Archives: February, 2008

I am, as usual, beating myself up about a failure to do something perfectly. (”Must get A. OK, A+ works, too.”) I have been warned by friends and colleagues, coached by professionals, and reassured by family members that it is OK to NOT to do everything to the nth degree, OK not to be perfect. Rumor has it that there is a RANGE of acceptable performance on various endeavors. Who knew? Apparently that range is NOT, as I have always maintained, A to A+, but rather there are other options, including B and C!

So what am I stewing about now? Getting Things Done. I read it (OK, well almost all of it) and I worked to put it in place and yet I have not systematized this, I am still struggling. What should I do? Renew my commitment to this program? Quit?

[This is how it is for perfectionists, BTW, you either do it perfect or you quit ’cause you are not doing it perfect.]

Turns out lots of people struggle to GTD and that it is OK to do something different. According to the author, David Allen, I need some version of “collect” so I can externalize all the stuff spinning in my head and I can get the bandwidth to be productive. In an interview about his new book, he says “It takes a couple of years for most people to really, really, really begin to integrate that so that that builds the consequential and sort of cruise control kinds of behaviors.” Years. I don’t have to quit, I just need to make it OK to not get an A+, OK to not know how to do it in the first month, OK take the time it takes to systematize. I can do that, right?

As is evident to anyone reading, I have struggled with blogging. My “fits and starts” are a result of my uncertainty of purpose and lack of time to allocate to this process. Who am I writing for? What is important enough to require my chiming in to the discussions in the blogosphere? How can I find the time to actually process issues of import? For me, Blogging has been more of a thing to be observed than a thing that comes naturally.

For others, however, it is a very different story. I have enjoyed the work of avid bloggers who write to think, and the product of their effort really contributes to the conversations about teaching and learning. This inspires me to keep at it, and brings up another important point — just because I am not driven to blog doesn’t mean blogs are useful as tools for learning. (Hear Homer Simpson here… “D’oh!”)

Two interesting ideas that seem right on to me. The first, Blogging the Research Process. In a September 2007 blog entry, Joyce Valenza recommends this practice as a way to facilitate transparency and constructivism, noting that through blogging, students can reflect on the process, get organized, and involve others in the process, ultimately contributing to the larger body of knowledge. The second, also from School Library Journal, is another simple yet powerful way to use blogging tools to enhance learning… a Book Blog. Like a book club, the Guerrilla Season Book Blog provides a place for students to engage their classmates and the rest of the world a project in which the “… diverse group exchanged thoughtful impressions about the book and pondered some provocative questions, adding a whole new dimension to the reading experience.” (Langhorst, 2006)

Simple, logical, powerful tools for learning. I get it. You can too! Pick up The Guerrilla Season and join Eric Langhorst’s book blog project between MARCH 3 and APRIL 4, 2008. See you there!

As an economics major, I know widgets. I have considered the elasticity of demand for widgets, the consumer surplus when widgets are priced competitively, and the change in price when the component materials for making widgets are suddenly more scarce. Always, my professors discussed economic concepts in terms of widgets.

Now, today, I am actually using widgets! Thanks to Widgetbox, I can easily create a way to keep up with ever-changing content like the LEARN NC features and the latest Instructify articles. I’ve even created one for this blog.

Just this morning, Bobby and I were discussing how we really need something to pull together the fiftyleven things we need to update, read, check, and generally pay attention to. How can we keep up with it all?

Pageflakes might just help me, as they promise in their byline, Get it Together. Using this tool, I can pull together the news, online tools, blogs and more that I am trying to keep up with. I can even create widgets and with one click, put them on my Pageflakes page. Pretty cool, eh?

Some of you have been with me when I mentioned to teachers the availability of PBS videos on NC LIVE. I believed that as NC citizens and taxpayers, anyone who was authorized as a library user could access these and, since it would be fair use to show them in a F2F classroom, teachers could include these in their teaching. I was wrong.

Apparently there is a willingness to pay in the school audience. If you are familiar with the 4 factors you must consider to determine if something is covered by fair use, you will see right away that if PBS considers the schools another potential paying customer, then we are violating fair use by showing these videos without paying for them. If you are unfamiliar with fair use, see David’s entry in the LEARN NC education reference area, http://www.learnnc.org/glossary/fair+use

Long term, the implications of segmenting the audience and charging schools as a separate customer is disturbing. We are essentially being charged twice if both NC LIVE and NC Wiseowl subscribe to the same content. Twice the tax money to the vendor for the same content. How can that be OK? Maybe if/when NC Wiseowl seeks to add the same content, PBS will give us a price break since all of the public library, community college library and university library users already are authorized as NC LIVE users. I certainly hope so.

It is all based on willingness to pay, which brings me to the most important issue… we must use our fair use exemptions or we will lose them. The more we hesitate and contact vendors to purchase an article here or there, the more we are signaling that there is another market for selling the content. It will be scary indeed when all the content and information is only available for fee.

Sorry for the rant, but you can see I feel strongly about this, and if you are still reading, thanks for listening.