No, I'm Not Dead

by Paul & Aline

Like the title says. I am not dead - just moving. No not this blog. First I moved my classroom and now I am moving house. Needless to say I have been quite busy. Once everything is all cleared up I will get back into posting here.

I am actually going through a little withdrawal.

On another note, the counter on the bottom of my website seems to have picked up about an extra 10,000 hits. Google analytics only recorded about 350 hits. No, I am not as popular as my counter shows. I don't know what happened.

Let me just leave you with a little question that came up from some time with my son.

Does anybody ever worry about the little piggy that ate roast beef?

The Value of Time

I have been thinking about time. We always complain that we don't have enough time for collaboration. There is not enough time in the day to get together and work with other teachers.  We are to busy teaching. Administrators need to give us more time for collaboration. We need time to have those meaningful conversations with our peers. (complain, complain, complain)  Yes, I am part of that crowd.

I think I have found an hour a day of regularly uninterrupted collaboration time. Nobody is really going to like the answer.

It came to me when I thought about this past year in teaching. It had been my busiest yet. I am always feeling rushed. The only real reason I could come up with was the fact that I switched carpools. My new carpool always wants to leave right after school. Always. In fact they often call me on the intercom to hurry up. I knew this when I joined but I am too frugal (cheap) to drive myself every day.

I am sure you can see where I am going with this. How many of us are out the door shortly after the bell? We all use similar excuses - I need to get home to my family, I have prior engagements, I am to burnt out at the end of the day. How many other jobs do you get to put in 6 hour workdays? Oh but I do my work at home. Ya, so much for your argument about family.  Add in the fact that it is harder to collaborate with others from a distance.

One hour at the end of the day would give us lots of time to get things done (both together and alone). Think how much better we would do if we were not trying to squeeze in collaboration during time we are supposed to be focusing on actually teaching.

Time, Innovation, and Open Ended Learning

I just got off the phone with a colleague. He is participating in an e-Journalism project and just finished a PD day for it. He loved the way that he was given time to play. He said that we would all be using the new web 2.0 tools if we just were given the time to learn them. He had a good point. Why are we only expected to innovate on our own time. When are we given paid time to learn and develop new things? (Conference doesn't quite cut it.) A conference is a great place to dip our toes into the water but then we need to time to go back to school and try it.

My colleague also raised another good point. He learned a huge amount at his PD day. And the learning was structured absolutely nothing like his classroom (or most of our classrooms for that matter). Play time to pursue learning. Learning in the direction you choose. Self directed learning (to use the jargon). I think he is at home right now thinking about how to restructure his classes.

I had a similar discussion with a couple of colleague's after a recent PD. A session were we were being instructed in how to "control the flow of information. " A direct quote. Not kidding. Our classrooms are killing creativity. We are not building lifelong learners. The structure is the problem. The control is the problem. Lets get the heck out of the way of student learning.

Damn, I hope that they don't make me try and innovate too. I just don't have the time.

Photo by Thomas Hawk Used under a Creative Commons License.

Buzy - zzzzzZZZZZZzzzzz

Why am I so busy? None of my classes are new this year. (Yes I am trying new things but the content and curriculum stays similar.) I have more preps than I did last year - (No preps at all first term last year). I even have one period set aside for tech. Why am I always so rushed?

At home time spent with my son is SPENT with my son. It is actually about the calmest part of my day because I try not to let other distractions creep in. It's all playtime! At home I have even cut wwwwaaaaayyyy back on the amount of TV I watch. I only really watch TV now while working on something else. I don't do any gaming any more either (no X-box, no Wii, no Playstation, and no gaming capeable laptop). Ok I tried to sneak back into World of Warcraft but I very, very quickly got bored.

So where does my time go? More importantly - am I more productive? I don't think so. Definately not at school. At home? Ya probably. Despite what my wife thinks I am getting projects done at home - at the cost of sleep. Maybe that is why I feel so busy. In fact maybe I should go to sleep instead of writing any more blog posts.

P.S. I have to thank the decision making part of the Technology Department for streamlining procedures and making them simpler - especially with respect to logins.

Oh Yeah - thanks to Daniel Morris for the Creative Commons picture.