So here’s the setup… today’s Daily Shoot challenge was to capture a silhouette of some sort. My plan from the warm confines of my living room this afternoon? => Turn it around a bit. Grab that copper likeness of the sun from a nearby wall, take it to the river with me and my little girl, and have her hold it out at arm’s length, directly in front of the sun… thereby creating a silhouette of the sun… by the sun.
I’m here to tell you that it didn’t work out as smoothly as I had thought it might. My near-three-year old quickly found the “sun” too heavy to hold in such a way. ”It’s too heavy daddy.” Well, of course I wasn’t disappointed in the least, but since I got her all fired up for the shot on the drive down to the snowy shore of the Missouri River… she certainly was.
So I stepped back, stuck the sun into the snow, and snapped off a shot to remind us of the attempt. Even though I didn’t take the time to adjust the setup (and so you see the sun “blown out” and over-exposed), I really did capture a moment in time. After scooping her up and telling her how she is the most precious thing to me- followed by some intense tickling, we climbed inside the toasty car.
The bottom line: she’s a bit too much like me at the core. I’m glad I know that while she’s only two years old. It took me a long time to make friends with failure. I’m comforted that she has parents who are now quite fond of the messiness of learning. Being the first-born daughter of two first-born parents might just otherwise carry some potential stress, if you subscribe to that sort of thing.
Education is life is…
So in typing an outline of this little story into Flickr, where I am ten days into my first image-a-day “Project 365,” it hit me how close this comes to the classroom at times. You see, I knew exactly what I wanted out of that shot. I have stood behind an SLR with an excited neuron enough times to know what I can and cannot do at this point. And right here is the rub. How many times have you envisioned a classroom task where the student work failed miserably to meet your expectations?
I don’t think I have to say “if so” here do I? We’ve all been there. My question is… what did you do about it? Hopefully, you finally got around to looking inward at your own expectations, approaches, and scaffolding. Hey, we all jump too fast on the good ol’ continuum of gradual release from time to time. It’s hard to slip your brain inside those of a hundred others to see what the best “next step” is every time. And if you’re an innovator? Well, if you’re prone to innovation, you often swim in unfamiliar waters… continually using your teacher senses to lead your students through the rip-currents of failure.
Jumping too early and expecting more autonomy than is warranted at a given moment in the educational spectrum is commonplace. What I would suggest isn’t so routine is tapping on the brakes for a moment, stopping the classroom bus and saying: “hold on a sec… I took something for granted… let’s go back and try it this way.” It is far easier to push the blame onto our students. We get into that, “well when are they going to learn responsibility and independence?” …sort of thing. I’m certainly not saying that students can’t be lazy from time to time. I could write the book on that. Yet, I would suggest that our teacher energy is best channeled into what we can realistically control. The only things we can 100% control within the classroom on a daily basis are the choices we make.
I think we need to create little microcosms where failure is frequent. I advocate the creation of zones where we celebrate failure as some sort of pushing-back-against-boundaries sort of thing. Our classrooms can be this. Allowing -even pushing kids- to “safe” failures teaches us all something about what we can and cannot do any any given point in time. We have to get to the point where this isn’t scary. Our kids suck a bit of water up their noses while learning to swim, right? In our protective arms, this sort of failure builds confidence. Should it really be that different in the classroom?
Prevent the big fail. Rub elbows with your students. Sit side by side with them as they work and watch them interact with… whatever it is you’re asking them to interact with. Find out what makes each kid tick. Put out sparks before they become fires. Teach. Teach along the way. And pay close attention: if you didn’t already attempt the student project yourself, then you should be sued for malpractice.
And really, if you’re still didactically preaching along from the pulpit on most days, you’ll likely not even run into this little snag. I bet this job looks easy from behind a podium.
According to the NCES, since 2004, girls have -in general- been shown to outdo boys in nearly every measure of academic success. Girls outpace boys on nearly every one of our measures of “winning” when it comes to school. And yet, when push comes to shove on earning degrees in engineering or computer science, boys still outpace girls by margins of 77% and 85% respectively. The overarching assertion: girls don’t tinker. Or at least, they aren’t often encouraged to.
Tinker. In nearly every published version, the origin of the word seems to trace back to an itinerant mender of kitchen utensils- and more specifically, those made of tin. As a verb (of which we are obviously more interested here) it hints of clumsy, unskilled or experimental efforts.
After that little search, I’m even more interested than before. Clumsy? Haphazard? Unskilled? Somehow I have always elevated the word in my mind toward something more sophisticated. I wonder why I so highly regard this word (and many of its associated meanings) when it seems this may not even be the general consensus at all.
Consensus?
Just last week I read an Education Week article entitled Teaching Girls to Tinker by author Lisa Damour. As an educator of nearly twenty years and a father of two girls under three years of age, this article certainly gave me pause. I’ve gone forty years (see how I slid that big number in as text) assuming that even if “tinkering” was not done with a specific purpose in mind, it was still a valuable effort. The idea of tinkering being a valuable pursuit seems to be at odds with the definitions I found today. And yet the truth remains… at times, connotation means everything. Think of how these two statements paint opposite connotations of the word:
He tinkered with the nation’s economy by regularly deregulating banks.
She tinkered with the lure in order to make it run deeper in the water.
Perhaps overall success… or gravitas plays a role here? Of course my take on this comes through the lens of a teacher/instructional coach. Before sitting here to type this evening, I even asked the Twitter crew what sort of off-the-top-of-your-head definition they’d give for the word. Twelve of them responded with:
tweeps on tinkering
I see tinkering on par with the sort of purposeful play I so highly value in the classroom. The kind of play we don’t do enough. The sort of thing most NCLB required state exams force teachers to push aside.
I find it interesting that although some of the twelve Twitter responses speak of tinkering as simply “messing about,” most contain language that seems to elevate the activity a bit, such as: “investigate”, “modify”, and “explore.” Several even mentioned it as something that leads to an actual accomplishment. Is it perhaps that the vast majority of these people are educators? Or is it that they are progressives? Things got even weirder while writing this post tonight when I clicked a Twitter link to view the list of scheduled “conversations” at Educon2.2. A quick scan down the list shoved me smack into a Sylvia Martinez presentation entitled “Tinkering Towards Technology Fluency.” Her brief description of the session mentions that the content will surround themes she’s been exploring on her blog. Networked digits provide digital serendipity, no?
Tinker vs. struggle?
Regardless of our take on the meaning of tinkering, apparently by some measures girls are not being afforded an equal share of the tink. Damour points to the 1994 book Failing at Fairness which includes an observation that, “…teachers allow boys to struggle with mathematics problems long after they have rushed in and rescued girls from the same struggle.“ This seems certainly overlapped with the concept of “tinkering” mentioned here… but it also seems to go in a bit of a different direction. This quote speaks directly of struggle. How much overlap do you see in these two words?
I try to create struggles every day. More often than not, it’s my classroom modus operandi. In short, I try to engage students in a concept… address the fuzziness between what we know and what we don’t know… point towards the structure we’ll be using to explore it… settle on how we’ll evaluate our work… and then allow the relatively safe struggle between learning and meaning to take place. My role is coach. My day to day mission is to support this type of tinkering with ideas within the framework of standards in which we work.
This tinkering takes its highest form when actually following a problem through to include actual harvesting and analysis of data followed by conclusions that lead back to more problems. In line with data presented in the article, my females generally tend to outpace my males in achievement. How do the numbers hold up by the time my students graduate from college? Even with the dawn of social media, this data is still fuzzy. So I’m left to wonder… could I too indirectly contribute to the tinker-divide outlined by Damour?
At home
The bottom line for me is that any article that comes back to haunt me a day later is a good one. In fact, just the other night I found this one still on my mind. That night my two-year old approached me in the kitchen with toy troubles. She had stuffed far too many toys into a little lunchbox that holds critters. While holding it up to me with two hands and two big eyes, she asked me to “fix it, Daddy.” I looked down to see both ends of the latch not quite matching up with the strain of the critter load.
My gut reaction was to reach right down and latch it right up for my little dollface. However, I stopped short… sat down beside her and coached her through it without touching it myself. I wonder how that might have played out if Delaney were a boy. I don’t consider these tiny struggles to be “tinkering.” I do, however, consider them to be related.
And yes, I still open doors for women. When you’re forty (twice in one post!) and were raised to be (roughly) a gentleman, it is just something you do as a kneejerk. Heck, to me it is a courtesy thing toward other humans in general. So yes, I treat men and women differently on a conscious level. It’s the subconscious level I wonder about.
Artwork
*Sculpture by iwishmynamewasmarsha on Flickr.
*Twitstream definitions by the twelve mentioned in the image.
*Classroom inquiry by me.
*Tinkerbox by me
Forgive me in advance for the not-so-touchy-feely words regarding our beloved Mother Goose, but this one gave me pause…
My two-year-old daughter drug over The Real Mother Goose yesterday as we were playing. I knew we had the book. It was a gift at some point in the last couple of years. However, it has never been one of my favorites. I guess I’m a prude, and for that I’m sorry, but these sing-songy bits of goofiness never did excite me. But hey- what my daughter wants to read… we read. So we read. Actually- even at two, she can spot-read (identify?) many of the words on the page already. So we laid in her comfy bed reading verse by verse and studying the accompanying artwork. Until I spied one in particular queued up across the page.
We didn’t read this one.
Now you can go on and on in the comments section about the historical significance of this work from 1916. It certainly does give an interesting glimpse of society at the time it first went to print. Jack Sprat, Little Boy Blue, London Bridge… I get it. I also appreciate the fact that these descend from verbal tradition and seem a bit weird on the printed page. I know.
But I have a pretty bright little turd here, and as of my current state of mind, we’re not about to sing songs of the difficulty of mathematics in my house. I almost hope someone will reply with just cause for not fretting over such a silly verse. I mean… she’s just two, right?
What will two years of failure do?
I was educated in the very public schools in which I now teach. I stayed pretty close to home. I was fortunate enough to be served by our gifted education program from elementary school on, when it was just out of the box and brand-spanking-new. I am proud of the experiences I had in our district from early to late. In fact, I was also in advanced mathematics in grade seven with Ms. Melody Boring (a known expert) and I learned a ton. However, I also have some baggage from later years that speaks to the power of having two bad experiences… two years in a row.
I don’t really feel like the usual research links here tonight that show how two neglected years can really sink a kid. It is in my head that this has been shown. I’m hoping someone will do that for me in the spaces below. But- I have a case study that says it is so.
Me, a bright kid sitting in the back of the room as a sophomore reading In-Fisherman and Sports Afield while my teacher sat in his desk chair tying flies. Yes, you read it correctly… tying flies. Tying flies in a full-on fly-tying vice clamped to his desk. Tying flies, painting the lead heads of crappie jigs for the weekend’s fishing expedition. Heck, I liked the guy. I mean, really… what high school boy wouldn’t? It was pretty routine. He’d scribble on the board for ten or fifteen minutes… give an assignment… and then get to work on his sportsmanlike artistry. If we needed a brownie point or two, we’d approach his desk and ask something like: “what color have the crappie been biting on this week?“ … and we’d be “in.”
The next year I was lucky enough to score a good teacher. He was a kind and gentle man, and one who knew a bit about mathematics instruction. I was playing catch-up, but a bright kid can do just that. Just a few months in, my teacher (the father of a current colleague) passed due to cancer and I was once again thrust into a tailspin. You can’t play catch up in advanced mathematics with a sub who reads the paper.
My senior year began anew with the trigonometry experience. Really- this was all quite interesting to me from a science perspective. I instantly got the conceptual ties to physics. Apparently, these conceptual ties weren’t solid enough as I ultimately scored a 6% on one exam, nailed the only D in my life… and pulled out of calculus for the second semester. This teacher?……. he was not rehired the following school year. Years later, my principal would show me the actual three-ring binder of documentation it took to pull this teacher’s roots from the public school system. Bad seeds in a good system. But the collateral damage of that mess is writing this blog. You should see the disparity in my ACT scores.
So perhaps I can thank all of this mess for pointing me in a rather literary direction. I remember even as far back as middle school, taking tests in Odyssey (gifted ed.) that always showed me to be “left-brain dominant.” That didn’t last long. From college on, the right side has done nearly all of the “talking” for me. That is probably rather obvious to anyone reading this blog over time.
A naked nerve
So, ultimately I apologize for defiling The Mother’s good name in kiddie lit (if she indeed has one). What I do not apologize for are some of the attitudes I have taken with me into the classroom for the past eighteen years. The idea that every kid matters. The idea that everyone deserves to grow, regardless of the skills they bring into your room in September. The idea that smart kids, perhaps most of all, deserve to be challenged, pushed and empowered every bit as much as any other kid.
My daughter stands to be a pretty brilliant little human some day. I’m not reading her stories of the vexation of multiplication. I’m just not going to do it. In fact, I’ll be damned if anyone does.
Have you ever wondered why we build sandboxes for children? That’s exactly what I did today. Today I wondered while wandering about the yard, putting the finishing touches on a landscape and backyard garden update. I wondered long and hard about the role of play in learning new things. In between digging holes, sinking plants, and spreading mulch… I took short breaks to watch my two year old daughter play with sand. This backyard classroom is every bit as much mine as it is hers.
I watched her take that first chartreuse-shovel scoop into a fresh sandbox today. I sat beside her as she pirated empty plant pots and filled them scoop by scoop with moist sand fresh from the bag. I saw her level off the orange pots and pour one into the other, and the other into another. Aside from the obvious tactile pleasures like digging naked toes into cool wet sand, there just seems to be so much going on with sandbox play.
A quick look at the packaging on the toy set which includes buckets, scoops, shovels, etc., reveals three things that are supposedly developed with these toys. The three listed are: fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and cause and effect.
And more?
I think those three skills/concepts are easily seen in this type of play. You could argue that the majority of toddler toys target those very things. However, I just really feel like there is something more going on here- something far more sophisticated. What did I see today? I saw what seemed to be a child unknowingly acquiring the roots of understanding two critical concepts: volume and mass. Can she define either? No. Can she really even talk about it much? Not really. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
The brain of a human child is an unparalleled learning machine. Beyond grasping for nipples and blinking at bright lights, the first thing it does beyond survival is play. I would argue that this play is not merely pastime. I would contend that it is far more than fun. I would suggest that it is fun for a toddler because that is what is needed to feed the brain at that developmental stage. All a child needs at this point is the opportunity.
Though a child’s mind cannot comprehend an abstract concept like volume, the roots are taking hold in those moments. Filling buckets… emptying a small one into a larger one several times, and on and on. Today I wondered about whether we realize why we build sandboxes. I bet the average parent doesn’t think about the why any more than the two year old does playing. Not consciously thinking about it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
Fast-forward to the end of formal public schooling. The brain inside the skull of your local quarterback cranked through calculus and physics last Friday night in an attempt to connect time and time again with his pass-catching receivers. He managed perhaps hundreds of variables without flinching in order to control the trajectory of a very odd-shaped object. He may or may not graduate having sat in a chair during a formal session of calculus or physics, but he’s doing it every day. Even if nothing more than a calculation machine, the human brain is an amazing thing. I am awed by its power on a daily basis.
Think about a student’s ability (or willingness) to grasp those first formal attempts at abstracts such as volume or mass in a school setting. What if those attempts hinge to a certain degree upon backyard experiences from age two or so? Thoughts like that poke at my gray matter. We almost universally agree about the power of diverse background knowledge as it relates to success in school. Hearing complex conversation in your home. Growing up surrounded by books. Museum visits for “fun.” Travel. Experiences. These are not things that happen in a typical high school setting (this is why you might want to continue reading past the first section of the aforementioned book), and yet all is not necessarily lost.
So what?
So where is the “sandbox” in your classroom? Does it even exist, and if so, is it really a place? Perhaps it is a time? Or is it rather interwoven throughout the environment you build for children? Do you purposefully employ “play” in your classroom? How similar is this “play” to the “explore” phase of the learning cycle model? Do current practices in your school allow for purposeful play, or has it been politically pushed out of the classroom?
Whenever I find myself in a reflective mood anymore this is where I find myself. Tonight is certainly one of those times. Earlier I spent some time tuning up my bike for an early morning ride. Big deal, right? Normally I would agree. The difference here is the fact that I haven’t pointed my bike down a single-track trail for over two years.
The past two years have been full of a ton of changes for me- the vast majority all good- read: finally being a dad, leading a successful edtech pilot, etc. However, at that time I also had a pretty gruesome neck surgery stemming from an old wrestling injury about fifteen years prior. From that time I fought with my neck going out several times a year. Anyone who knows me close knows that I spent weeks each year in pretty good pain when it would “go out.” That summer (2006) I finally had two cervical disks blow out completely and started rapidly losing pretty much everything in my right arm, including size.
All of that paled in comparison to the pain. For a solid month it felt like a a dump truck had backed itself up onto my right arm and parked. I didn’t sleep more than about 40 minutes solid at any time during that month. After the surgeon very deftly put my spine back together with bone marrow from my hip and a solid bit of titanium, I was painless pretty much instantly for the first time in years. My neck still feels like a million bucks today. That surgery really is a rather raw and unsophisticated thing in some respects. The guy put me back together with what must have been similar to wood tools. If you don’t believe that, just look at the screws that are embedded in my vertebrae. Awesome images. You know me -the sciencegeek- if there is data to be had, I want it. I got all of those images on CD not long after the surgery. Hopefully you aren’t too freaked out by the ghastly pics…
Since that time I have completely removed myself from coaching wrestling after 18 years of doing what I grew up with and loved doing. That has been a tough transition for me. I wormed my way out gracefully though by contacting a smart guy to step in a take the reins at my school with my brother while I stayed on one last year as an assistant coach. The deal is this: wrestling is just not a “lifetime sport.” I always despised those coaches who led by words alone. The sport is far too technical nowadays to not roll up your sleeves and get into the mix. learning wrestling is true athletic apprenticeship. For me it was just too painful to stand and talk when I was used to actually doing for so many years of my life. So today I remain fan #1 for our athletes and coaches, but I just wanted better for our guys.
So how does that relate to riding a mountain bike down uneven trails? It is pretty simple really. I have just never done “halfway” very well when it comes to anything. Teaching- full blast. Instructional coaching- full blast. Educational technology leadership- full blast. Mountain biking- full blast. Writing- full blast. You name it- full blast. My fear (or intelligence, we’ll see) has kept me off of my bike since that time. I could have chilled down the concrete of the local trails or roads, but to me… that felt too much like coaching wrestling from the edge of the mat. It just felt too “halfway” to me.
So tomorrow, with a clean, toned bike and tight tires I will glide down the trails of our river bluffs for the first time in a long long while. I can assure that the views I take in on that ride will be absorbed in a much different way. At the speed I will be traveling I will likely take in more sights than I have ever seen even in some very familiar places. But I think I am finally OK with that. Though I’ll never really be able to coach wrestling the way I always did, the risk of a bike ride is a fair trade for the thrill. It’s high time to kick off the second forty years of my life with the intent of returning to some semblance of the fitness I was used to.
Hey- I might not being going full blast, but at least I will be back on the horse… Wish me luck.
Lately, my students and I have been studying not only the effectiveness of biological illustrations, but also the efficacy of their own illustrations to personally enhance the knowledge of abstract concepts. As well, I have been engaged in some short but interesting discussions with Dr. Mishra at MSU concerning the validity of visualizations. None of these interesting interactions, however, hold a candle to those between my eldest daughter and I. Big surprise, huh?
She has shelves upon shelves of amazing books that have come from her mom and I, gifts from others, or direct picks from Delaney herself. One of these books is the subject of this post. I had noticed the scientific inaccuracies on “number seven” before today. Yet- I hadn’t really looked seriously at what was going on because I generally hate this book, and usually try to get mommy to read this one when it comes up. Yes, this one was a gift. No biology instructor would ever purposefully unleash this one upon their progeny.
Details? Who cares?
I understand where you are coming from if you tell me the content details that are so fouled up here aren’t important at age two. I get that. However, this kid can tell the difference between a barracuda and a salmon in one book, and then be able to transfer what a barracuda looks like and “does” when seeing a photograph of mine flash across my laptop’s screen saver:
I don’t know. As I’ve said before, I’m no early childhood expert. My learning about EC education occurs as we experience it through our lovely daughters. However, I have to at least give myself props for keen observation skills and an active framework for constructivist learning (as well as other approaches).
However, page seven of this book is just… well… dumb. Page seven features an octopus as a painter with tubes of paint in all tentacles. Not only is this the representative creature for the number seven, it has seven tentacles. Yes- count them. Seven tentacles. One tube of paint in each. Not to menton the fact that the page goes on to suggest that seven rainbow paints can “…make a world of make-believe or Never Never Land.” Wow. Perhaps this is a feeler to draw kids in to the Never Land Ranch? If so, sorry Mike, my girlie’s not remotely interested.
All silliness aside… are you kidding me? Page seven? The octopus sits on page seven in this book? I mean, this creature isn’t named “tentacle-critter.” It is named “OCTO-pus” as in: eight. Eight of something- you don’t even need to know what. But ask someone before you put the brush into the paint can next time. Seriously. Or wait- perhaps the illustrator simply applied color to the author’s words? Regardless, there you have it in the end, a seven-tentacled beast staring gleefully back at you. Am I saying that a children’s author needs to hold a degree in biology? Not remotely. Though I would argue that if you wish to publish, take note of basic prefixes.
What I thought a few weeks ago was a glaring error, just tonight became a full-on dumbfest. A silly soiree. When skipping to page ten, we see ten terrific sea turtles. Actually, according to the book, we see “ten tiny tortoises swimming in the sea.” Yeah- no. No we don’t. I am willing to bet no one has seen tortoises swimming in the sea. Considering the general common language surrounding the taxonomic order Chelonia is that all are turtles. Those spending their lives near water (and especially those spending it in water) are always referred to as turtles. Only those living the most terrestrial of lives get to be called tortoises. Even those in the middle, who spend some of their lives near water are often referred to as terrapins… but never tortoises. A book depicting “tortoises” doing loop-de-loops in the sea, is not for me.
What is this- a conspiracy?
I have no author to blame here. Honestly, I can’t. This book hasn’t an author listed, an illustrator credited, etc. The front and back covers depict a series of books called “Animal Crackers” to which this particular volume belongs, although there is no other information to be found. I would chalk this up to the nature of a children’s book, though all of our others seemingly have a plethora of documentation and credits. I do suspect that it makes some sick sense to not want any sort of “credit” for this remarkable work to be placed upon your resume. The only thing I can find on the back cover is “Copyright 2005 Edicart – Printed in China for Books Are Fun Ltd., 1680 Highway 1 North, Fairfield, Iowa.”
My wife is from Iowa. Smart people hail from Iowa. So tell me readers… why am I crazy here? Why is this really no big deal at all? Why is it not embarrasingly funny and sad all in one icky-literacy-burrito?
Holiday break, for an educator for sure, is a time to spend time with family and friends… regroup, and just relax. It is a time for reflecting on the previous year (if you haven’t already) and planning for the year to come. It is also a time for indulging in fun. Fun food, fun drink and even some just plain… silliness.
So before I return to my three young ladies for the evening, allow me to introduce you to a very fun time-waster. Really- if you are a bit more motivated, this site could really even be a valuable marketing tool for your classroom or department. As I said- this certainly isn’t a post to turn your educational philosophy on end. This isn’t definitely not a post that will add significantly to your pedagogical repertoire. Forgive me, for I too, am on holiday break. This post is to educational technology as cheesy spinach & artichoke dip is to nutrition.
If you have read this blog for even one day, you know that visual literacy is fundamental to my core. I can’t write a paragraph without an image helping my cause. Perhaps this is an homage to my realization that human words cannot do justice to a carefully crafted photograph. Perhaps as well, this marks one more post on this blog as of late that isn’t so grippingly “instructional” or “edtech.” However, hopefully you have checked out my About page by now. That -in a very indirect way- explains the hierarchy here. I hope that works for most of you…
Enough blabb. If you are unfamiliar, allow me to introduce you to the fun of BigHugeLabs as one last cheesy nugget of 2008. Not only is this site a potentially fun time-waster, it can also be a valuable relationship-builder in the hands of the enlightened. In fact, it can also be a “Christmas gift creation tool” -if you have both the images and the verbal initiative to pull it off. I say that with utmost cockiness after having delivered these two gems (framed) as Christmas gifts for my parents. Toss in the birth of their newest granddaughter and you have the makings of a sweet little gift. Seriously, would you not prominently display these? Also- have I yet mentioned how amazing my parents are? They are. To me, these images immortalize that fact.
I have used the BHLabs website in the past. In the past five months, I shot the first two weddings of my life. The fact that a good friend from graduate school and then her friend trusted me with their wedding day photography was… frightening. Conclusions? I doubt I can even be a wedding photographer on the side. Why? 1) Way too much stresss. 2) I hate weddings. (to clarify: marriage is treating me splendidly. weddings are just most generally not a guy’s thing) A million other moments are more important throughout the course of a life, and few hire a photographer for those.
Sad.
That said, I used BigHugeLabs to add a sheen of fun to the disk of images delivered to my two new brides. Whether highlighting the beauty of a bride in splendid excess, or laughing at a groom as sex symbol, all is great fun. Whether it is the “motivator” tool, or one of the other “you don’t eeeeven need Photoshop for this” -style images, you will almost always find something fun and fitting. I mean, hey- not everyone loves me… but foreign leaders somehow seem to. Well, foreign leaders and models.
All of these images, as well as 95% of those I post on this blog to both highlight the ideas I am selling or to celebrate the work of amateur artists (usually both), are hosted on my Flickr site. Flickr is currently the place to store your photos online. At one time, I housed hundreds of photos at the now-defunct Clubphoto. One fun day a couple of years ago, management walked into the offices and told folks to pack up their **it and *it. I, of course, had backups of all images on my hard drives. What I didn’t have were the countless hours of captions (lengthy explanations) I had invested in each image for many years. I once used these as educational blurbs for my students, and especially for the parent of my students -and prospective students of a very unusual and expensive class (for public school).
Happy New Year to you all. May you find a thousand photographable moments headed your way in 2009. By the way- this marks the ninth year I have been disappointed by the “F” volume of the World Book encyclopedia from my sixth grade year. I remember that future entry which showed transportation in the year 2000 to prominently feature svelte little rocket cars zipping about to-and-fro a la George Jetson.
On a day when the only thing bigger than the snowflakes is the deep gray loneliness of the sky, I bring you a minuscule chunk of one of my favorite Christmas gifts.
My wife, Erin, has a thing for finding the perfect book to send me off on my April exploration of the Bahamian backwoods. Normally, when I unpack the mystery book from my jumbled bag on board a sailboat anchored on Andros Island, I delight in the pen-sloppy scribblings just inside the front cover. Last year it was Pablo Neruda. What will this Spring bring? Someday perhaps I’ll do a post on those messages. Though parts, to be sure, will stay private forever for me.
Today’s words for winter: by Galway Kinnell. You (and I) can thank some nifty old guy on the east coast for this book. He knows who he is too. I’m glad Erin reads his blog as well, for she is an excellent gift-giver.
This verse is from A New Selected Poems from Galway Kinnell. I feel OK about posting the words to this poem here in hopes that it will gain a larger readership. I will, of course, retract if ever asked.
We humans do create fires here on Earth. We create warmth in a universe where, aside from stars, cold is the norm.
Amazing words here. Poetry compared to language is the inverse of DNA compared to a tree frog. While poetry can be seen as shiny distillation of our daily talk, biochemicals tell little of the quickness of life.
Artwork thanks: Cemetery Angel from Adam Selwood on Flickr.
“Play game, ‘puter game… play ‘puter game… gaaaame… yayyy!”
My almost-two year old has a thing for letters and numbers. That, of course makes me delighted because from there, everything is exciting. I spend my professional life trying either to help teenagers find excitement in the natural world or colleagues find excitement in refining their practice. Those two groups of people in my professional life have little in common with preschoolers. Yet, the content carrots I have to work with there are far more thrilling than the bare bones geometric shapes and associated sounds of letters and numbers.
Now, it is here that I must tell you (as if you didn’t know) that I am no kind of authority on early childhood education. I have spent nearly 18 years as a teacher or an instructional coach. However, those years have been spent working in secondary education. I have developed a really healthy love of the process of learning itself, but I walked to the plate in 1991 swinging a love for science. Now that I think about it, I suppose there would be a bit of overlap in a Venn diagram of those two entities. I have now spent less than two years on a case study of early childhood education. How could I not? Instructional coach + new father = easy fit. That said, I welcome the comments here of anyone and everyone who might carry a bit fatter portfolio of educating children. Please allow me to extend the educational technology discussion down a grade level or ten.
So let’s get back to the leadoff quote. Yes, that is exactly what our little beast now exclaims when either of us sits down by her with laptop in hand. In reality, all it takes is the slightest hint. What on Earth is she speaking of while in the throes of such excitement? Starfall. She is fired up about the online reading site at Starfall.com. This is not a new site. It was founded well prior to the “Web 2.0″ boom around 2004. If you are an early childhood educator -and computers don’t frighten you- you likely already know about Starfall. Since this is not my largest reader demographic, allow me to point most of you in this direction. Even if you don’t have your own larvae at home, you can certainly share this link with friends who do. They might just thank you.
At Starfall, you will not be blown away by slick graphics nor amazing audio. What you will find is a rather engaging little site for curious tykes that seems to be very sound at what it does. What does it do? It provides a version of online reading instruction starting with ABC’s and moving on to various levels of early reading. The ABC’s introduce students to the sounds of letters (phonemes). Learn to Read teaches students how letters are combined to create words. The simple animations associated here are quite good as the letters (always pronounced by a child’s voice) move closer together as they become a word. The It’s Fun to Read section uses learning activities to begin simple sentence construction. Finally, I’m Reading uses plays, myths and folk stories to increase fluency.
How well does it work? I honestly have nothing to compare to. My little girlie could identify all letters by sight when she was 18 months old. She has delighted in the phonemes for each of the letters, and is starting to identify simple words. Is this website the only thing she has explored in that time? Certainly not. Erin & I read and read and read. That’s pretty much what happens in the family room. Whether we are reading to ourselves, or to the babe, we read tons… and much of it is online. Our little bookworm even finds little corners in the house to hide away and “read.”
Will Starfall raise a child through the screen of a laptop? Not so much. Will it help out in the early stages of learning to read? I certainly think so. It is a very cool part of the puzzle. In fact, my wife just remarked about how she also first began to actually nail down colors and numbers as a side effect of several of the mini-lessons on the site. I guess watching mom & dad work & play on laptops influences the way a child likes to learn. She gets so fired up when we let her take center stage in front of the ol’ Mac and click her own way through the site. No gift we have yet given her has been met with the enthusiasm this website has, and continues to deliver. Ok, maybe Discovery Channeldinosaur flicks.
Check out Starfall. Copy the link to anyone in your world with small children. Or really- perhaps even older kids who struggle with reading. I would be curious about that. Are the animations & examples too young for somewhat older kids to gain from the program? Or is this something that might be utilized in a school setting? As I said above, my “expertise” with early-childhood education amounts to one case study with a 23-month old princess. If you need a “testimonial,” link back to this page. Check it out. Check back. Let us know what you think here.
And oh… Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and many others. May you all glow in the warmth of any celebration of light in the middle of Winter’s darkness.
My two-year-old daughter drug over The Real Mother Goose yesterday as we were playing. I knew we had the book. It was a gift at some point in the last couple of years. However, it has never been one of my favorites. I guess I’m a prude, and for that I’m sorry, but these sing-songy bits of goofiness never did excite me. But hey- what my daughter wants to read… we read. So we read. Actually- even at two, she can spot-read (identify?) many of the words on the page already. So we laid in her comfy bed reading verse by verse and studying the accompanying artwork. Until I spied one in particular queued up across the page.
![dumb numbers book](http://nashworld.edublogs.org/files/2009/03/img_8076.jpg "\")
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