When I Say Jump…

If you do not speak or read techaneese feel free to skip ahead to the next paragraph.

Will we find a plug-in that allows students the ability to customize their headers, but not have the ability to change the theme all together? Will we be able to figure out how to aggregate specific tags to post to several blogs? Can we subscribe to specific tags or categories? So teachers can subscribe to student blogs based on tags related to their classes not whole blogs? Will we get all the student Gmail accounts up and running by the end of next week? Will the Google Calendars work seamlessly like we planned. Will our server be able to handle the blogs next week? Will we find all the right plug-ins to make for an easy blogging experience? Will teachers understand what we are trying to do? Appreciate it? Enjoy it?

I am nervous. I am stressed. I am terrified. Two days into my new role at school, and I am realizing that things are different already. When you are a classroom teacher, what you do everyday really only affects you and your students, maybe your department, but as a tech facilitator suddenly your ideas, however brilliant they may have seemed at first, take on a much heavier feel. It becomes suddenly clear that they could crash and burn quite easily. It feels like everyone is looking to you for answers. Answers you may have uncovered minutes before. The pressure is already palpable for me. After two days. There are no students on campus and nothing has even been rolled out. Wow. I need to breathe and regroup.

A little context. I am only teaching three English classes this year and filling the rest of of my timetable as a tech coach (We are still writing the job description and title. I have already had a few people come ask me how to add folders in Mail or how to print. We hope to move away from the day-to-day help desk stuff and start looking at deeper pedagogical conversations that lead to shifts in teaching and learning. Will keep you posted.) The big initiative right off the bat for us this year is that we are moving away from a confined VLE and moving toward a system that is made up of K-12 WP blogs hosted on our sever, for teachers, students, and admin. We hope these blogs will act as portfolios as well as communication tools, discussion forums and more. We are building the system from scratch and as I mentioned before it is scary. We are also moving toward a Google Campus for access to Google Docs for back of the house curriculum creation and storage, as well as use of Calendars, Reader and Sites for a variety of things: student work, RSS, and document navigation among other things. It is scary.

Now that you have read the context, let’s spend a few lines on reflection:

The best part about learning is the not knowing. The guessing. The exploration. The trial and error. The failure. But suddenly when you are in front of a group of teachers who are looking to you to know what you are doing, learning feels like a waste of time. They need you to know this stuff. You have to know to teach right? What do you mean you don’t know how to do that? Then why are you in charge of teaching me?

What is lost is the sense that learning begins with not knowing. The one idea I hope to impart on people this year is that technology is not always a smooth path that will make their lives easier. That notion is a myth. It is ironic that we look to technology to make our lives easier, only to spend so much time and energy agonizing about how much of our time it saps. How many times have we watched some poor sap awkwardly stare about room as the very tool he/she was touting as life changing didn’t work? How many times have we been in that spot, “No I swear Google Docs will make this easier.” No one can log in. Tables act weird. Back to the drawing board. So why do we do it? Why do we spend so much time talking about technology and what it can or cannot do? Why have I chosen to try and convince grown professionals that learning about it will make them better teachers? That it will help their learning.

For the last two nights, I have laid awake in bed worrying. Worrying about some of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph, but when I wasn’t stressed about Themes and RSS on WP, I was thinking about why we choose to focus on technology when it isn’t always as easy as advertised. This is the analogy I came up with in my tired, sleep deprived brain:

We sell technology as a sprint. It is fast. Efficient. Breathtaking. It makes everything it touches fast, efficient, and breathtaking…but as we all know this is seldom the case. It is often frozen, loading, or crashing. It often feels more like a sprinter who can barely get out of the blocks, let alone finish a race. For me technology is more like a hurdle race. Or maybe a marathon. Or maybe a marathon with hurdles. And motes. With crocodiles. And hot lava. You get the point. Technology is not about ease; it is about obstacles. It is about problems. And understanding that when you have problems you often have solutions. The beauty of technology is overcoming obstacles. Critical thinking. Learning. Clearing hurdles. One after another. One step after the next.

image by studiocurve

I see value in technology for students and teachers because it teachers them, in a perfect world where they are not “trained” or spoon fed tutorials, how to identity problems and solve them. This is what I hope to get across to the teachers with which I work. Technology will break. It will fail. It is not a sprint. Maybe it won’t make your life easier, but damn it, you will learn some things about yourself. Your ability to be patient. To handle stress. To think critically under pressure. You will learn how to clear the hurdles with poise and precision, so that when it is time to sprint you will be all the more able.

Why may you ask, would any teacher in their right mind, with all their teacherly responsibilities, want to enter a marathon with hurdles and lava? Why do we ask our students to it? Why do we ask them to put themselves in situations that force them to learn?

See you in the comments…

(note: Sometimes technology can be a sprint. Sometimes it can be an amazing flight, but tonight I was mired in stress and I needed this. More posts coming soon, I am sure.)

Wagon Wheel

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Last week, upon my return from an extended holiday in Thailand, I had an urge to sing a song that I had discovered while vacationing. Throughout my break, I had missed my guitar terribly, and the first thing I wanted to do was see if I could strum the chords and sing the lyrics in the same reckless and carefree manner as this amazing band called Old Crow Medicine Show.

Once home, I tuned my guitar and sang it to the best of my ability. It felt good. Natural. Raw, yes, but comfortable. At this point I know that Leslie (@onepercentyello) is always good for a little Ukulele and harmonies that can take my out-of-tune voice and make it sound presentable. I uploaded it to Soundcloud, sent a few tweets and linked it to Facebook, asking anyone to:

Download this file add some banjo, fiddle, harmonica, gazoo, whatever you want, then upload YOUR part to soundcloud and send me the link. The timing should be right, but DO NOT send me a file with your part on top of my part. It will get muddled. Send me your part only. I will layer and arrange what I get back into a song.

A few minutes later @bryanjack from Vancouver sent me a lead guitar track, a few hours after that @joebire from Australia sent me a Mandolin track, a day later @drgarcia from Monterey (Where are you now?) sent me some awesome Patti Smith style backing vocals, Leslie had a crazy weekend, but she did not disappoint, finally @joelbirch from Paris sent me some wicked electric guitar tracks. Every morning I would wake up to a new thread for my sonic tapestry.

Tonight, I played with the sound levels and am ready to present the final piece. Maybe not final, but where it stands now:

Wagon Wheel Collab by intrepidflame

I have only ever met Leslie and only briefly. We have made music together several times in the past. Bryan and I have played together on a few projects too, but I have never met or worked with the others. We are a loose network of learners interested in seeing what these tools can do to bring people together.

image By giulia.forsythe

What does it mean that a group of people spanning the globe find the time to create music just for the sake of it? How are our relationships and connections strengthen by the bound of music, however, splintered and artificial? I understand that this is not a collaborative project, seeing that everything came through me and the others were not able to hear what anyone but me had recorded, but that is not the point. The point is that this was a spontaneous idea that had little to no planning. What could we produce if we explored other tools, planned together, exchanged ideas, or played live. Practiced. Edited. Well you get the idea.

I am a big fan of spontaneous, loose, free flowing projects. They open our ideas to what is possible. Not only for our own enjoyment, but they can help us consider the implications these sessions or ones like it can have for our students. I would love to hear from the participants of this project in the comments. Why is this important? Is it? What did you get out of this? Why did you participate?

I am hoping that the real beauty of what we have done will come out in the ideas we share in the subsequent conversations. Furthermore, I would like to invite anyone reading to help take this project a step further. How about if someone or a group of people created a video for it! I would love to be involved and take direction, but don’t want to lead the video. I love to see how far we can push ideas. The song is public, creative commons, and waiting for anyone to do more with it. Find another group and create something else with it. Please share what you do. I will send this post to the band and see what they think as well.

Thanks everyone for playing along.

The Art of Creation

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I have written several post lately about how happy I am, and how the events of my life are fluidly flowing in some strange spiral direction, but for the last few days I have been weighed down by a nagging angst brought about Google +. I am pretty sure it is not this new social network that is causing me anxiety– that my apprehension is caused by this new digital social arena where we sometimes find ourselves battling for existence as unwilling gladiators.

Who am I? Where am I? What am I sharing? Likeablity versus authenticity. My brain has been buzzing for the last forty eight hours; I just need to shut it down and focus on what matters. For me the main thing has always been creating content I can be proud of. Writing post, creating videos, singing songs, taking photographs that touch people and make them think. Feel. I have only ever wanted to explore my sense of self; if a group of people find what I do, who I am, worthwhile than that is a plus. I cannot concern myself too much, however, with the splintering of this body of work. This self. I am who I am everywhere, all the time. The internet is just a reflection of that.

Networks will come and go, ebbing and flowing within various tools and online spaces. This is our modern consciousness. The trick is to learn how to construct a viable self within the flux. I know the connections that matter to me, and they will find me when I need to be found, the rest is grandstanding. I am trying not to concern myself with circles or groups or lists. I have set roots in these blogs. I have stretched my branches as far as my constitutions allows. I will now focus my energies on keeping my leaves as green as possible and producing fruits that others enjoy. If nothing else fruits that will help me regenerate.

I find value in the act of sharing. The art of giving with no expectation for value returned is a holy act. In an age where commerce rules, I see sharing as an act of transgression, one I have to which I have committed my life. Even as I write this post, I see the paradox of my point: I want to share, but cannot be bothered with worrying about the avenues with which to do so.

One can advertise and use competing networks to connect with as wide an audience as possible, but at some point you have to have faith in your content. You have to believe that what you put out into the world will attract the necessary attention. In the past, artists simply created– unconcerned with feedback or connection; we have lost that somehow. So concern are we with statistics and comments that the art of creation has been replaced with likes, +1s and Re-Tweets.

There is no anxiety about sitting quietly and smearing your thoughts into the blank void. The fear is that no one is listening. No one cares. You don’t exist. I am here to say that I do exist. In the body of my work. In my ideas. In my art. In my body. In my life. If you are seeing this right now, than somehow what I am saying has worked. Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or some other nameless avenue has brought you here. For that I am thankful, but what has rid me of my unease is the very act of creation itself.

The Cavalry Has Arrived

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I woke up this morning to a shock. I was checking on this blog, when I was surprised to see a weird error message. I wasn’t alert enough to take a screen shot, but it said there was something wrong with this file, “home2/intrepj1/public_html/blog/wp-content/themes/vigilance/functions/comments.php” I panicked. My worst fears of weird WordPress shenanigans had come true. A few quick google searches showed me that I would be messing with this problem for hours. My wife had the kids out by the pool was already starting her, “Get off the computer!” mantra. I couldn’t just leave my blog dangling in limbo, something had to be done.

Enter Twitter. After a quick SOS call, @techsavvyed and @mburtis responded within seconds. The cavalry had arrived! Suddenly, I was no longer alone and lost. I was still in an agitated state, but now I had the help of two WordPress experts. They quickly calmed me down and led me to where I needed to be. I went into C Panel, found the corrupted file and began to diagnosis the problem. I sent a copy of the file in question to Marha and she informed me that the apostrophes had been changed to &#39, their HTML equivalent. After some back and forth, I was able to download the original theme, isolate the comment files which had been messed up and reload it. Voila. Problem solved.

Needless to say I was a bit shaken, but came out of the situation much more confident than when it had started. It was a learning experience for sure. It was not just the actual fixing of the problem- finding the correct files, understanding C Panel better or getting a basic understanding of php, which I still don’t have. No, what was so important for me was that it put me in the place of most of the teachers I will be working with next year. It all felt so overwhelming at first. Google seemed too abstract and the time it would take to figure it out didn’t seem worth it. How many times do teachers feel this sense of isolation and confusion when dealing with basic technology issues? So often, I deride teachers for not understanding what I consider basic computer functions, but here I was just as lost. I needed someone to slow me down and explain where and how to fix what needed to be fix.

This was a textbook example of the power of the network. I knew that I had on hand several WordPress experts, that should I need, would walk me through this problem on Skype. We were able to solve it in few Tweets, but I know that if I needed it they would have gotten to the bottom of this or any other problem. It is this sense of security that makes my network so valuable, and it is this feeling of support that I think many teachers are dying to gain. As tech facilitators we can help alleviate some of the angst teachers feel, but only when they have made these connections on their own, will teachers begin to feel comfortable enough to try new things, solve their own problems and venture beyond their comfort zones.

Expertise + Empowerment = Experience + Exposure. Next time around, I will know where to start and remind myself to stay calm. But I fear not, because I know I am not alone. If I find a problem I cannot solve, I know I can look to my network. Thank you Martha and Ben. But Ben raised good question, “Now just have to find out what went wrong!”

A Larger Sense

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Social media and in a larger sense the Internet for me is:

a soapbox, a confessional, a journal. It is a stage, a radio station, a blank canvas and a pew. It’s a gallery, summer festival, and a critical friend. It’s a warm embrace and an atta boy. It’s a mirror and a disco ball. A promise made and kept. A vow and a practice squad. The process and the product. It’s spiritual, organic and digital. Real and virtual. It is surreal and three dimensional. Collaborative and selfish. It is a parade, and a long lonesome hike. A drum circle and job interview. It is a mediation hall and recording studio. A resume and field journal filled with scraps of poetry, tweets, and cosmic contemplations. Myself turned inside out and presented to you with open arms. A photo album, a debate and an intimate conversation. The magnification of a drifting thoughts dressed as philosophizes and manifestos. It is the ability to exist outside oneself for all to see. It is open and free and allows me to say these things to you.