As our culture’s norms and protocols shred and tear, an issue I’ve noticed is amazing content laced with profanity. Now, most who know me know I can have a bit of a salty tongue myself. I’m sure it’s from a past life when I was a pirate. Or perhaps it’s just a stress-reliever, kind of verbal punching bag. Maybe it’s when I was a pirate in therapy. Who knows? Regardless, there have been many times I’ve wished to use the perfect clip or content to relate a concept, yet it’s laced with vulgarities. What’s a teacher to do?
Case in point: John Oliver’s latest post about the primary and caucus rules, state by state, was amazing. I won’t link it in case there are children present. There have been multiple Daily Shows, clips from R-rated movies (as long and as bad as it is, Troy with Brad Pitt shows his naked hiney, so I can’t show that….). Glory with Denzel Washington and Matthew Broderick, also fantastic, but says the “f” word, contains war violence, and uses the ‘n’ word; however, a case is made to understanding the context of the ‘n’ word. Years ago when a publisher switched out the ‘n’ word for ‘slave’ in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is wrong for so many reasons.
Here’s my wish: if there is some content that could be easily edited, or comes edited with the language ‘gone.’ There are some programs that allow for this:
Inside the mouth of a leatherback turtle (See Exhibit A)
Yes, this is how I currently feel about my digital hoarding. See that external hard drive with my name on it? That has ten years’ of lessons, plans, photos, videos, etc. on it. And the other day I found it in the laundry room garbage.
FOUND IT IN THE GARBAGE.
There were other terrible, unmentionable things in that garbage, too, and it was on its way out the door when I spotted it.
I have no idea how it got there; lately, I’m believing in house gremlins because my Apple watch, a gift from my husband last fall, has gone missing. I have looked high and low. It’s gone. No, it wasn’t in the laundry room garbage pail, or under my bed, or stuff on a shelf. It’s gone. Will I replace it? Probably not. It was pretty cool, though. And now I’m sad.
But what would I have done if I hadn’t noticed, and rescued, the Holy Grail of Hard Drives from the bucket? Would I have missed it? Felt this strange sense of grief without being able to place it? I’ll never know. What I do know is I’ve tried to curate, delete, organize, and consolidate my digital tomes many times, and have met with odd and undermining obstacles.
Here are the storage sheds in my virtual world:
Google Drive
i-Cloud
The district’s personal server drives (H)
The district’s switch to Microsoft’s OneDrive/Office 365
My personal Dropbox account
My personal computer (Mac)
My school-issued computer (PC)
My old Macs
My old Dell (who knows what treasures still exist on that one?!)
Three external hard drives, including the rescued one.
And this digital list doesn’t include the binders I organized last summer, with labeled tabs, of many years worth of lessons, ideas, and curriculum maps.
Don’t think I’m not aware of my hoarding problem. Wait a damn minute, that’s not fair! I’m not a hoarder, I’m a saver! This has potential! And so does this! And if I don’t save the same thing in multiple places, what if it gets lost? ONLY PROVEN BY THE TRASH CAN CONSPIRACY OF ’16! The fact is my tendencies not to delete lessons has only been reinforced by multiple times when a colleague has needed a lesson or a file. This is the truth. But that doesn’t give me an excuse for not organizing this stuff better because it’s gotten completely out of hand.
You know that old saw of “preparing kids for a future that doesn’t exist yet?” I can think of something right now. I would pay a kid to curate my files/computers. Right now. I would outline the most important things/categories and have them save to two places: a hard drive and a cloud.
But how to label and categorize? Is it by medium, standard, theme, unit, or what?
Medium:
Power Points
Prezi links*
Smartnotebooks
Lessons
Letters/Teacher Files
Photographs/images
How-to flip/blended classroom videos
Standard:
Go through every lesson and label by CCSS? Oh no…but…
Theme:
Files by thematic (units)
Files by Lesson overview:
Literary elements
Short stories
Grammar lessons
Writing workshop
Reading workshop
Units:
This would be fairly simple to do…right?
*So the Prezi thing — this made me realize how much of my work is already saved somewhere to some digital cloud, some other place, where it’s not located in one of my accessible hard drives. Dang, do we just gather all the links? The embed codes, and put it together?
Sigh.
Oh look…another image for my files.
The other day during testing, I set up a way to port files from the rescued hard drive to my Dropbox. When I check in after twenty minutes, it had over 2,800 files to go. It would take things off the hard drive as direct file folders: I had to unpack everything and try. This led to falling down the rabbit hole: looking at old video clips, reviewing former students’ work, reminiscing about times of yore. Okay, that is hoarding, I admit. Or is it?
Finding photographs of my sons from when they were younger? Being able to send a student a video of when he was in 7th grade (he’s now in the Navy), and having his mom be so happy to see it? Are we so burdened by our own narrative digital information we freely and capriciously trash it?
“The real secret is, I didn’t make them, I asked them. And in the very act of asking people, I connected with them…”
My daddy told me, “If you don’t ask, the answer is automatically no.” I’m not suggesting this is original with my amazing dad, but I will give him credit for knowing the right advice at the right time. Unfortunately, like most good advice we receive, it settles to the bottoms of our confidence toolboxes, and we forget how to self-talk encouragement and friendship to ourselves. When I spoke with my wonderful admins recently, I tried something new: I asked for some conditions that I know are best for students, and–here’s the revelation: good for me, too, and my workspace/happiness. These conditions are arein alignment with their visions, too. We (women) are trained from birth not to ask for help: we run from archetypal misconceptions that lead to sexism at least, and misogyny at worst.
And constraints are put on educators, too. Recently my district made stipulations to sites like Donors Choose, requiring more bureacratic obstacles than most teachers have time to overcome. And I think back to my art major period, and giving away almost every piece of art I made. My friends didn’t do that: if you wanted a piece of art you paid for it, with no apologies or explanations.
The personal question for me is, do I wrangle my own cultural, ‘southern lady’ independent, never-ask-for-help norms, or do I just say, ‘you know what…I make good stuff, and deserve to be paid for it?’
So: what do I need? I need to support this addiction to teaching. How am I going to do that?
Share: For fee-based and for free: see how this source-funding thing works, or doesn’t. I’m beginning to suspect I am well behind the curve on this one, and funding-fatigue is setting in. Here’s to hoping there’s still a little bit left.
Much ado is being made about age these days. Maybe it’s my own resentment of being a digital pioneer, and constantly being reminded I’m in charge of training children for jobs that don’t exist yet (for Pete’s sake, it’s not like I’m asking them to be farriers or corset-stay carvers!) At the NCCE, included in one lecture’s description was “NOT YOUR PARENTS’ TEXTBOOK!” which, yes, using the “o” word — offended me a tad. And not only am I playing a shoddy offense but defense as well. In this political climate my sons’ generation is constantly maligned: labeled entitled, privileged, whiny, and naive. My friend John Spencer gets it. VSauce has a great video about “Juvonoia,” the idea that younger generations are lame.
So I suppose if those younger than I are a bit miffed and allow for casual ageism to creep into the conversations, I must try not to cast my own disapproving glare.
But ageism is actually quite horrifying. We’re all living longer, and creating a world where each generation gets a little smarter (thank you unleaded gasoline!) and a bit more savvy with all these critical thinking skills we’ve been touting. We’re creating awesome smart monsters humans. And while young folks may think of us as “elders” in their capitulating apologies, it has very real consequences.
Yes, young woman, you are contributing quite a bit. But over-40s are not quite “elders” yet.
So why does this get to me? Perhaps because it has an ‘ism’ at the end. “Ism’s” connote binary decision making: yes or no, black or white, up or down. Ageism is permission to assume someone cannot learn something about anything, but usually, especially technology, because they are old. Is it as bad as racism? I can’t make that claim. Its consequences may mean someone doesn’t get hired, so while we elders are trying to pay for our millennials’ college, we also can’t save for retirement. This article feels like a biography. Ageism decreases opportunity and allows for mocking on good days, and discrimination on bad. There’s that binary thinking again.
That moment when you realize someday you too, will be old as….never mind.
So, tiny examples: if I see something cool, guess what I do? I try to figure out how it was done. One of my little goals right now is to create gif doodles. Believe it or not, I can’t find any good tutorials, and this is making me feel a bit doddy. But they’re so cool! Not as cool as the Silicon Valley holographic mustache, but still…
Is there something you’d like to learn how to do? Can anyone help me with this? I’ve fallen in a gif and can’t get up!
PS I know how to use Snapchat. I just choose not to. My students laugh at me because my husband is my only friend. /sigh You’ll understand when you’re older.
Yesterday’s post concerned time: today’s post is all about…you guessed it…money.
And boy oh boy is this a touchy subject.
Let’s let go of the trope that teachers get summers’ off and don’t make enough and-and-and…I’m just looking at the nickel-and-dime new microtransaction model of economics. “What’s a ‘microtransaction‘?”, You innocently ask. You know those times you’re playing Candy Crush, and to unlock the next level you need to spend .99, easily done from your PayPal account to the finer purveyors of CC, and voila! Your level is unlocked. Or, instead of simply spending $99 to buy Microsoft Office, and then upgrade every few years, it’s on a subscription fee basis, so you end up spending a little every month, but much, much more over the life of the software.
As much as I enjoyed Leslie Fisher’s gadget roadshow at the NCCE, many of the things she discussed cost cold, hard cash.There was one gadget, a wireless document camera, and that was ‘on sale’ for $154. Yeah, not going to happen.
This is quite a revelation to myself, and I have a sneaking suspicion I’m not the only one who does this, one who loves the ‘new shiny first-adapter’ feeling, that ‘new tech’ smell that comes from the promise and hope of new, engaging means of delivering instruction. And that doesn’t take into account the time to learn the software, collect sprites,* storyboard, edit, etc. I have no idea what the costs are for Comcast, printer ink, web hosting, etc. I can rationalize most of these purchases, and therein lies the rub. I am masterful at rationalization and need to flip this skill with penny-pinching miserly ways. Somehow other teachers muddle through without Animoto or VideoScribe presentations.
So now that I know the numbers, what’s my plan? What am I going to jettison off this money boat to keep it afloat? Probably VideoScribe and Animoto, and will not renew those subscriptions. I have one year, and then if I don’t see amazing results or enjoy using them, they’re gone. Prezi is too damn expensive for teachers, but I’ll probably keep that one. Thinglink is super fun, and I’ve just begun to tap into those possibilities.
As I look at my grey hairs and neglected haircut, my shabby couch and dingy bathroom, and unpurchased plane tickets to destinations of home and love, it’s time to seriously rethink how I spend our money. And word to these educator tech companies: please stop trying to make money off of teachers. I’m spent.
And no more doughnuts.
*I’m calling anything that is collected or curated a sprite from now on.
