13th
January
2008
I still remember that time that I had to prove my “new kid” status, and I ended up punching the other guy in the nose. I got strapped for my troubles, and figured out that violence wasn’t really matched to the playground. To be fair, I was eight years old, and although the powers that be said that a child is able to completely determine what is right or wrong by the age of seven, I was a bit slow. There, my history as a fighter in a nutshell.
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posted in education |
12th
January
2008
In summation, a life between parentheses. The premise offered this afternoon by my friends over at Thalassa, during a series of short documentaries dealing with the world as seen from a container ship. Often, while my bus does its short detour beside the river, I see heavily laden freighters, inbound and outbound, with carefully corded containers. This was a chance to see vignettes from the life of those that move “all our stuff” around the globe.
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posted in education |
11th
January
2008
Perhaps I spent too long in school; along the way I determined that marks were secondary to learning. This was reinforced when I completed my own “teacher training”, because the whole science of testing was demystified. A test can be made to demonstrate whatever the tester (and testee) decide. What on earth, then, compelled the Island government to run “standardized tests” on their captive school population, and then release those results to the public earlier this week.
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6th
November
2007
After watching users respond to the “new” screens in a recent software upgrade, I’m left somewhat perplexed. What is so mysterious and unsettling about the “send/receive” button now appearing slightly to the right of its former position. Doesn’t anyone read anymore?
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30th
October
2007
On of those defining moments in an educated life is when you realize that something learned a long time ago is finally relevant. Let’s set the situation. We’re in a physics class around 1970 and the topic of the day is static electricity. We start with the wimpy foil leaf that moves in response to an ebony rod that was rubbed with rabbit fur. Boring. Write up the lab report and wait for the next class.
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22nd
October
2007
One should always be prepared. We have a whole youth movement based on the idea. Sometimes a great notion has to be tested, and today I went through a good old-fashioned, count the seconds situation: the fire drill.
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20th
October
2007
In some ways, it is a pity that humans depend so heavily on visual clues for our socialization. The clothes we wear do “make the man” in terms of our contact with others. We live in a world that tries to convince us to alter our appearance; hair colour, clothing styles, even the shoes we wear.
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posted in education |
5th
October
2007
Close to twenty years ago, my “job profile” took a shift toward a Brave New World model. The government decided that new technologies might be important in education, and a limited amount of money was made available to test the premise. That is, I was hired to see if computers (and other related toys) might someday be worth underwriting on a broad scale in the classroom.
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26th
September
2007
We’re due to take “our” census in the next couple of days. In this province, a head count is made on a specified morning falling as close as possible to the last date in September. Schools are funded for the current school year based on these numbers which then receive a detailed mathematical analysis. Just so you know; that are the reason computers were invented. Forget all those urban myths about bomb trajectory calculations. School funding formulae were at the root.
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24th
September
2007
I come from a long line of tinkering fools. The sort of person who believes that most things can be repaired, even if the object doesn’t necessarily function, as originally designed, in its new form factor. A descendant of blacksmiths and shady tree garage mechanics. In short, if it ain’t broke yet, well we’re not done here.
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