Friday, March 27, 2009

bathing suits in the dark


Earth Hour allows:
people of all ages, nationalities, race and background...to use their light switch as their vote...
Fair enough. And like any bipartisan light switch, you are able to cast one of two votes:
Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth...
Good. I like Earth. But I hate the dark. So I could leave the lights on. Doesn't mean I'm against anything, right?
or leaving them on is a vote for global warming.
Guess that new bathing suit I bought makes me look even more insidious.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

a tweally twifficult twest

The future of education depends on your mastery of this.


I'm constantly reminded why I despise multiple-choice tests.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

10 minutes or less

According to Delicious, 667 people have tagged this one:


World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.


And 107 people have tagged this:


The Age of Stupid: final trailer Feb 2009 from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

Feel free to be #668 or #108.

Monday, March 23, 2009

where's my yearbook?

Two quotes, seemingly unrelated, but you know better:

Michael Scott:
Truth be told, I think I thrive under a lack of accountability.
Anonymous Caller:
Some educators are running into the 21st century landscape of teaching and learning; others are walking; most are crawling, and many need to be carried. And then there are the ones who brag about not moving at all...

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

guess who's not proctoring?

State testing underway here.


I'm in total agreement with Wellington. There must be more ninjas. They're so good at hiding, even Google can't find all of them.

Ninjas are their own search engines.

Friday, March 13, 2009

the photo album

Can you believe that we're all standing here? Six of us, varying in height and balance.

Mark is walking over to the photo album. He finds the picture of the two of you. Can you see him? Feel him? I think he has some memories tucked away in his four-year old brain. When I remind him of moments past, he focuses on my eyes. His head skillfully positioned, and he is, I'm certain of it, listening. These stories matter to him. You matter to him.

You and Brian overlapped one day. A eerily perfect 24 hour cross-over. Brian, fading in. You, fading out. And both of you in the same building. Remember the picture we brought to you? He was so new, his eyes were still shut. I like to think that he was looking at a picture of you. His mind, coming to form, plowing through a familial rolodex, perusing images of those that came before him. Maybe that's what really happens at birth, a pre-loaded picture show begins, rooting each and every one of us to our ancestors.

And you're not seeing double. They're too young to understand. But they have the same cushy, padded photo album that's been passed down from child to child, and they see you. They see you holding Mark. They bite on the plastic protecting the pictures. It's just their way of exploring the world around them, of making meaning. I like to think it's there way of connecting. To you.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

does it come with a gym membership?

Job opening alert!

Here are the "physical and mental requirements":


I knew The Director of Information Systems position required vision, data collection and analysis. But this grueling? This physically taxing?

And is there a difference between 'must be able' and 'able'?

Lastly, I have one last question for you, employee seeking district:
What do you mean by 'occasionally'?

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

dear facebook person,

So I'm not sure where I left off, but I've been at Springfield HS for over a decade (gasp!), I have four kids (gasp!) all four and under, and I don't think I would change much.

I live outside of Philly, no different than any other year of my life, except my wonderful home is a twin, and I live in a town where people hang NASCAR flags.

My own property remains flagless.

Writing messages in Facebook is tricky for me b/c I'm looking at all the 'I's in this message, and shame is washing over me. Maybe it's because I think that my blog is my all about me place.

And then there's Twitter.

I'm going through some sort of tech crisis, and to make matters worse, the anchor on the local news just directed viewers to look at his blog.

And now there's a story about Twitter!

On Facebook, we can write as much as we want. On Twitter, we're limited to 140 characters. There's something dystopian about all of this, as I think the next app will, in true Orwellian style, truncate our language even more.

They'll release Sputr, and we'll be limited to 100 characters.

Then, in about a year, KerTale will invite us to express ourselves in 70 characters.

And the eradication of our text-based communication will be complete in 2011 when our 6" Dell Mini computers come equipped with a direct link to '?'

And the question won't be 'what are you doing?', but 'what can you say?' in four words.