Periodic Table of Awesoments

http://www.dapperstache.com/index.php?contenttype=ptoa

For Douglas! - The Year in Tweets: 10 Most Memorable Twitter Moments of 2008

• The Year in Tweets: 10 Most Memorable Twitter Moments of 2008

  tags: no_tag

  • The Year in Tweets: 10 Most Memorable Twitter Moments of 2008

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Durff's Blog: Network Challenge

The next best thing to be wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are. CS Lewis

http://durffsblog.blogspot.com

50 Things

• 50 Things Everyone Should Know How To Do | Marc and Angel Hack Life

  tags: lifehack, lifehacks, coolthings4school

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

A 30/31December to Remember?

A couple of years ago a blogger friend set up a challenge to her circle of friends to keep up their level of exercise through December. For her, December was the hardest month to keep up her high level of fitness. Between the cold, the short days, holiday temptations and travel it was the month to get off track the easiest. The challenge was to keep up a December schedule where you exercised for 30 minutes a day for each of the 31 days. i made it, but it was harder than I thought.

I find myself in need of extra motivation this winter. I have not exercised as much as wanted this fall and my waistline shows it. I have some things I want to accomplish next summer which will require a higher level of fitness than i have enjoyed in the last 12 months.

So, I am making my December Challenge public. I start my road to redemption by reviving the 30 minutes for 31 days and will post my daily results here for scrutiny and ridicule.

Are ya with me Babinski?

Twitter for Douglas?

I have been spending the last few months encouraging (provoking?) a newbie blogger, Doug Hammerstrom by correcting many of the misconceptions contained in his posts with his initial foray into the blogging community at It's Not About Me. Now I will say that this really is not new. For over 30 years in dorm rooms, over pints of various kinds of beer, in long train rides, car rides, VW micro bus rides, on freezing mountain hillsides, in long letters and late night phone calls, the subjects may change but context has stayed about the same. Blogging just puts his foolishness in a public forum and it is just a too irresistible target for me. He is doing quite well as a new blogger, if you enjoy reading the well thought out musings of a iconoclastic, conservative, fundamental Christian, environmentally committed, well respected physician. From such a solid base you would think he would not get it wrong so much of the time.

Recently I told him that he was probably ready to take the next step and move on to microblogging with Twitter. His reaction - "that's just for folks who don't want to think". So, despite his lumping Twitter into the world of IM speak, text messaging and cell phone gabbers and his chronic dismissal of popular culture and the hoi polli as a whole (you have to forgive him as sometimes his nose gets so far up in the air he does not realize how far up his butt his head really is) it gave me pause.

Twitter does make me think. Or rather the network that it connects me to makes me think. I started like Doug. I blogged first because my daughter was blogging. My first efforts let me see the power of networking as I quickly found a group of folks connected by biking and outdoor activities and gave me a peek into the ways teens were expressing themselves online. Those steps lead me to reading blogs of people in my professional area, and Twitter has provided a logarithmic expansion of resources, ideas, people and culture. Twitter makes me go new places, it makes me read and reflect, it exposes me to people who think like me and those that don't. It is largely about K-12 education for me, but I am fascinated with the ways that "wisdom of the crowds" is being mined by Twitter derivatives and how the fast moving online culture is becoming a mainstream flow of information. From Obama tweets, to hastags about Mubai, to CNN & PBS moving into Twitter space, it is worth knowing and worth knowing about.

I find some common ground with Doug and some of the "old lions" of the K-12 ed community that are finding a surge toward Twitter is decreasing the use of blogging for expression of ideas and reflection on educational issues. In the "old" days when we just had blogs, the time and attention it took to write a few paragraphs created more thoughtful posts. You got to "know" the person by reading their blogposts. Nowadays if you can't stick it in a 140 characters including a shortened URL, it does not get noticed,and nobody checks out the blog where the longer post resides.

I do think about that piece a lot. We flit from topic to topic. We chase the latest thing like Twitter birds on the info tree. Is there less deep reflective thought? Are we and the kids we teach becoming a society of thin veneer where we know lots and think we know much but do not think deeply and thus really don't know jack? Is that where we are headed? A society of folks who because of instant access know much but know little? And yet I like the different kid of "knowing" when one of my favorite bloggers tweets the mundane factoid that they just took their kids to Madagascar2 and really enjoyed it, or that This Week in Tech is going live in a few minutes.

On balance I do know that understanding Twitter and how social networks are formed through new media is important in understanding society and especially youth culture today. The question on the table is why would it be important for a 53 year old physician, devoted father of 3, marginally adequate husband who habitually under appreciates his saint of a wife, church elder, politically conservative environmentalist, hunter, living in the last spec of red left in Colorado need to join Twitter? I have found two posts that I hope will lead him astray:

http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/doctors-opinion-why-i-started.html

http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/11/why-i-like-twitter.html

I am hoping that some folks who have wandered over to my personal reflections blog from my tweeting might be able to provide him with more reasons why he should join Twitter by posting responses to this blog post.

Oh, and Douglas, - the Twitter handle - DaHammer is taken but NotAboutMe is not. Act fast and sign up for an account!

Blogging at a Snail’s Pace - NYTimes.com

• Blogging at a Snail’s Pace - NYTimes.com - Annotated

  tags: web20, mansfield20, blogging, DaHammer

  • “I’m definitely noticing a drop-off in posting — I’m talking about among the more visible bloggers, the ones with 100 to 200 readers or more,” said Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies popular culture and technology. “I think that those people who were writing long, thought-out posts are continuing, but those who were writing, ‘Hey, check this out’ posts are going to other forums. It’s a dynamic shift.”

    Technology is partly to blame. Two years ago, if a writer wanted to share a link or a video with friends or tell them about an upcoming event, he or she would post the information on a blog. Now it’s much faster to type 140 characters in a Twitter update (also known as a tweet), share pictures on Flickr, or use the news feed on Facebook. By comparison, a traditional blogging program like WordPress can feel downright glacial.

    • Danah Boyd - always a cogent thought on new media - post by stevesoko
  • Ms. Ganley, the blogger in Vermont, has a slogan that encapsulates the trend: “Blog to reflect, Tweet to connect.” Blogging, she said, “is that slow place.”
    • Nicely said - post by stevesoko

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Star WarsAcapella John Williams Tribute

This one just speaks, or perhaps sings for itself. Many thanks to Leo and Amber at Net@Night:

More Cities Upon Hills

Looks like on beat up on my friend Douglas a bit too quickly. Today's Hartford Courant reveals that contrary to the remark by Babinski, I do not live in the People's Republic of Eastford, but on an island of red in the sea of Connecticut blue.

http://www.courant.com/media/acrobat/2008-11/43270443.pdf

I fear that I have not been a good enough Democrat, a Democrat that has forgotten the lessons of the past and how to win elections. I should have figured out how to vote more than once to sink the Isle of Eastford into the sea of blue.

All is not lost. Douglas blogged from Colorado's version of Helm's Deep that there is a scriptural basis for a different type of society than the one he fears that is coming. One that relies on Christian principled communal sharing rather than government coercion (that is taxation) to provide for the needs of the many.

Indeed there seems to be at least one of my ancient New England neighbors that unifies the two themes and suggested that the city on upon the hill DOES need to be based on being each others keepers:

John Winthrop - City Upon A Hill, 1630
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_upon_a_hill

...We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. .... We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies; when He shall make us a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, "may the Lord make it like that of New England." For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us...

Joni Revisited

This is more than likely to be a depressing night for my friend Douglas. A deeply depressing night. A Joni depressing night.

So, Douglas my advice is settle back into the easy chair, pour yourself 3, maybe 4 fingers of a good stiff single malt, turn down the lights and watch the colors change across the map. Oh, and have your wife lock the knife drawer. This one is for you.....

When Pumpkins Drink Too Much

Courtesy DRAFT Magazine - http://news.draftmag.com/2008/10/29/when-pumpkins-drink-too-much/

The Rising Tide Turns the City on a Hill Into an Island

The Rising Tide Turns the City on a Hill Into an Island

RE:http://notaboutme.typepad.com/not_about_me/2008/10/why-im-not-an-obamaite.html

Now it is a well reasoned island, but as the article below notes, the tide has turned even in the orthodox gulag of CO Springs and its environs.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/vote2008/reportersblog/2008/10/colorado_hispanic_voters_push.html

I do think that a lot of people are counting chickens that have a few more days before they hatch, but change is in the air.

Actually Douglas, I can empathize with your angst. I felt the same way upon the election of Bush 2. It may only last 8 years, keep hope alive. Below is a YouTube just for you. Oh, and don't fire that Office Manger. She may know people you will need to know until the water recedes.

Killing the Vampire On My Right

Peggy Noonan on ABC's This Week - "He threw a Hail Mary pass w/ the choice of Palin .... A Hail Mary pass to a section of the Party at a time .... when they needed to redfine what they were .... to go broad to the United States of America ..... Palin on the stump has the authentic sound of the old hit the line ...Republicanism or conservatism.. it is the old party, it is a party dealing w/ old realities... it is not the future, it did not sound like the future, it was narrow, it is repetitive, it is always 1984... it is 2008...

George Will (on Palin's socialism comments) - "95% of what the government does is re-distribute wealth... we have socialism for the strong, that is, the well organized and well represented in Washington, like sugar growers"

Sam Donaldson - "(you can't buy) a $150,000 suit when you are trying to run a campaign about Joe the Plumber, this is nuts. What were these people thinking?"

What would life have looked like for the Republicans if McCain had moved to a more centrist broader approach? A fiscally conservative, pro-business growth, socailly conservative and strong defense approach as a way to the future rather than an appeal to the evangelical hard right and Republican orthodoxy. As measures of the miss-steps, Hispanics that have a friend in John McCain are fleeing the Republican party and Catholic support for McCain is down t0 41%. You can say that in hard times economics trumps culture, but if this is a party re-alignment (ala Regan or FDR) the Republican base will be looking in the mirror. Even if the economy is going to hell in a hand basket, feeding a Democratic congress, McCain could have played it into a Presidential win and essentially a checkmate. Obama has opened up the map with new combinations to get to 270. In my old political science class that was called a re-alignment, that happens about once every generation.

When you play checkers on the blue state/red state map, there are some (but few) scenarios where McCain can pull togther enough electoral votes to win. The end game battle will now be to see if the Senate races will break to get the projected 58-59 Democratic Senate seats to a clochure proof 60 and ensure control for the Democrats, not veto proof but clochure proof.

How amazing would it be if Al Franken in Minnesota becomes the 60th wooden stake in Rush Limbaugh's heart?

The End of Cowbells

The post XC State Championship & Homecoming Dance sleepover is breaking up. After 8 years and 2 daughters, I am no longer a cross country Dad, now & forever nomore. Lots of melancholia w/ Ms17 taking the final lap. I learned w/ the first that it becomes a very empty nest once they go and mine is still half full for a few more months.

On the brighter side it could be as little as 14 years +/- until I can be a cross country Grandpa and the cowbells will come out of the closet.

Pass the Fork Please?

So did Colin Powell stick a fork in McCain and Palin today on Meet the Press? Not just for the mere fact of endorsing Obama, but his rationale. He said that he has known MCCain for a long time, and respects him, and thinks he is qualified to be a good president. Powell said that he was evenly decided in September but he the looked at the last few weeks as a "final exam" for the candidates. He said that he was very disappointed in the tone that McCain adopted in the last few weeks, turning to reving the rabid base of the Republican party by trashing Obama's character. He said that tactic did not square with the John McCain he knew and was at odds with his own view of where the Republican party needed to go. He remarked that while he had difficulty bringing himself to not support his friend of 25 years but he had problems with McCain's reactions to the financial crisis and was seeemingly lurching from ideas to idea for solutions. Powell had particularly harsh words for the choice of Palin who he called unquailified to take on the job as vice president and sit a heart beat away from the Presidency, while someone like Biden would be up to the job if called upon. Powell delt deftly w/ the question of his support being just a black man supporting a black man by articulating his judgement that he felt that Obama has been calm, thoughtful and intellectually curious though the financial crisis and that those charateristics moved him into the Obama camp.

Stick a fork in them, they are done. I think the 72 inch drapes will be fine thank you.

Mahalo's take: http://www.mahalo.com/Colin_Powell_Meet_The_Press

The Belly of the Beast

So what are we to make of the hypocrisy of a candidate who on the stump runs hard against the eastern liberal media elite, and yet has no problem crawling into the belly of the beast when it suits her purpose? Are we to believe she is so vapid that there is no cognitive dissonance? Or is it a case of situational ethics? Or just one big 'ole hoot to go on a TV show? One thing for certain she had no problem throwing the Alaska life style under a 5th Avenue bus for a laugh last night. I wonder if Harriet the Hunter, or Nanuk the Native American, enjoyed being mocked by SNL while Sarah bopped along in time to the rap? Do they do a lot of rap in Alaska?

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-palin-rap/773781/

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/gov-palin-cold-open/773761/

CNTRL-ALT-DEL on Blog Spot

Welcome!

As of the October of 2008 this blog is changing. This is the place where I will reflect on life and the world around me, from a personal point of view. I will continue to blog about K12 education Web 2.0 issues and ideas, at my other blog- Life In The Fast Lane (http://stevesoko.edublogs.org).

For a log time I had been kind of playing with Blogger vs Word Press to learn the different tools offered by each. I had been blogging on educational issues and cross posting them in both places and it kind of got jumbled and I got lazy. I also found that I was mixing commentary on life in general and education. I believe I have a voice (albeit a minor one) in the K12 Education community and I want to continue that with whatever small audience that has. So, I am going to do that at Life In The Fast Lane . I want to make that my voice about my profession.

And yet, I find myself wanting to say some things about life in general. Inspired in part by my good friend Douglas' new blog - It's Not About Me, and a sense that some things I need to say are not connected to education but more my political opinions or chronicling my reactions life around me, I am going to keep that commentary here. And at least I will feel better about teasing Douglas and his posts by writing here rather than cluttering his blog with long wordy comments.

So consider this a CNTRL-ALT-DEL on this blog and welcome or welcome back.

What I Learned at BLC08

This is will not be the comprehensive, reflective blog post it should be. More like a random stream of consciousness trying to get my head into that state of emptiness that David Allen calls a "mind like water". There are some things rolling around in my head so I want to do a brain dump to capture it someplace before time and failing brain cells reduce it to dim notions that exist in some set of neurons difficult to retrieve. And anyway I found myself brain dumping a lot of this to my lovely wife last night as we chilled by the pool debriefing on our time away from each other so she has had her fill. Time to bore you folks.

Despite the logistical nightmare that the venue caused there was enough here to have me think about coming back.

Why did I end up at the same sessions as lots of folks in my Twitter group? Does it mean that I am on the right track with so many impressive people gravitating to the same ideas, or was it the echo chamber?

On Friday morning I found myself in a session led by Clarence Fisher and Darren Kuropatwa and I realized that there were about 15 people that I Twitter follow/follow me. The session ended and people were going to the keynote but at one point I wanted to jump up, run over and lock the door and shout - "You are not going anywhere! Stay here! Let's talk about stuff, anything, don't go, you are my lifelines, you are my sustenance on line and you are here in front of me, nooo, don't go!"

If I had been successful I would have missed the challenging keynote presented by Pedro Noguera, that laid out school realities without flinching and directly challenged me to look at my"comfortable" practice and my district's practice. Nothing really wrong with what we are doing but looking at it from the perspective he presented makes you look deeper at what that really is. Are we educating everyone? Are we reaching outside of our comfort level to really make differences.

The other remarkable thing that happened on Friday was I got to stand in the doorway of a small room where Marco Torres was editing with a couple of his students. Just serendipity they were using the room to put together some stuff they shot. My learning? Video editing when done even by the best, looks a lot like what I do. It is just sweat equity to get a good product and you have to just work through it.

Marc Prensky was less than impressive. For all the things I had read and heard it was disappointing. I agree with some of the blog posts that have already been posted. He mailed it in. There were 3 sessions he presented back to back. He mixed up his presentation so he started session one w/ the session two slides and said - Well that's OK they all start the same. Didn't I feel special to be there? The use of annoying "wake up" sounds in the presentation was juvenile. It felt like he just delivered his canned presentations without a sense of the audience. It was the speech you give to a more general audience. Hope you cashed the check quickly Marc. And he was wrong on many points. There are quite a few who felt the same and are blogging and commenting. I can take opposite ideas, they are good for me. At most they change my mind, at least it makes me rethink what I think to be sure I am on right track. His style was just annoying.

Joyce Valenza is the most forward thinking librarian I have ever met (and a heck of a dancer). Pageflakes as an organizational tool for libraries RSS stuff, tons of great ideas.

Wait a minute. Maybe Peggy Sheehy is the most forward thinking librarian I have met with her work on Ramapo Island II. It was just amazing what they did with digital story telling this year.
I have to find it on the main grid.

I could listen to the mix of accents between Ewan McIntosh, Clarence Fischer, and John Davitt all day.

This conference was a good break for me. The end of the school year was a complete rush to the finish line I was feeling quite a bit burnt out and items from the school year were creeping into the summer. I was feeling resentful that the treadmill would not stop, even for a little bit. For some reason these 3 days have represented a break and have recharged my batteries. I am excited to recast my to do list and get school work done next week.

My Audiobook Experiment - Update

Just a quick update on my audiobook experiment for this summer. I am enjoying the books so far with a mini-review of the audio experience.

I have read "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card a re-issue of a Sci-Fi Classic, which was exciting, moved well, and made me want to read more about the pre-story and other character. The ending did leave me a little flat.

I have read "The Forgotten 500" which did not translate well into audio. It sounded like a reading of a series of internal memos given before a Congressional Committee to explain the incident, which was probably how the book was researched and written. Tough listen and I did not finish it.

A good listen was "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz, the Pulitzer Prize winner. This was a good read about a culture that I am not often exposed to in my life. I enjoyed the readers movement into Spanish phrases and takes on life. It would be a good book in paper as well.

Another good listen was "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseni (author of the acclaimed Kite Runner). Another story set in war torn Afghanistan that ranges over years and the lifetimes of families. I especially enjoyed the female reader of the story. I think it made the telling more powerful, and I would not have gotten as much out of it without the female voice given the context. I especially enjoyed (perhaps not the best word here) the view into a war torn culture and as in Oscar Wao a view into a culture I am not accustomed to. I "know" about male dominated Islamic societies but to see it played out in the daily lives of the characters increased my appreciation of what that life is. The female reader heightened the experience beyond what I would have gotten by reading the paper.

Couple more books to go that I will report on later.

As to the overall experience, here are a couple of notes. Audiobooks are hard to read at night. If you have an older iPod there is not a "sleeps shut off" like on newer models. So, if you start listening and nod off you find the iPod going off hours after you are snoozing. At least with a paperbook your finger stays some where in the page! So, bedtime and beach time has not worked out so well for me as I sometimes have to backtrack to find my place.

Listening in the car has proven to be great. I have several long driving trips this summer and the audiobooks have been wonderful. Often you would get to where you were going and want to stay to listen. At night when tired, it would tend to make you sleepy just like reading in bed, except behind the wheel. Audiobooks were banned after dark in favor of rock and roll!

The Digital Summer

Well summer is almost here for me. A little more teaching, a few more tasks, and it is summer time. I decided that this summer, I am going to make my summer reading, audio books. I traditionallly make a summer pleasure reading list and devour 6-8 novels. I love to read but during the school year, I find that I do not pleasure read. Perhaps it is because I am reading so much other stuff. Summer offers longer chunks of time and it is not unusual to find a quiet morning, stick my nose in, and come up for air several hours and 500 pages later.

I do have several long driving trips this summer and I thought that I would make some selections from my Audible account, stick them on my iPod an do the bulk of my summer reading that way. The verdict so far, great in the car, especially my favorite genre - Science Fiction. "Reading" at night, is not so good. I fall asleep and the iPod moves along oblivious that I have gone ten toes up. At least with a book, if I fall asleep, my finger stuck in the pages remebers where I was. I'll keep you posted on the experiment.

The End of the Innocense

The end of this school year brings a subtle yet great change. Over the summer a new security system will go into place and I will wear an ID card around my neck that will also serve as a swipe card to enter building doors. The main doors will have a camera and office personnel will connect with an intercom and visitors will be buzzed in. This is not in response to any serious incidents, although we have had our share of non custodial parent attempted pick ups. In our primary schools of 200-250 kids the ability to know and understand our families (and at times some quick thinking) has always been enough to stop any of these situations. In fact, we pride ourselves on being neighborhood schools as much as we can and work hard to develop those relationships where the school is stitched deeply into the fabric of the community.

And yet, the grant was there, the pre-audit by the police did reveal some interesting ways of looking at our school that we had not thought about before. It was cool that our network infrastructure that we worked so hard to build stood ready to be a part of a new security system. And, clearly the times are changing. Better to be proactive than at the other end of a sad, sad news story? On that I would agree. The most important thing that I do each day is that I take the most precious thing a parent has and keep it warm, happy, fed and secure for 7 hours and then I give it back. The fact that I get to stuff some knowledge into their heads, is merely a side benefit.

Maybe it will not be so bad, Maybe we will make it not intrusive. Maybe it will make us one more layer secure. But it will be different.

Change At The End Of The Year

Many educational bloggers are taking the time at the end of the year to blog about the highlights of the year. For me, this has been a year of subtle, yet great change. Not so much in the day to things I do in my job but in the overall tenor and intellectual scope of my job. Much of that change will hit in September.

I serve 3 schools, PK-4, about 240 kids in each school. In those buildings I have 9 colleagues who will be retiring in a week and a day. I look at the folks moving on and all of them were here before I came. I looked to them because it was their schools, their school district. I needed to learn the norms and ways of how they were doing it. Making may mark, of course, moving the technology ball forward, but there was a sense that what they were doing was pretty good, and we needed to fit technology into that bigger picture.

I wonder now if it is "my" school system. The superintendent who hired me is retiring, the assitant supt, who has been my direct supervisor for the last decade is moving up. I am glad for him, he is a good man, an excellent educator and has an excellent prespective on the role of technology in education. The Town/School/Regional District IT department was reorganized last summer and a dear colleague became the IT director of all teh "entities" as we have come to call them. The movement of the Asst. Supt. to Supt, kind of puts the leadership of where we go w/ technolgy back onto this re-organized department. It is yet to be worked out but already I can feel it. We will be called on and turned to chart the direction for a variety of technologies. Fells like all of a sudden we are the grown ups. That is OK. I get paid well for what I do, and feel I can grow in that direction. However in the past it was executing a plan that was articulated in many other place, defined by other folks. I had a voice, but a small one. Now I look around and we are the planners, the one ultimately charting the course.

It is not good, it is not bad, it is just beginning to look and feel different. My plan is to retire from doing this job in six school years. In terms of what will be a 33 career, I look at it as kind of the last lap, the last chance to play with ideas and concepts on this stage. I wonder if it is best viewed as a long relay race and I have just been passed the baton for my section of the relay.

What Comes Around?

I have written here before about the case of Avery Doninger, the CT high school student who got in trouble for calling her school administration "douche bags" in her blog. It is a complex tale and I invite you to look at earlier entries as I wrote and reacted to the story as it unfolded in the news media.

The latest chapter appeared in today's Hartford Courant. The article, as written, has a jumbled flow, presumably edited to present a headline and focus on details that grab the most attention. As I read it, the story goes like this. There is a different Superintendent in place than the one that was there last spring when the incident happened. In the last year the case has moved through the court system. Currently it is at a stage where a recent ruling said that the school did have the right to punish the student and we await the next round.

As that recent ruling hit, a Wisconson man, Mike Morris, who had been following the story in the news, emailed staff at the school saying that the school's reaction to Avery constituted evidence that she had been right about them all along. The principal of the school took it upon herself to email back to the guy, saying in her email in part that Avery had been warned about her language in the past. Morris forwarded the reply to Avery's mother, who used a Freedom of Information request to get the school to give her the orginal email and original reply.

The story is a bit unclear in the next details but the upshot and headline is that the current superintendent suspended the principal without pay for two days for an "uncharacteristic lapse in judgement" for releasing information about a student in violation of state law and school policy, because her reply email revealed information about Avery. Avery's mother for her part obtained a complete set of her daughter's school records which predictably have no mention of any disciplinary actions, or comments about difficulty with inappropriate language.

You just can't make this stuff up.

Does it sound like it was a comedy of errors that resulted in a self satisfying "gotcha" by the Doninger family? A parting shot for Avery who was a junior when this started and will be ending her high school career in a couple of days?

One of the things that I learned in following the story in the local news over the year was that the devil was in the details. The mainstream media (or what constitute mainstream media in CT) presented the story in a way that highlighted the details to keep the reader flipping the page. It was not until I read a longer piece by Larry Bloom where you got to see a fuller, richer picture of the give and take of what went on in the days last spring when Avery got mad about the cancelation of the Jamfest concert. I think that today's article is about the same. An above the fold sidebar headline, and a focus on the "suspended Principal", burries the actions and context of the now very media savy family.

I said before that the actions of the school administration were designed to provide a lesson about responsibity and accountabilty of action. The incident continues to be an ultimate "teachable moment" for everyone involved.

Tweetup Part 2

So looking by looking at pictures of Tweetup on Alice Barr's blog, I found she had collected this video, which I find very interesting:

What I Learned at The New England Tweet Up - 4/13/08

I have an informal criterion for a successful vacation trip. One - I have to go someplace I have never been before. Two - I have to eat some food I have never eaten before. Three - I need to meet some new people or be intellectually stimulated in some way. Yesterday's NE Tweetup at the Grog Restaurant in Newburyport MA met (and exceeded) all of the criteria. It was fun. Long drive up and back but such fun. There were about a dozen of us driving in from MA. ME, NH, and CT to put faces to names (or at least twitter names).

First two criteria were easy. Newburyport was picturesque seaside town. Cold in the early spring along the water but easy walking along the shops and side streets. In warmer weather, like in summer or early fall, it would be a crowded bustling mass of humanity enjoying the charm of the shops and the waterfront. The Grog was a cozy welcoming restaurant and if you get a chance teh sweet potato burrito is to die for.

The tweets were a diverse group. All techies of some sort but as these things go, we are at once all the same and yet all different. I think that in some professions you can introduce yourself as a lawyer, or accountant, or EMT, or nurse and folks have a pretty good grasp of what your job is like. In my world, we all do work in schools with technology, but how that plays out is so different. Partly designed but our employers definitions of what they think they need, partly designed by what we make our jobs, partly designed by our states and how they define technology teachers, we all were different. And yet, scratch the surface and the same problems, same issuses, same concerns are there.

I don't know that a couple of hours over nachos and beer yielded lightening bolts of insight leading toward universal truth, but it was nice to have conversations (longer than 140 characters) with folks who walk in my shoes. All in all very nice people. Nice to make some connections, some good info exchange, and perhaps some friendships begun. Thanks folks!