In July, I decided to (re)start my daily blog, coined Daily-Ink. At the time of my original attempt, I was a regular reader of Stephen Downes OLDaily, and a fan of one of my student’s blog name Wandering Ink. Thus ‘Daily-Ink’ seemed a good name.
So what prompted the rebirth of my daily blog? I wrote this on my Daily-ink:
Why blog daily?
“For years, I’ve been explaining to people that daily blogging is an extraordinarily useful habit. Even if no one reads your blog, the act of writing it is clarifying, motivating and (eventually) fun.“ ~Seth Godin
I enjoy writing, but I’m slow at it. So, when I get busy, I don’t write. This has really hampered my sharing on my Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts blog. At one point, I was constantly thinking in blog posts. I enjoyed this. I would think of a concept or idea, expand it in my thoughts, then wrap it up on my blog. But I’ve written less and less and so that ability to create a full narrative around an idea has faded. I miss doing that.
So, what can I do to get that back? I need to practice writing; to practice thinking in story; to make writing a routine and expectation – not just something I wish I did.
When I started Daily Ink years ago, I was going to hand write a journal and then take a photo of the writing (images are gone from moving this blog around before finally getting DavidTruss.com)… This digital sharing of analog writing was to be a blending of two worlds. It didn’t stick. Then I shared links and videos with a small commentary (I might still do that occasionally), but now this is about (re)finding my joy in writing.
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Looking at my Pair-a-Dimes home page I can see my last 10 posts, and the 10th one, ‘How far would you go?‘ dates back to almost 2 years ago… that’s 5 posts a year, and hardly what I would consider blogging. Now that I’m back at it, I’m writing more about education along the way, and I think over time I’ll share some of them here too. There is another post that I hope to rewrite and update here as well, but I won’t link to it until I’m ready for the rewrite. Meanwhile, here are snippets from a few short posts that I think relate to the kind of things I usually share here on Pair-a-Dimes.
At the end, I’ll also share some links to some of my favourites so far, even if they aren’t specific to education.
Here are the snippets, click on the titles to see the full post, which in most cases would only take a 30 seconds to a minute-and-a-half more to read:
Some kids…
Some kids are easy to like. They make an effort to connect with you. They want to do well. They seek your approval.
Some kids are hard to like. They don’t want to make an effort to connect. They are defiant. They don’t want your approval, or maybe they do, but they sabotage their own efforts because that don’t believe they’ll get your approval even if they try…
Smart A$$ Responses
Ask yourself, if you aren’t getting the answers you want, are you asking the right questions?
Here are 2 worksheets where students got very creative with their answers…
Alphabet Soup
Vocabulary is a currency in our world.
Vulnerable learners, English language learners, students with reading and learning challenges, all start with a deficit of this currency…
Design vs Use
One of our middle schools in the district sits on the edge of a steep hillside. There is a large set of stairs, and to the side of that, a long wheelchair ramp. Between the stairs and the ramp is a steep grassy wedge. There is a huge forested area with trails nearby, but three boys, two with GoPro cameras on their helmets, are riding up the ramp, and riding down the grassy embankment as well as the stairs. You can see a trail down the embankment from continued use… use that was never intended.
I remember reading about a new college or university that didn’t install walking paths until after students had created foot trails through the grassy openings between buildings, allowing form to fit function…
“Start off hard”
Yesterday on Twitter, I read this tweet by a first year teacher, Ms. Beatty:
Recently got the advice of, “Start off hard, you can always get softer,” in terms of student relationships at the beginning of the year. What do you make of that? Is it good advice? Or misguided?
This was my response: …
“I’m a hard marker”
This is one of the most puzzling statements a teacher can make, and yet some teachers wear it like a badge of honour.
Who does this benefit? What is the gain? …
A little reminder to educators
I’m writing this as a reminder to myself as well as to others. This isn’t something I’m preaching, it’s something important enough to keep at the forefront of my mind, our minds, as the new school year is about to begin…
Potential
This time of year, the word ‘potential’ resonates with me. There is so much potential in a new school year! What will be accomplished? What surprises await?
What questions can we ask to maximize the potential we and our students have? Here are a few that might be worth asking: …
Flawed message
I’ve seen this post a few times now and while it has a message that will get a lot of ‘shares’ and ‘likes’ on social media, it completely misses the points it should want to make…
Sfumato in education
I think we need to soften some of our edges in education:
• School isn’t its own entity. We need to soften the edges between living and learning; Parents as teachers, sharing expertise, and; learning happening in our community… as part of a student’s school day.
• Assessment isn’t formative or summarize, it’s both, it’s continuous, it’s self-reflective, and it can be conceptually/curricular based as well as competency based.
• Subject lines need to be blurred. How can we learn about the biology of crisper without talking about philosophy and geopolitics? (Should scientists be altering the human gene code? If we don’t think so, who in the world should decide? And do we have the ability to stop research in other countries? Will we create a different class of humans?)…
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Those make up the posts I’ve tagged education so far. Here are a few favourites that I also want to share:
I got this
I was not a swim coach. I coached water polo and I did a level one swim coaching course, and there I was coaching the season’s first swim practice at a high school with over 10 years of back-to-back championships. It was a small 25 yard pool with 5 lanes, including the diving board lane that didn’t have a diving block. 124 students showed up.
It was mayhem…
The Vampire Rule for Email
I apply a key vampire rule to give my staff a break from work emails…
Reducing email
Here is something that I’ve done the past couple years with my staff, to help reduce email…
Innovation Lag Time
When you’re innovating, it takes a considerable amount of time before the benefits of that innovation can be seen. What that means is that after the excitement of creating plans, and the thrill of collaborating towards a wonderful vision…
Disruptive Forces
To not use Google is like choosing to use a horse and cart on the information highway…