Media as a reward
My morning started out with a complete validation of what I’ve been doing for the last two decades. My professional duties have had, as a focus, the evangelization of the computer as a useful tool in education. Today, I did the setup for a meeting involving administrators, teachers and representatives of the minister of education. Nothing too showy; a laptop and a projector, some video footage, the usual. The difference is that this audience expected the tools to be there, and they welcomed the media content. Stuff that had been recommended by someone to someone else via a link in email, which they all can’t live without. A conference room where the laptop was ordinary. Working wireless.
Not only were they all technically adept, but the content showed how the times are changing in education. Here’s a link to the material, from the original site. We watched it courtesy of a site called TeacherTube.com (a YouTube derivative). Content gone viral. I can’t confirm the statistics, but if the message isn’t clear enough, watch it a second time.
Imagine; computers as mainstream tools. When I was first hired by the school board, we were still swapping in 8K ram chips on IBM Model 5151 machines. Evolution. Enough machines to demonstrate the concept. Now, we are a plugged in ‘puterhead bunch of folks.
On a completely different tack, I was “buzzed” on the way home this afternoon. The bird immediately struck me as a newcomer in the neighbourhood. (I am not a “birder”; this one was good enough to land just in front of me on a porch roof, so my identification is close enough to be realistic.) Methinks it may have been a juvenile peregrine falcon. The colouration, the beak, the pure beauty of its swoop. This was a bird with style. Much cooler than the usual robins or doves that live on the block.
