Author: timcalvin

A potential Hack

I’m using “Hack” in the oldest sense of the word- as a positive descriptive noun for something clever and elegant.

So two companies I enjoy products from, Evernote and Moleskine, have teamed up to produce a physical notebook. That sounds odd, I realize, but it has a number of features that allow Evernote to digitize it’s contents more easily. One of these is a particular style of dotten lines on the pages that help the scan with error correction. That’s neat, but not what really caught my eye.

The notebook comes with a few sheets of stickers with tags on them- and the optical scanning in Evernote is keyed to see those stickers and automatically apply the tags you wish to those scans. That means I can sketch/write/draw ideas related to a project, slap a sticker on the page, and when I take a picture of that note into Evernote, it’ll automatically apply my tags to that note. That’s awesome.

The notebooks are a small premium in price above the already-premium-priced Moleskines. That’s understandable; they’re a more complicated book, and made in smaller numbers. That said, I have plenty of existing notebooks, almost all of which are Moleskine anyway. So I don’t really need another.

What I really want are the stickers- and I’m interested in either

a. Buying them, or

b. Having them made.

Any ideas about either of those two options?

Think about this:

If you’re doing something the same way a second time, what you’re really saying is:

a) It was absolutely perfect and can’t be improved, or

b) You’re too lazy/busy/overwhelmed to change it.

 

That put too fine a point on things?

Just a couple of days to go.

We start school Monday. It’s Friday, right now, and that means that this weekend is all that really stands between me and the school year.

I’m lucky, though, that my district runs a three-day professional development conference. It’ll have on the order of 97 sessions presented over the three days, and to whatever degree we can we’ll allow staff to choose what sessions they attend. It’s a lovely three days of getting revved up and ready for the school year. For connecting with coworkers you haven’t seen in months. For getting the motor on and warmed up before the kiddies pour through the door.

I should mention that when I say “my district runs” what I mean is “the Ed-Tech Team runs.” That’s not a complaint- heck, it’s why I’ve added “event organizer” to my resume- but it does bring me to my point:

I’d never been involved in the organization of an event like this before last year. I had no practical idea or experience regarding what would need to be done, how to do it, or any other aspect of this thing. So. What’s that mean?

It means it’s a great analogue to this year. I tried something totally new. I thought about the problem, tried to address as many potential problems as I could, planned (and planned and planned), and then did the thing.

And nothing caught on fire. We, as educators, like to joke that we can “go down in flames” when a lesson fails. Or that our rooms might “catch on fire” if something goes wrong. But the reality is that classrooms don’t burst into flame. Mostly (Chemistry teachers, I’m looking at you…). There were things at that first conference that didn’t go as smoothly as you’d hope. There were things that had to be changed/addressed/corrected. There are things we’re doing differently this year.

But I’m not sure there’s a better example for how we (and our students) should approach this year. Try something new. Give it the best shot you can. Know that despite your best efforts it might not go as well as you hope. Be ok with that. Do it better next time.

Good luck.

What have I done?

I’ve mentioned here before that my school self-publishes our senior year ELA textbook as well as our junior year ELA textbook. Not to go into too much depth, but for the last six years we’ve written and curated and had printed our own physical books. We use Adobe InDesign for the layout, and use the excellent Lulu for printing. It’s wildly cheaper than comercial textbooks. It’s so cheap that we can print and GIVE to students new books every year, and it still costs less than buying one set of hardbacks that we’d keep for TEN years.

I was heavily involved in getting this off the ground- I did the layout work for a few years, and early on was so keen on the idea that I paid for parts of it out of my own pocket. I still feel passionately about it, though I don’t have a ton to do with the project these days.

Or “didn’t,” I should say. Because I’ve gone and done something rash.

I’m taking all the existing files for the senior year book and I’m going to turn them into a decent digital version.

It exists already, as a matter of need (to upload to Lulu) as a PDF, but PDF’s are not an acceptable format for the distribution of a file like this. I’m going to be doing either (and maybe both?) an ePub and an iBooks Author file. Either will allow much of the hands-on work with the text that those teachers have come to expect from students- and either will be a. Cheaper, b. Not confined to the limits of a printed page and c. physically weigh nothing. All of which, as far as I’m concerned, are good things.

It’ll be some work. But maybe me doing this will be what it takes to get my department completely onboard.

 

Tangential’s not dead. Really.

I know there’s not been a new episode in a while- actually, something like two months. Fine. In that time, I’ve been super busy. Vacation (cause I needed it), surgery (cause I needed it), and tons of work & family time.

All that said, as the school year starts I thought I should run-down the changes I’ll be making to the show:

After a bunch of talking with Patrick Larkin, I came up with the following idea: I’m going to make two versions of each episode. The first version will be just like what’s up now. That means 4-6 minutes of high-speed delivery. These are meant to be jumping off points- things that you could use in a classroom to spark a conversation or lead into a debate. Or something. The second version will be longer- say, 10-12 minutes. The delivery will be slightly less… manic. And the depth I go into will be more substantial. These will be meant more as a flipped-classroom (as much as I hate the term…) tool. I think they will be too long for in-class viewing, but they might work well for a homework assignment that involves watching and then responding.

Anyway, since all the videos I’ve made thus-far are the short form ones, I’m going to be trying to go back and shoot long-form versions of the existing videos. Ideally, that means that I’ll be doing both types at the same time going forward, but there’s only so much time for me to shoot and edit, and there may be times when only one of the two shows up for a while.

First priority on the shooting schedule is the Red Head episode- and I can tell you that given start-of-the-schoolyear-crazy, I’ll be doing the short version first.

Just so you know.

Sit Rep!

So my summer’s coming to a close (rapidly!), and it’s time to get a handle on where I am with things. Here goes.

1. #bpscon is ready to go. Mostly. Schedule is done, sessions are ready (?!), and logistics are mostly covered. Somewhat easier than other con’s I’ve done, in that way, given that everyone is an employee already…

2. One more day of iPad rollout for this year- until the mid-year mark, when there’s another HUGE rollout happening. But still. For now, almost done.

3. New room is mostly up-and-running. Got some smaller stuff to move around and some software I’m still waiting on (!), but the bones of it are coming together nicely. Next step: media gear setup, and art on the walls.

4. My handbook for my Media Production class is pretty much ready to go. It’s built in iBooks Author, and I’ll post a link to it here as soon as it’s public for the students.

5. I’ve been back to twitter, if you’ve been missing me there. I’m finding #sschat to be a great place, even though I’m not a Social Studies or History teacher… and as far as I can tell, #edchat is dead. Utterly useless at this point- a no longer productive echo chamber. A shame, really.

If you’ve read some of my other posts, you know my project list is hovering in the 30-40 range right now- and I’ve been making some progress through those in the last few weeks. I’ll likely abandon some of those- and that’s not a bad thing, but there’s a 100% chance I’ll add more too. As I’ve said before: I get bored quickly.

Eventually?

I’m pretty excited.

The school I work at, as a result of a grant I helped write, should have a 3D printer this year.

Ideally, it’ll be a Makerbot Industries Replicator, which will let us do all sorts of neat stuff. Printing brackets for stuff. Fixing things. Hacking things. I’ve got a GoPro that’s not going to mount itself, you know.

And strangely, one of the things I’m most looking forward to is teaching the students about the nature of open-source projects- the idea that giving back can be a rewarding process. In addition, I’m looking forward to teaching in more detail about the limitations of copyright and patent processes. I’m looking forward to showing that ideas are not original things- that we all stand on the shoulders of those before us. That everything we create is connected through our culture. And I think showing this with physical items is more tangible than some of the concepts and ideas we otherwise deal with.

 

I’m done with paper.

This year, it’s all digital, all the time. Email, GDrive, Dropbox and the like make it so easy to push files back an forth that printing things out is more of a pain than it’s worth. I’ve not installed any printer drivers on this computer, either. Just in case my resolve weakens.

While for most day-to-day things ditching printing is pretty easy, there are a few things I’m keeping in mind:

1. There’s a certain… richness… to paper. A tangibility. A tactile response to it’s heft and physicality. To that end, I’m trying to emulate that digitally as much as I can. That means graphics, layout work, and pushing a specific aesthetic on everything attached to my classes. A cohesiveness. This cannot be overlooked.

2. Just because it’s all digital doesn’t mean it’s all the same. I need to keep in mind the myriad digital formats that exist, and endeavor to use the most appropriate format for the task I’m trying to accomplish. Vital. And when you combine this with #1, you realize that the aesthetic you’re using has to translate across multiple digital formats. A bit tricky.

3. Think like a startup. Make a choice quickly based on the best information you have access to, and then be ready to pivot to another choice if things need to be changed. Make these changes definitively, and don’t look back. Done is done.

I moved classrooms for this year, and in doing so I saw the opportunity to purge much of my physical stuff from my life. It was liberating, and while terrifying for a moment, I don’t regret it at all. I did, however, move two file cabinets to the new room. These are an archive of my last 6 (or so) years of teaching. I’ve never reached into them for anything, really. It’s a record. But I’m not sure it needs to exist. What’s it for? Why keep it? What purpose does it serve?

None, I think. It’s a function of me being sentimental.

I guess the next step is clear.