So this week marks one year since I left my public school job, and I have to say I’m surprised how little I’ve looked back. Partly because I haven’t had much time to, but mostly because this past year on the road has been such a profoundly great experience in general. I’m truly humbled by the opportunity I’ve been given…it doesn’t happen for most, I know.

What follows are just some random thoughts that I wanted to capture about this first year more for myself than anything else.

The good stuff:

• Getting a chance to meet and talk to so many teachers and administrators and others who in general, I think, really do want to understand the changes that are occurring. By far the best part has been the people.
• Expanding my reach…Some very “fuzzy”math suggests that I found myself in front of upwards of 15,000 people last year at around 70 events, and I only got heckled twice! Not too bad.
• Meeting many of my “teachers” along the way.
• Learning a great deal about myself, some of it good, some of it not so good. But I’m understanding some of my limitations…and that’s a good thing.
• Learning a great deal about the realities of education in this country.
• Feeling, at least, like I am starting some important conversations.

The not so good stuff:

• Being away from home. My family has been great about the career change, but my being away does leave a lot of stress on my wife and kids. Thinking of how to deal with that better, (though video Skype has helped.)
• Not having the time to read what’s in my aggregator…probably the biggest change is that I just can’t keep up with all of the bloggers that I used to read, and really, in the last few weeks, I’ve only tracked about 15 feeds on a regular basis.
• Not having the time to blog…if I don’t read, I don’t write. And to be honest, blogging has become more of a burden than a joy of late. I think it’s because a) I’m doing a crappy job of it, b) my brain is really, really tired and just doesn’t want to expend the energy, and c) I’m not reading.
• Not having the time to do a lot of the other writing I wanted to do.

Despite the downsides, on balance, it’s been a very good year in just about every way except just generally being unable to keep up. And so what am I going to do now that I have four solid weeks home? Relax, play with the kids, get ready for a 10K the second week of June, read what I can, blog when I want to and just get rested up for a very full summer and fall. (Australia and Shanghai…here we come…)

One last note…I’ve updated my masthead to reflect the shift in my own thinking about this, that the conversation really has to be about learning first and education second. Not that I’m abandoning the whole classroom aspect of the Read/Write Web. But I just don’t know where this is all going to lead schools. I do, however, know where it can lead in terms of personal learning.

Thanks to all of you who have so generously supported my work this year…

Technorati Tags: learning, blogging, education

So we’re driving to the airport, Tess and I, to start our most excellent weekend adventure to South Dakota. Tomorrow, it’s horse shows, Sunday, Rushmore and Custer, Monday back home after a presentation.

We’re cruising down the interstate and all of a sudden she pokes me from the back seat.

“I can’t help it,” she says. “I have to poke someone every thirty minutes.” She laughs, and I put a fake frown on my face.

But then, I start thinking.

“Hey Tess,” I say. “Remember how we talked about maybe you and Tucker writing books and then being able to send them out for Christmas presents?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, you know, that could be a pretty fun story to make into a book.”

Her faces scrunches up in the rear view mirror. “What? About a girl who has to poke people?”

“Yeah,” I say, with more than a tinge of enthusiasm. “Like, maybe it’s a disease or something, like the flu.”

She looks out the window. “Like the 24 hour-flu,” she says and smiles. “Like Pokinitis.”

I laugh. “Pokinitis,” I say. “Perfect. Maybe she wakes up with Pokinitis…”

“Yeah, and can’t help but poke her mom and her dad and her little brother…”

“And maybe her teacher,” I say. I can see this. It’s got potential. I look in the rear view to see if she feels it too.

“Hey Dad,” she says after a moment. “Could we really make this into a book? Like a real book?”

“Absolutely,” I say, thinking about George Mayo and Lulu and how cool this could be.

“I already wrote a book, you know,” she says.

“I know. You know how many people have read it by now?”

“How many?” she asks.

“Over 1,700,” I say, and I see her face brighten.

“Really?”

“Really. But we could turn Pokinitis into a book that people can put on their bookshelves.”  She looks out the window and the cars passing by.

“Maybe she goes to the school nurse and pokes her too,” she giggles. I laugh.

“So what do you think? You want to try to write it? On the plane maybe?” I’m hoping.

“Maybe…we’ll see.” I deflate a bit.

“You know what else?” I say. “You could write it, draw the pictures for it, and then when it’s all done, we could make a movie of it with you reading it so other kids could even listen to it.” Oy, I think. Overload. The curse of being so invested in all of this. But she’s thinking about it.

“We’ll see,” she says. “We’ll see.”

Technorati Tags: books, publishing, read_write_web

This is our year…I’m tellin’ ya…

Technorati Tags: dreams, torture, angst, curse, love, Cubbies

For a variety of reasons, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about blogging as an act, my love of it, my frustration with it, my history with it. In that spirit, today my brain wandered a bit, trying to reconstruct how exactly I came to blogging, what my first post was, and what the impetus was behind this amazing relationship I’ve had with it. I’d thrown some time at this before, searching through my Blogger archives, the Wayback machine, trying to find the very first words I blogged, but with no success. But today, I had one of those “doh” moments, realized it had been there right in front of my face all along, and finally found it.

So, just so I get the chronology down, I hope you’ll indulge me in a little personal blogging history. (Or not, of course…) Piecing it together now, I find hugely interesting the process I worked through in my own practice with all of this.

So, yeah, June 11, 2001 it starts. Taken out of context, those first words give this whole story a more romantic (if it could be that) feel than it deserves. It turns out the first blog I created was in the “Nerdy Books Journal” which I started during the year I took off from school to help Wendy launch her books. I kept work notes and links as we tried to market and make connections. As it turned out, when I went back to school that fall, the blog pretty much died.

Exactly a month later I started the School Stuff blog which was basically just a personal link/notes blog that I kept up for about six months. Then, on October 23, 2001, I started my first class blog for my Beginning Journalism kids:

Welcome to the journalism blog!

I’ve set this up as a place where you can come if you need to find information about class, about journalism, and about the world. I’ll be posting homework information here regularly; you can find it at the top of the left hand column. I’ll also be posting links, and from time to time I might just throw out some of my own feelings about stuff that’s going on.

You can post here too if you like. Just let me know if you would like to get access. Your names will get posted with each entry, and I have administrative control over content. It would be another way you could contribute to our understanding of journalism and to show effort on your part. Let me know if you want to give it a try.

I’ll be updating this a lot in the next few days, and you guys are going to be my guinea pigs for some other stuff over the next couple of weeks. I know you’re happy. Bear with me, okay?
If you want to set up your own Blog, (I love Blogs!) I’ll be happy to help.

I love how tentative that sounds now, looking back. In all honesty, it makes me nostalgic as all get out, that experimentation phase, not knowing exactly what I was doing or where it was going to go. It’s what I miss most about being in the classroom, without question.

On November 13 of 2001, I started a class portal blog for my Web Pages and Portfolios class.

Please bookmark this spot as it will be the place where you can check for updates on assignments, links to cool sites and information about page creation and design, and links to your own personal weblogs.

Scanning the posts, I remembered that I had them set up their own blogs at Diaryland (which, I’m amazed to say, is still in existence.) They were the first of my students to have blogs.

About a month later, my first really personal blog was born, and I do mean personal. In fact, I’d forgotten just how personal some of the posts were at the very beginning. That was back in the day when I never thought anyone was going to be reading anything I wrote anyway, so I figured baring my soul was perfectly ok. (Um, no, not linking to that one.) After I got my first couple of comments, I changed course pretty quickly. That site did eventually turn into Weblogg-ed about a year later.

Then, on January 25, 2002, I started yet another blog, this one for my Journalism 2 students aimed more toward discussion and actually getting kids involved in a learning community online:

Welcome to the Journalism 2 Weblog where we will carry on a conversation about this class and about journalism as a whole. I’m expecting you to get in here and add to the conversation twice a week. That means an average (read: “C” for you grade grubbers) effort on your part would be around 15-20 meaningful posts over the next nine weeks. The more the better. (Remember the word meaningful,however.) A weekly topic will be posted in the left-hand column to get you started, but if you want the big bonus points, post here on your own. Find interesting articles or links that you think the class would be interested in and add them with a bit of comment or question. For a good example of what I’m talking about, see Metafilter. Debate is encouraged, but remember, be civil. I’ll try to enter the conversation too. So have fun with this and use it as a way to push your learning about journalism, the news, and the world around you.

Oooo…the grade thing hurts! But, I have to tell you, reading through some of those early posts from my kids, I can understand why this whole blogging thing bit me so hard. I mean seriously, read those very first three posts and you’ll see what I mean. And as I quickly scanned through some of the 1,057 posts that we accumulated on that blog in those nine weeks (which is amazing in itself) I am floored by the amount of thinking and linking those kids were doing. That was a very uncertain and scary time (as if today isn’t…) and it’s neat to read the kids working through it.

And that was it…I was hooked. I started blogs for my yearbook kids, my softball team, and the next fall I cajoled the technology guys to install Manila on one of our servers. That September we did the Bees, and my classes went paperless. They’re still serving up over 500 sites at my old school…pretty cool.

(Note: Just in case you got this far, I ended up having to re-templatize most of those old blogs today since they were all pointing at old servers which were long gone. Thank goodness Blogger let me push them back over to Blogspot…)

(Photo “Brace for Impact” by Big-E-Mr-G)

Technorati Tags: blogging, education, learning

Just a pointer to an incredibly wonderful, fantastic, enjoyable, thoughtful, scintillating, exciting, provocative (did I say fantastic?) 12-minute interview with my wife Wendy on the nationally syndicated EcoTalk show on Air America Radio. Her book about what we can all do to protect the environment has been getting some great press of late and is starting to get some momentum. It’s also constantly challenging me to think carefully about the choices I make in terms of what I consume every day, from using a refillable coffee cup to driving the speed limit to taking shorter showers. I really, really admire her passion for making a difference…

[tags]environment, Wendy_Richardson[/tags]

I’ve created a new Manila Web log at ideaforest.net where I can rant and rave about whatever is on my mind. Here is the XML feed if anyone is interested. I know there has been much discussion about personal posts and voice, and I’ve been struggling with using this space for sharing my angst about life. So…we’ll give this a shot.
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School is winding down on what has been a very intense, productive and exhilirating year, one that I will not soon forget. And I’m feeling it in a number of ways, most decidedly by a pull to get back in touch with my kids again and spend more time playing than sitting in front of a computer. I really marvel at the people who can continuously carve out the necessary hours every day to write and comment and continue the discussion. And it is great discussion and thinking that’s moving at such a fast pace that it’s getting really hard to keep up with. I have learned a lot. But let’s face it, there are, many more important things out there than Web logs. And I think I need to take back some of that perspective.

This has been brewing for quite some time, but when I went to a speech by Bill Clinton last night, I was really pushed in my thinking about this complex world in which we live. His world view is one of integration and interdependence, and there is much to be done to make this a better place for my kids. Love him or hate him, what I took away from it was this sentiment: there is no time to check your brain at the door and not become a part of the conversation.

I still want to be a part of this Web log conversation, and I will. But I also want to throw my energies into other areas that are capturing my attention, namely the environment, the dissapearance of the media in this country, and getting rid of what I truly believe is a dangerous group of leaders who are threatening our way of life in many, many ways. With two young children who I don’t spend nearly enough time with, a self-employed wife, a new job, a garden, a renewed passion for running and more, I’m having to choose my priorities. I wish I could do it all, but I can’t, so in case anyone cares, don’t be surprised if posts here become more sporadic. I’ll still report on my successes and failures, and I hope to continue to expand my thinking on how and why Web logs could be great things in my classroom. But I need to take a step back and reasses. Wish me luck.

I’ve been trying very hard not to do much posting about politics and policy here since a) this space is provided by my employer, b) there is enough free, independent web space out there for the taking, and c) this country is more and more becoming a scary place in terms of intellectual and personal freedoms. The problem is that I just haven’t had time to create some new space, and the idae of another place to keep my thoughts is somehow daunting to me. Still, I read stuff like this and I just get outraged, and I have no outlet for it. (BTW, if I do create that new site, it’s name will be “If You’re Not Outraged, You’re Not Paying Attention.” I saw that on a bumper sticker in Key West and it just rang very true.)

That’s one of the lures of this easy publishing stuff; all of a sudden you have a voice and it’s frustrating when you can’t fully use it. We’ll see…

I’m heading to Key West for five days to reintroduce myself to my wife while the in-laws babysit the kids. This will be the first time in over five years we’ve gotten a chunk of time together, so someone please shoot me if I start posting the rest of this week. I figure having posted 104 of 113 days this year buys me a little rest. Of course the problem is that things are moving so quickly that I know by Monday I’ll feel way behind. Hopefully I won’t be totally left in the dust…I’ll be thinking if not posting. Be well.

Bill Moyers on Patriotism and the Flag:

I put the flag in my lapel tonight. First time. Until now I haven’t thought it necessary to display a little metallic icon of patriotism for everyone to see. It was enough to vote, pay my taxes, perform my civic duties, speak my mind, and do my best to raise our kids to be good Americans. Sometimes I would offer a small prayer of gratitude that I had been born in a country whose institutions sustained me, whose armed forces protected me, and whose ideals inspired me; I offered my heart’s affections in return. It no more occurred to me to flaunt the flag on my chest than it did to pin my mother’s picture on my lapel to prove her son’s love. Mother knew where I stood; so does my country. I even tuck a valentine in my tax returns on April 15.

So what’s this flag doing here? Well, I put it on to take it back. The flag’s been hijacked and turned into a logo — the trademark of a monopoly on patriotism. On those Sunday morning talk shows, official chests appear adorned with the flag as if it is the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. And during the State of the Union, did you notice Bush and Cheney wearing the flag? How come? No administration’s patriotism is ever in doubt, only its policies. And the flag bestows no immunity from error. When I see flags sprouting on official lapels, I think of the time in China when I saw Mao’s Little Red Book on every official’s desk, omnipresent and unread.

But more galling than anything are all those moralistic ideologues in Washington sporting the flag in their lapels while writing books and running Web sites and publishing magazines attacking dissenters as un-American. They are people whose ardor for war grows disproportionately to their distance from the fighting. They’re in the same league as those swarms of corporate lobbyists wearing flags and prowling Capitol Hill for tax breaks even as they call for more spending on war.

So I put this on as a modest riposte to men with flags in their lapels who shoot missiles from the safety of Washington think tanks, or argue that sacrifice is good as long as they don’t have to make it, or approve of bribing governments to join the coalition of the willing (after they first stash the cash). I put it on to remind myself that not every patriot thinks we should do to the people of Baghdad what bin Laden did to us. The flag belongs to the country, not to the government. And it reminds me that it’s not un-American to think that war — except in self-defense — is a failure of moral imagination, political nerve, and diplomatic skill. Come to think of it, standing up to your government can mean standing up for your country.

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It appears today will be a very sad day for those of us holding out any hope of a peaceful resolution to the Iraqi situation. The “president” will be on the tube tonight telling us why we need to start dropping bombs on primarily innocent people in an act that most of the civilized world doesn’t see the need for. He’ll repeat all the usual rhetoric, invoke the name of god eight or nine times, tell us we have no choice, and give the go ahead. I don’t think I’ll watch.

I guess what has irked me most in these final days is the jingoistic jabber that politicians and preachers have been throwing out, specifically god’s role in all of this. It’s obvious that god likes us better than the Iraqis ’cause he’s watching over us. I guess he’s not watching over the children and the elderly and the infirm in Iraq…no one mentions them much. Must be some other god’s dominion. We have to protect Americans, as if we by some birthright are inherently more important or worthy than those born in other places. Our president believes that “the United States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to ‘every human being in the world.’” Yeah, liberty in the form of two-ton bombs and heavy artillery. Some gift.

This is a sad world, and we’re going to make it sadder tonight, or tomorrow, or the next day. Two million children die of disease in Africa each year. Two billion people on this planet have no water to drink. Twenty five percent of African’s suffer from chronic diarreha because of it. Yet our priorities are to spend billions of dollars and an enormous amount of our reputation to topple a egomaniacal dictator whose closest neighbors don’t even fear.

Excuse me if I don’t get it.

…I don’t want to see the ending. Last night, our president said:

“During the last two years, we have seen what can be accomplished when we work together. To lift the standards of our public schools, we achieved historic education reform which must now be carried out in every school, and in every classroom, so that every child in America can read, and learn and succeed in life. To protect our country, we reorganized our government and created the Department of Homeland Security which is mobilizing against the threats of a new era. To bring our economy out of recession, we delivered the largest tax relief in a generation. To insist on integrity in American business, we passed tough reforms, and we are holding corporate criminals to account.

Some might call this a good record. I call it a good start.”

How about this “start”:

November and December 2002 unemployment climbed to 6% - the highest since 1994. All told, 1.7 million jobs have been lost since January 2001.

Between Dec 29, 2000 and the end of the third quarter of 2002, the total market value of all US equities has dropped by 38% or by $6.65 trillion

1.3 million more Americans slipped below the official poverty line in 2001, the first increase since 1993. 11.7% of all Americans fell below the poverty line in 2001, up from 11.3% in 2000

In two years, the U.S. had the highest rate of bankruptcy cases in history, increasing 23% since 2000

Requests for emergency shelter increased by an average of 19% in 2002, the largest annual increase in the demand for homeless shelter since 1990

A budget surplus of $236 billion in 2000 has evaporated into a $157 billion deficit for 2002, with more red ink projected. Many respected private sector budget forecasters now predict the Bush 2004 deficit to be in the $300 to $350 billion range, meaning a half-trillion-dollar negative change in the government’s fiscal picture since Bush took office. The predicted 2004 deficit of $350 billion would eclipse the previous record deficit level of $290.4 billion set in 1992 by the first President Bush

Weeks after the President’s promise to “write a healthy check” for education when signing the “No Child Left Behind Act”, he submitted a 2003 budget that actually cut education the programs within the No Child Left Behind Act by $90 million.

Almost 40% of Bush’s first tax cut went to the richest 1% of the country-those making more than $373,000 per year.

The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 1.4 million in 2001, after dropping in 1999 and 2000

Monthly premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance rose by 12.7% between spring 2001 and spring 2002, the largest increase since 1990

In June 2002, the EPA “warned in a report to the United Nations of significant effects on the environment from climate change” with “changes over the next few decades expected to put Southeastern coastal communities at greater risk of storm surges, prompt more uncomfortable heat waves in cities and reduce snowpack and water supplies in the West.” Nonetheless, “President Bush dismissed the report” suggesting “nothing to deal with heat-trapping ‘greenhouse’ pollution beyond voluntary action by industry
(All of the above cited here.)

And on and on and on. I almost threw up when he said this:

“We will not deny, we will not ignore, we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations.”

How he kept a straight face I will never know. Are you ready for the next 10 years? I don’t think I am…

Well…looks like I got the job. More later.
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Just an observation about this Web log thing…

In my regular morning reading, it struck me that even though I’ve only met two of my Web logging peers face to face, I feel a real sense of community here. Joe’s loss saddens us, Sarah’s accomplishments gladden us, our communal struggles frustrate all of us. We Pat each other on the back, and lend a helping hand without any expectation of getting anything back. I worry about Seb and Terry and others when they don’t post for a while. I wonder if they’re just taking a break or if something bad has happened. Just like my real face to face friends, I feel pushed, pulled, appreciated and kicked in the butt.

I love how Karen puts it: “I write about this because the dry snow that doesn’t stick together reminds me somewhat of our individual blogs. No two blogs are alike, but they are similar in ways. They just don’t stick together…all of our individual blogs right now don’t work together to form snowballs, or snowpeople or igloos. Just like the snow, our blogs are going to need some sunshine, a little heat, to get to the point where we can make snowballs, or snowpeople, or igloos. I think that’s what Pat does (and Will and others). They provide a little sunshine, a little heat, to make us able to stick together to become something else. I’m looking forward to seeing what we become.”

She’s right…this community is moving somewhere, toward something. I’m looking forward too. It’s definitely time for a.) Karen to post more great stuff to her Web log and, b.) edublogvention!
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Quote: “But when we tell the world that we couldn’t care less about climate change, that we feel entitled to drive whatever big cars we feel like, that we feel entitled to consume however much oil we like, the message we send is that a war for oil in the gulf is not a war to protect the world’s right to economic survival but our right to indulge. Now that will be seen as immoral.”

Amen.
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