Uphill both ways.

From NPR:

Many families who live in Mendon, Vt., have been stranded because of road damage from the post-hurricane flooding. One place they can't get to is the local elementary school. But instead of staying home, about 20 kids from Mendon have been hiking over a mountain pass to get to a nearby road, where a group of parents then ferries them to school.

Yep.  You can get theah from heah, but you might have to walk some.

Survival of the Fittest

or, "Those who do not backup the past are condemned to re-type it."

Darren was talking about his new backup system, which included a new computer and I figured I'd repeat what works really well for me. I have a good computer at home, loaded with a bunch of software and a basic machine at school that is connected to the smart board.  I do not have any other tech toys and only a basic LG phone.

I have two 8GB thumbdrives (e.g., from TigerDirect.com. You could get them from Amazon, too.) "MY Documents" has a folder for academic videos and another for academic files. These two folders are synchronized with the two thumbdrives every day or so. At school I run everything off the two thumb drives, leaving nothing on the school's network. When I return home, I synchronize and thus never go more than a couple days without a simple backup.

For all my other files, I have an external USB drive (400GB, from Staples, Amazon, and many other places, ~$70)  This is connected about once a month or so and backs up ALL my files, including the academic ones, mail folders and system files.  Except for the mail folders, there's little on the home computer other than academic stuff that changes often so I'm okay there.

If you don't have a similar plan yet, you should start.

Technology and the Digital Natives

We hear all the time about our digital natives, their need for 21st century skills and their total immersion in 21st century technology. This morning, the following thought occurred to me:

Our kids don't need any training / help / instruction / encouragement with social networks and tech. They've got that in spades already. What they need is to control their social life and learn the unsocial 21st century skills.

My son was sitting on the coach with his wireless laptop, playing World of Warcraft with Facebook open in another window, his band's Myspace open in another and an IM session running ... then his phone rang. The TV was showing iCarly or Spongebob.

If anything, kids need to be pulled back and calmed down when it comes to social media and web 2.0. They've stayed at the banquet table too long and gorged themselves on every privacy exposure they could find. There are ways to reduce your public exposure, but many settings were deliberately left obfuscated so kids wouldn't understand what they were throwing away. Marketing, of course.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt in Wall Street Journal: "In the future, the passage from teenage life to adulthood will include an automatic name change 'in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends' social media sites.' "

I don't think it needs to be that way and it's not too late. Everyone should simply change their names now on all social media accounts. As I said last month, put up a fake persona. We all need to do that: our social life gets a fake persona ("Harold the Magnificent"), work and serious life gets the true stuff, and never the twain shall meet.

Back in the classroom, what our kids really need for the "real world" and for "work in the 21st century" is to learn and make better use of the non-social tools. You know: spreadsheets, word documents, email, writing, publishing, graphic arts, WolframAlpha and calculators, online references and other tools ... whether Excel, Google Docs, blogs, OpenOffice, forums, wikis, etc.  They need to consider their words, slow down their minds and stop blaring out any random fluttering thought.

We need a catchier word for it. though. What's the opposite of "social media?"

Anti-social ... no.
Non-social ... that doesn't seem right either. It's serious but needs to be shared.
Web 2.x ... not descriptive enough.
unsocial ... oh sure, make a geek joke, why don't you?

Jet Powered School Bus

Saving money, still buying pencils.

Ricochet copied a rant. I commented but figured I'd repeat two things here just to spread good things around.

Cheap, too.
IF you play it right.

Staples has 1 cent offers in the weekly flyer this time of year. Usually, they are 2 per customer, but teachers can get 25 with some school ID. Got that?  Nobody mentions it in the store -- you have to ask and then they're all smiles.  So, MENTION IT!

Pencils were 8/pack so 200 pencils cost 25 cents.  And I went back the next day (It's near the post office).  and the next day. and whenever I drive by on some other errand .... like Stop & Shop next door. Did I mention that my wife who teaches elsewhere comes in at the same time?  1 cent for 2-pocket portfolio. BAM! 25 cents, 25 folders 1 class done. Paper and Single-subject notebooks are 25 cents. No limit. You should see my hall closet ... $10 buys a hell of a lot of stuff at these rates.

As for books, we FINALLY got the business office to realize the benefits of a credit card for Amazon.  If you can, schmooze the people who do the work up there and show them how much can be saved when you order through Amazon and Amazaon Used&New for your textbooks and such.  It made a big difference for us when we showed them how much we saved.

You can thank me later.