You should be. Let’s examine the advantages:

1. Updated as often as you’d like
2. Much less expensive than purchased
3. Contain only the content you want
4. A sense of pride for having created the thing

That last point is not to be overlooked, mind you. The pride a teacher feels for having created the very book they are teaching from is a powerful motivator. There’s a certain kind of passion that comes through an educator directly responsible for the creation of the materials they teach.

There are, I can admit, a few disadvantages:

1. A large up-front investment in man-hours
2. Understanding the many formats, conventions, and design decisions applicable to creating a textbook
3. A willingness to be responsible for the text you teach

These are all surmountable, but doing so requires that the educators involved be willing to learn these things. If you are pushing staff into doing this, you will find they only encounter problems, each of which will become an excuse to kill the project. If the educators themselves are motivated to do this, you will hear only about the freedom and power it afforded them.

I’ve been using the word “textbook” a lot here- and I want to be clear: I mean everything from an analog textbook to a digital textbook to a “textbook analog (aka a conglomeration of materials that approximate the scope of a textbook). I don’t think it much matters what format the thing is eventually published in (though, again, there are some very distinct advantages to going digital here), as much as the thing existing in the first place.

For those of you that are interested in how I manage my daily lists, I thought I’d share. I use a modified (and simplified) version of Patrick Rhone’s Dash/Plus system. I keep a Field Notes notebook on hand all the time, and every day I start a new TODO list with the date written next to it. Under that, I start compiling the pressing tasks for the day. My version of the Dash/Plus system looks like the following:

And that’s it. If something becomes it’s own project, I’ll push it to it’s own page in the notebook and give it some room to breathe. It a project out grows that page in my small daybook, I’ll push it off to one of my larger project notebooks (usually a Moleskine of some sort…). That will give me room to cross things off and draw arrows and generally make a mess of it.

But for day-to-day operations, this system seems to work pretty well. It’s fast, lightweight, and had just enough flexibility to make things work for me. I’ve tried a ton of other options- I like the app Clear, and for a good long time I used it a ton… but for reasons beyond my understanding, paper and pen (currently a Uni-ball Signo 207 in black, for the pen geeks that might be lurking. Will soon be replaced with a Retrakt G2).

Don’t underestimate the power of that right-arrow, by the way. When I start seeing something with that arrow next to it for more than a day or two, I find myself really motivated to decide if the item really is that important, or if it’s something else. Often, those arrows have a way of turning into a circle. I’m ok with that- it’s a way of forcing some self-evaluation as to what I’m investing my time into for tasks and what might really be important.

“The street finds its own uses for things.”

William Gibson

When Gibson talks about this quote, he’ll usually use the example of pagers- Motorola, when they were pushing pagers in the late 1980’s and early 90’s never thought they’d become the go-to tool for drug dealers. A technology originally developed in the 1950’s (!) for doctors came to be used in a totally different way than anticipated.

We have to consider, in the contexts of our schools, how the tech that we introduce for one purpose will certainly be used for things other than we intended. The typical response to this in schools it to shut things down or lock things up. Instead, why can’t we learn from the alternate uses our students find and incorporate those uses into our classrooms? Why can’t we accept the inevitable?

So I was on twitter when this post went by:

And the thought occurred to me: Static is a remnant of an analog world. My children will never see that on a tv.

Found this via Cory Doctorow:

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations. Architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable. Originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said, ‘It’s not where you take things from. It’s where you take them to.’”

Jim Jarmusch

I’ve never felt like I’ve done enough- there’s always this lingering feeling that I should/could do more in a given day. Specifically, to make more. Still, to make well you must consume- it is the fuel that drives the creative process. I try to read a lot- most of it non-fiction, most of it online. Still, when I saw this list by Steven Soderbergh, I was impressed not only by the scope of what he’s consumed but also the quantity. I’ve got a lot of work to do.

How old is your car?

How old is your oldest lesson plan?