Planning the Next River Trip

A few weeks ago my brother called me on a Sunday morning to say he had a "minor cardiac event" and was in the hospital.  Initially, the blood tests showed a very minor event.  Over the next few hours follow-up tests revealed an alarming change in his cardiac blood chemistry.  

The decision was made to transport him by ambulance to the Regional Medical Center, 200 miles away.  There they had the resources to do a cardiac catheterization and anything else that was needed.  On Monday morning they determined that he was not a candidate for arterial stints and needed bypass surgery.  He was admitted and placed on the surgery schedule for the following Monday.

I was dedicated to being there for him and his family when the surgery was done.  He had been there for my own heart surgery 30 months before.  We spent the week hoping he didn't have another event.  Every day was planned around the possible  400 mile dash to his bedside.

Finally the weekend came and the original plan kicked in.  Sunday morning was spent driving, Sunday afternoon, sitting in the hospital talking about stuff and not saying other stuff.  

He was second case for the day on Monday, meaning we reprised Sunday afternoon Monday morning.  Finally, they wheeled him off to pre-op.  Then the wait, we hung around in the waiting room until the operation began.  The nursing tech assured us they would call with news but he would be in surgery for hours.  We ducked out for lunch 5 minutes away.  It was after 10pm when he began to come out of the anesthesia enough to talk to him.  He claims to remember.

In the end they performed a quintuple bypass.  He was discharged from the hospital 4 days later and traveled 200 miles home with a good friend who has a comfortable car.  He is home recuperating and doing well.  His prognosis is good.  With all those new cardiac arteries he will likely feel better than he has in a long time. 

I returned home.  I know he is likely going to be fine.  I know he is going to spend most of the summer recuperating.  I know we will paddle some wonderful river trips in the years to come.

I have not liked this little glimpse at his mortality. 

Just sayin’.

Talk less, listen more

I keep forgetting this.

Just Sayin'

RenLearn, Google and Big Data in education

I recently came across this item about Google taking a seat on the Board of Directors along with a $40M position in Renaissance Learning. http://goo.gl/4i6Evd

This paragraph jumped out at me as significant- Renaissance Learning now hosts data for more than 38,000 schools and reading records for almost 11 million U.S. students. In total, 18 million students now use the company’s cloud-based Renaissance Place platform. Together with the 30 million students and teachers on Google’s platform, Lynch told me, that’s a “really big reach into K-12.” The company says it saw a 20 percent increase in its top-line growth in 2013 and double-digit growth in the year before.

While pondered it, I thought to look at Google's Mission Statement- Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Wow! 

Just Sayin'.

Feed the tech hungry

I just came across these comments in a blog on the rise and fall of interactive white boards

My years as both a classroom teacher . . .have taught me three key strategies for effective implementation of transformational instructional technology:

• Feed the hungry, not the full: If your teachers aren’t asking for the technology, odds are they won’t use it. That is, if they can’t describe how new tools will enhance instruction, they aren’t really looking to transform their instructional practice.
• One teacher at a time: One instructional tool, one teacher. Technology intended to transform teaching was never intended to be shared. Since full adoption of any new tool that presumes to change one’s practice requires full commitment, invest in a permanent installation in one classroom instead of a school-wide implementation. Don’t go 1:1 across the board. Pick the early adopters--the ones who are hungry.
• Cluster: Cluster technology by grade, subject, hallway, or building. Cluster the technology in a manner that is in line with existing channels of communication. Organic or not, adoption of new technology is hard, and the more colleagues working together, the more likely successful adoption. Since true collaboration occurs between individuals with established trust, introduce technology that capitalizes on these preexisting channels.

At the end of the day, implementation of any technology tool requires buy-in from the teacher. Make sure teachers are a partner in all steps of product creation and adoption. Although the ultimate fate of the IWB is not yet sealed, its short history offers valuable lessons for educators and edtech entrepreneurs alike.

Read the entire blog post here https://www.edsurge.com/n/2013-10-22-lessons-from-the-downfall-of-interactive-whiteboards

I like a lot of it.

. . . From the shameless "theft/borrowing" file

If imitation is the greatest form of flattery then many in my world should be hugely flattered.  An education professor once told one of my methods classes to "shamelessly appropriate teaching ideas wherever possible".  I have done my best to be true to that charge.  One such story follows . . . .

This weekend while chatting with my Millennial daughter the subject of Twitter came up, to my consternation she admitted not following my feed, shockingly she admitted not even having a Twitter account at all.  This led to much eye rolling on my wife's part, not that she was upset about my lack of followers.  Rather she was upset that a phone call that was nearing a conclusion now had new life as I launched into the reasons a young emerging professional needed to plug into the Twitter-sphere.
As I extolled my daughter on the value of mining professional information and crowd sourcing work related questions in 140 characters or less she casually mentioned a fellow graduate student who is Teaching English as a Second Language and using Twitter in her classroom.

(In the interest of full credit and attribution this idea comes from my daughter's friend Fran, or perhaps Jan.  At any rate, full credit belongs to Fran/Jan or whoever she stole it from- it was not my idea.  Now with a clear copyright conscious here goes.)

Fran/Jan assigns her ESL students English reading passages and the following writing assignment is to Tweet a response to the passage.  The result is a conciseness of response that requires her students exercise careful writing and is relatively quick to review/correct to assure reading compliance.  Brilliant!

To all the Teachers who already figured this out I tip my hat. To Fran/Jan if this was a truly original idea I freely assign all rights and royalties.  To the rest of you I never promised much, as I anxiously await  some clear concise commentary on this reading passage.

Sports and High School Education

The Sochi Winter Olympics has special meaning for me.  I am always awed but the drive and determination of the young athletes and I always find someone to cheer for as the Games progress.

These Games are different.  This winter I know an athlete in Sochi @RussellCurrier is a 26 year old Biathlon competitor making his first Olympic appearance.  Russell grew up in my hometown of Stockholm in northern Maine (pop. 238).  It makes it easy to know everyone in a town that size.

Along the way when Russell was growing up I didn't know him well. We moved away and saw him and his family on those occasions when we were home. He is of my niece's generation so he would be around when the kids were growing up.  Early on it became apparent Russell was a special kid. His involvement with the Maine Winter Sports Center demonstrated his skiing talents early.

But in a recent newspaper interview (http://goo.gl/BDb6s8) this comment from his father jumped out at me.  “He’s the poster child of success for the Maine Winter Sports Center,” said his father, recalling Russell’s initial involvement in the center’s program at Stockholm Elementary School. “They knew he had something under the hood. And it’s not just skiing. His grades and study habits soared [after he started Maine Winter Sports Center programs]. His report card went from Cs to As, and he was elected to the National Honor Society his senior year.”

It made me think of the value of not just sports but all extra curricular activities in schools. 

Just sayin'.

Recently in my inbox-

How open-plan offices make everything worse
Open-plan offices are thriving despite boasting measurable flaws and negative effects on employees, writes Maria Konnikova. The bustle of open-plan workplaces increases stress and makes it harder for employees to concentrate or work productively. "Regardless of age, when we're exposed to too many inputs at once -- a computer screen, music, a colleague’s conversation, the ping of an instant message -- our senses become overloaded, and it requires more work to achieve a given result," Konnikova writes. The New Yorker (free content)/Currency blog (1/7)

Who We Are, In The End

A while ago while talking to someone I respect he shared the Bill Parcells quote, "You are what your record says you are."  Since that afternoon that phrase has been rolling around in my head, often after 1 am.  Sports has never been a place I looked for inspiration but this particular statement transcends sports and really bears on life.  But lest we over simplify when reviewing records we must assess the entirety of the record and take care about value judgments about what we see.

We are, in fact, what our record says we are.  All the opportunities and disadvantages, all the good  and bad decisions, all the lessons learned and missed, all the experience we have make up who we are.  So next time you assess a record to determine what you or anyone else may be, step back and look deeply and carefully.

 Just something to think about.