt help in this matter.”
As a third fail-safe, I called the help line and explained my situation. The lady with whom I spoke explained that she had no power to unblock web sites, which was what I expected. She mentioned that she saw my email, which was what I expected. She explained that she’d forwarded it on to tier three, which I didn’t quite understand as I don’t know how many tiers there are in this particular case, but it was still a little unexpected. It sounded like progress. I asked if I might have some kind of contact information for someone in this tier three, and the help desk attendant explained that she didn’t even really know who they went to, simply that they went to tier three, which I somehow expected.
But how to turn it into a teaching experience? My second class filed in, and by then, I was in a white-hot righteous fury of epic proportions. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, which sounds about right for me. Yet the students could not discern how angry I was, for I did my absolute best not to manifest it at all. In that particular class, I’m blessed to have a co-teacher, and when she entered, I explained to her what happened, then explained to the class what had happened. I went so far as to say that I was extremely angry about it. But I excused myself, went to the restroom, ranted for a little bit, washed my face to freshen up, and went back to the classroom and carried on as if nothing had happened. Students were finishing up summaries of a reading we’d just finished, and I and my co-teacher went from student to student, advising, helping, praising, encouraging — all the things we try to do on a daily basis to build the self-confidence of the students in this class, all of whom read below grade level. A corollary to this low reading ability for many of them is a low level of self-control. Several of them say what comes to mind when it comes to mind. Many of them, when they come into the classroom angry about some excessively emotional interaction that occurred in the hallway — “drama” they call it — enter the classroom already doomed: they will sit and stew about it the entire class, refusing to work, refusing to calm down, often disrupting the class further.
On Monday, I’ll be able to debrief them about how I dealt with my anger. “Please notice,” I’ll begin, “that I didn’t take it out on you and that I didn’t refuse to work. I dealt with it and moved on. Was I still angry at the end of class? Very much so. But I kept it from controlling me.” Will it help? Perhaps. Teaching by example is always better than teaching by words. Show, don’t tell. Who knows — that might turn out to be the most valuable session we had all year for some students.
Out With the Old
If there is one thing I hate more than going to shop for a new cell phone, I don’t know what it is. I hate shopping for just about anything (with a few unhealthy exceptions), but cell phone purchases are at the very bottom of my list. You go into an electronics store and everyone is so excited about the new XYZ and the incredible DEF and the improved KLW — and it just leaves me baffled. It’s a tool, nothing more, nothing less, but I suppose in the age of iPhones and Galaxies, it’s more than that to most people.
K and I don’t upgrade our phones often. Indeed, we don’t upgrade them ever. Until recently, I was happy to hobble along with my half-broken piece of junk. Then, coming home on the bike, I got caught in a downpour and the phone got soaked in my bike bag, putting it out of its misery.
In a way, I was thrilled. No more phone, period. I don’t have to remember to pick it up in the morning; I don’t have to remember charge it; I don’t have to think about it — heaven. But there are times when even a phone curmudgeon like me has to admit that a phone can be fairly useful. Emergencies, for example. So despite my hesitations and protestations, we upgraded.
The upshot of that was I could finally do what I always wanted to do to my phone. L enjoyed getting in on it, too.
Yet the Boy was a little upset about it. “Why are you breaking your phone?” he asked, genuinely concerned. I explained that it was already broken and that L and I were just being silly, and so soon he was stomping away too, chirping, “I love breaking phones!” It was at that point that K and I thought a little addendum might be in order…
Times Three
Self-adjusting clocks are a clockmaker’s dream. Nowadays, we have clocks set by the Internet and via satellite. We have three such clocks: two of them stand-alone clocks; one of them our computer.
Photos of those clocks taken within a minute or two of each other:
Three clocks, “automatically” set; three times.
I checked the time zone setting on the computer and had it update the time. No change.
Any ideas?
Talking to Babcia
When I was a teenager, I was infatuated with a girl who lived in Idaho; I lived in Virginia at the time. We spent a fortune on postage and the occasional phone call.
I can’t help but wonder how that would have transpired in today’s wired world, where L can show babcia in Poland what she’s drawn.
If anything, the relationship would have burned out sooner, I’m sure.
Hoover Dam
The first stop on our week-long trip was Hoover Dam.
To say it’s awe-inspiring is an understatement. Things of that scale are almost frightening, both its size and its implications.
The enormity of the structure is almost as breathtaking as that of the Grand Canyon. Approaching it, you know it’s going to be big, but once you see it, you think, “I didn’t think it would be quite that big.” And it’s not just the dam that’s huge — everything connected to it is enormous: Lake Mead is the largest man-made lake in America; the overflow tunnels, with a diameter of 50 feet, are big enough to drive a truck through.
But it’s the implications that are frightening. Built from 1931 to 1935, Hoover Dam was completed two years ahead of schedule and under budget! Six companies, from Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and California, pooled their resources to create a structure so complicated that procedures and tools had to be invented to complete it.
For instance, the heat created by the chemical reactions of concrete drying would have stretched the process of the concrete setting and drying to 125 years. To combat this, engineers designed a system whereby tubes were run through the concrete and cool water pumped throughout the whole structure. But a refrigeration unit that had such a cooling capacity? It didn’t exist. Yet.
So here’s all this innovation and creation and genius going into one of the most complicated structures in history at a time when a significant part of our population was treated like animals and a psychopath in Europe was laying plans to slaughter six million people because of their religious/ethnic heritage.
Humans can’t be manipulated as easily as concrete, I suppose. Well, I take that back. Humans can be manipulated just as easily as anything else, but most of the time, it’s manipulation towards evil.
More implications: Can anyone imagine an enormous project like Boston’s “The Big Dig” project going under budget and well within the projected time frame? Can anyone imagine Haliburton delivering its services on budget, let alone under?
Still, all these thoughts passed quickly through my mind: we spent most of the time in gaping-mouth awe.
iDontCare
For the last several months, I’ve been hearing more about the iPhone on NPR while driving to work than I really cared to.
The phenomenon is a fascinatingly, achingly-perfect example of our consumer culture. All of the reporting I heard on NPR was about the wonderous technology and gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it.
Or sometimes about people who feel they’ve gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it, gotta-get-it.
People standing in line; people paying people to stand in line. Lines, everywhere — if reports are to be believed. People waiting to buy; people waiting to try: to the former, “Do you have nothing better to do with your money?” and to the latter, “Do you have nothing better to do with your time?”
I really just don’t get it. It’s a phone that plays music, and accomplishes it without a keypad. Nothing revolutionary. Nothing that turns our conception of the universe on its head. Bohr, Plank, and Einstein would have all been impressed, I’m sure.
Perhaps I’m just one of those “old fashioned” types that thinks a phone that is just a phone is sufficient. My phone is two years old, and if I don’t have to get a new one to renew my contract, I probably won’t, because I just don’t care. It rings; I talk — end of story.
If I want to listen to music, I’ll use my iPod…
Entropy
The first time I was in Polska, I started making a little ‘zine that I’d mail out to friends and family. I called it “Entropy.”
I remember that yesterday evening and wondered who had “entropy.com.” I knew it wouldn’t be available, and I typed “entropy.com” in the address bar.It re-directed me to “entropy.ie”.
“Entropy — Secure Networking.”
I’m not sure how much faith I’d put into a networking security company that’s taken its name from a principle of decay.
What would its logo be? A frayed networking cable?
Anticipating user confusion, the company included this explanation:
Conall Lavery founder of Entropy decided upon the name after reading a book called “The Crying of Lot 49” by the American author Thomas Pynchon.
In the book the professor uses the two theories of Entropy (thermodynamics and communications) and invents a perpetual motion machine that is driven by telepathy.
There are various definitions of Entropy.
According to the Collins dictionary, Entropy means “a thermodynamic quantity that changes in a reversible process by an amount equal to the heat absorbed or emitted divided by the thermodynamic temperature.”
In my view, that doesn’t help clarify things that much.
Shipping Costs
We recently bought a notebook computer and that inspired me to do the logical: buy a router and set up a little handy-dandy home network. Because we bought an older, cheaper notebook (essentially for word processing and internet access), it didn’t come with built-in wireless capacity, we also had to buy a USB wireless adapter.
First stop: Google’s Froogle service. I found a nice deal: less than $60 for both the adapter and router. At that price, probably not the best quality in the world, but I wasn’t trying to set up an industrial-strength wireless network here.
It turns out, they applied BMG Music’s business model: sell things (at least initially, in BMG’s case) at less-than-market price, but make up for the losses by charging inflated shipping and handling costs.
In this case, ridiculously inflated costs. Shipping from California, the retailer’s cheapest shipping option: FedEx, at $41. UPS Ground cost a mind-blowing $71! Overnight service was $278!!