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Yesterday in my Ed Philosophy class, we were talking about a court case from the 60s where this woman was on unemployment and refused to take any job that required her to work on Saturday.  She was a Seventh Day Adventist and they celebrate the sabbath on Saturday.  She was going to stop receiving unemployment because she had refused possible jobs, but she sued because she was basically saying that if she were forced to take a job that required her to work on her sabbath, then that was a infringement on the free exercise clause.  The courts were on her side in this case.  Since then, there have been a few more cases reversed this and then called it into question again.  But, what this made me think (and this is sort of a stupid tangent) is, what if no one worked the weekend, ever?  I know most of us don’t, but what if no one else did either?  So then we couldn’t really go anywhere or do much.  What would we do?  We’d kind of have to stay home, cook for ourselves, hang out, maybe go to a park, watch movies… it sounds kind of awesome.  It would be like Christmas day, when everything is shut down, but every weekend.  I wonder if it would make the week too busy though, like if we would have to cram our grocery shopping in in the evening or whatever.  I don’t know.  It’s not a profound thought, I know, but it’s fun to think about.

At ODE we receive an email everyday with all the news clips from around the state that have to do with education.  Today, there was a story about how the state is considering allowing school districts to make up snow days online.  There have been lots of stories about this lately.  People are sort of excited about it, but there was one article where a state congresswoman said, “Hey, what about the kids without computers at home?”  This is always something that’s hard to keep in mind when you start to get excited about the capabilities of technology, but it’s a huge problem.  So, here’s my solution (and it’s not really a new one).  Every kid should be handed a laptop in Kindergarten.  They should get free maintenance, upgrades, replacements, etc. all the way through twelfth grade.  It’s just too big of a disadvantage not to have access to a computer at home.  Oh, and there should be free wireless EVERYWHERE.  What do you all think?  One laptop per child?  (Say yes.)

The good news: I got up early to do yoga before work.
The bad news: I got terrible sleep last night (too used to going to bed late and sleeping in).
The good news: It wasn’t as cold as I expected when I went outside to wait for the bus!
More good news: I got Starbucks on the way to work!
The bad news: I still don’t feel great.  I had a bad headache and neckache at work.
The good news: My honey picked me up from work so I didn’t have to wait for the bus!
More good news: I only work a half-day now on Monday and Wednesday, so I got to eat lunch at home.
More good news: I got a really good parking pass so I can park in the garages on campus for the winter.
The bad news: It was over $400 and I had to wait in line for 30 minutes.
The good news: I can sell it back in the spring and get half of my money back.
More good news: I got a really good parking spot in front of the bookstore.
The bad news: They only had one book I needed (out of seven) (and it was my third trip to the bookstore!).
The good news: I had time to go home before my night class.
The bad news: I only had 15 minutes at home.
The good news: It only took me 15 minutes to get to campus (instead of the usual 30!).
More good news: The first class I taught went well (I love the middle school pre-service teachers!).
More good news: I got home a little early and got in my pajamas.
More good news: The Bachelor started tonight.
The bad news: The digital signal started getting wacky and I could only hear every third word.
The good news: I cleaned the kitchen and prepared for class tomorrow morning while I would have been watching the Bachelor (it was a sign).
More good news: The first Monday of the quarter is over and the rest will be less stressful.
More good news: Wearing no make up was not so bad, but more on that on Sunday.
More good news: I had more good news today than bad news!!

Yesterday, I walked to work in the coldest temperatures of the season.  It wasn’t such a bad walk, aside from the intensified windiness of downtown.  Try standing at the corner of Nationwide and High sometime and you’ll know what I mean.  Work was work and then I was on my way back out into the cold, which I’m pretty sure had gotten colder somehow.  Back at home, I sat around for a while thinking about packing for my trip and not doing it.  Ben stopped over for a bit, so that helped me put things off for longer.  I finally packed and even wrapped a few Christmas gifts.  I went to bed much too late for my wake up time of 4:45am.  My first flight was at 6:40am and, needless to say, I slept through most of it.  I woke up in time to see the snowy ground and the sunrise before we landed in Minneapolis.

I love seeing the way snow cover looks from plane.  Right now, I’m on the second flight, headed to Phoenix and we are flying over the snow-covered Rockies.  It’s beautiful.  Not that I’m not excited to get to some milder temperatures, but it feels a lot more like December now.

The flight is pretty full, but somehow I was placed in a row with three seats and only two people.  This means I have sprawled my belongings out onto the middle seat.  The older gentleman sitting on the aisle also has his Diet Coke resting on the vacant tray.  I spent much of this flight reading a book of my advisor’s called Troubling the Angels.  It’s about women living with HIV/AIDS and it’s written in an interesting dual page format with the women’s words on the top of each page and my advisor and her co-researcher’s thoughts on the bottom.  There are also factoid boxes throughout the pages with facts about HIV/AIDS and even some poetry by the women.  The book has gotten much acclaim and has been used by lots of different departments as a study of alternative formats for “doing research” with people rather than on people.  I noticed the man sitting a seat away checking out what I was reading.  Though the title Troubling the Angels, the book’s subtitle is Women Living with HIV/AIDS.  It made me wonder if he thought I might be a woman living with HIV/AIDS.  I wasn’t bothered too much by this, but I also wondered if he, on the other hand, might have sized me up and not for one second thought I was a woman living with HIV/AIDS.  The women in the book talk about the stigma associated with the disease and how, for example, if you have something like cancer, you can tell people and people understand and are sympathetic, but if you have AIDS, people seem to take one step back and wonder what you did.  It’s a difficult negotiation and the book is a good step in helping others understand what that might be like (among other things).

It’s funny the way we do that though, size each other up, make assumptions and then judgments.  In fact, I was also sizing up my neighbor.  He’s an older white man with glasses.  He’s wearing dress pants and a sweater over top of a tailored button down shirt.  At the beginning of the flight he was looking at some paperwork that had something to do with politics and taking notes.  Then, he moved on to a crossword puzzle, then, a sudoku.  I wondered if he was a professor preparing for a conference, or perhaps some sort of politician preparing for a meeting.  I wonder also how my judgements might change if he was a different race, age, were dressed differently, etc.  I wonder why we do this so automatically.  We’re funny creatures, aren’t we?

This morning, I stepped out of the door into a cold and lovely winter morning.  As I headed to work, a few snowflakes began to fall, and then a few more, until I was walking in a fluffy winter wonderland.  It was the kind of snow that sticks to your eyelashes and I loved it.  When I got to ODE, I noticed that the tree was up in front of City Hall.

City Hall in the snow.

It was the last day of the year that all five of my coworkers and I in the Gifted Department would be in the office at the same time, so we decided to go out for lunch and then see the model train they set up every year at Huntington Bank (in a room that looks a whole lot like Gringotts to me, but I’m a dork).  We went to lunch at a Venezuelan restaurant called El Arepazo, where I was introduced to arepas, fluffy corn tortilla things.  They were delicious.  This was definitely my kind of place.  First, it was in a back alley (I love secret stuff).  Second, you just walk up to a counter and order (I hate formal places).  And third, the food was veg-friendly (beautiful beans!) and delicious.  I will be going back.  Here’s a shot of the crew after we had devoured our Venezuelan yum yum.

The gifted Gifted Dept.

Then, we headed to the Huntington Bank building to find that they hadn’t set up the train this year.  We were disappointed, but decided that we needed to go somewhere to get into the Christmas spirit.  So, we decided to go to the statehouse and see if there was a tree on display.  Even better, there was a lunchtime concert in the basement!  The Ohio School for the Blind Marching Band was playing and they were really good! We also visited the gift shop… and I got some Ohio-ish presents!

Lunchtime Concert

Going back to work was very difficult after all of that holiday cheer, but I managed.  When I got home I gave in to the urge to put up my own tree.

Ooh la la, pre-lit and everything!

I feel so warm and fuzzy.

P.S. This is my 500th blog post!

Today at work, we walked down to the statehouse at lunchtime.  Word on the street was (okay, we got an email) that there were local artists selling their wares in the basement of the statehouse.  I didn’t even know the statehouse had a basement, but when I walked in, I realized that I had never been in the statehouse period.  I blame my grade school teachers (I mean, we went to COSI).  It was actually pretty cool in there. Here are some shots.

The Dome

Below the Dome

A display in the basement

We saw some neat Christmas arts and crafts, but the best part was that there was a glass elevator!  A GLASS ELEVATOR and SECRET TUNNELS!?!  IN COLUMBUS?!?  I need to write a story.

So, I’m in the field of educational technology, and I’ve started noticing more and more the sorts discourses that surround this field.  There’s the “technology is ruining our kids” discourse, the “necessary, but not really our ‘nature’” discourse, the “technology can change the world” discourse, and many many more, but those first three I encountered just today in my email inbox.  How about that?  It was quite a day for competing discourses.

Exhibit A: At work we get an email that aggregates news articles regarding education from around the state.  Today there was an article from the Findlay Courier titled, “Cell phones a challenge for educators.” This is part of the “technology is ruining our kids” discourse.  This is the full article; I inserted my own comments in parentheses.

Cell phones worry educators, and “sexting” makes them cringe.  Most schools have the same policy on cell phones: Students must keep their phones turned off and in their lockers throughout the day.  But some school officials say the policy is loosely enforced.  Besides cell phones being disruptive, there is a concern that students could use them to cheat or to spread rumors and gossip through the school quickly (this stuff happens with or without technology). And now, there are concerns about “sexting” (this too).  It gives educators an added incentive to enforce their bans on cell phones.  “We don’t go looking for the cell phones, but if they have them out, we’ll take them,” said Glenwood Middle School Principal David Alvarado.  None of Glenwood’s students has been caught sexting (please note), but Alvarado has found pornography on a student’s phone.  “Anytime you see a group of seventh-grade boys huddling around a phone, it makes you question what they’re doing,” said Alvarado.  He broke up the huddle and searched the phone. There were pornographic pictures, but no pictures of other students, he said. The boy was punished (I wonder how he was punished, this is a little vague).

Findlay High School has turned over one sexting incident to the police, said Principal Victoria Swartz.  “It didn’t take place in school, but we had heard there were pictures on a phone. It’s nothing we saw. We heard a rumor,” Swartz said.  The report turned into a criminal investigation, she said (they turned it over to a criminal investigator based on a rumor?).  That is about as much trouble as Findlay High has had with sexting, but Swartz said school officials aren’t naive enough to think it is not happening (based on this one incident, you need to be afraid).  “That is where parents can help. Be aware of what your children are doing with their phones,” Swartz said (be afraid and alert!).

Swartz can share cell phone horror (sounds like an exaggeration. horror, really?) stories from her work as an assistant principal and attendance officer at Louisville High School in the Akron/Canton area, and as an assistant principal of middle schools in Barberton and Ravenna.  “As a mother myself, I respect the intent parents have with cell phones. I know parents want to know their students are safe, and we don’t want to go around snatching everyone’s cell phones,” she said.  “We have to ask parents to stop calling and texting their student during the school day.”  Parents often cite safety as the biggest reason for giving their children cell phones, Swartz said, but that thinking can backfire if the technology is misused.  She tells a story about three students caught texting during an Ohio Achievement Test, invalidating the test. One boy responded to the text, without cheating. His test was invalidated, too (horror?).  “Now, imagine this boy was a senior and this was his last chance to pass the test before graduation,” Swartz said (imagine!).  Worse yet is Swartz’s story of a student using a photo taken in the locker room to bully another student. The student was disciplined by the school. Today, the same student would also be facing criminal charges, she said (that’s crappy, but horror?).

“In school, we tell them to turn them off,” she said of cell phones. “Out of sight, out of mind, and don’t use them for anything,” she said (sounds like a very naive policy, cell phones are powerful little devices, we can’t just pretend they don’t exist).  Bruce Otley, principal of Liberty-Benton Middle School, said his students are “pretty good” about following the rules and so far, there has been no discipline involving sexting.  “The students need to be aware that anything they send electronically is utterly the same thing as publishing it,” said Otley (be afraid!  you are being watched at all times… the panopticon!). “It is reproducible and retrievable. We tell them not to send anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable reading out loud to your mom” (be afraid, your mom is watching!).

Otley is encouraging both students and parents to attend a technology safety seminar being hosted by Cory-Rawson Schools at 7 p.m. Thursday at Cory-Rawson High School. The seminar is open to the public.  Jay Arbaugh, superintendent of Cory-Rawson, said the presentation is meant to help students avoid the problems that come with the Internet and other technology (a whole seminar on problems?  any positives?).  “Everything is so intertwined now. We’ll cover the issue of sexting, too,” he said (what’s “everything”?).  Arbaugh said his district has had no problems with sexting (so is it a HUGE problem or not?).  However, “It is a worry. You go anywhere and talk to other principals and superintendents about it, and they are worried, too. It makes for some very interesting, and scary, stories. It is something you’d rather not deal with, but you have to be ready,” Arbaugh said (it seems like they are afraid for very little reason).

Richard Steiner, principal of Central Middle School, said there were rumors “of stuff that happened over the summer” involving Central students and sexting, but nothing this school year (isn’t this a pitiful excuse for a case against cell phones?).  Steiner said the school will hold two assemblies, one for seventh- and eighth-graders, and a separate assembly for sixth-graders, on sexting.  The program has been developed by the Hancock County Prosecutor’s Office in cooperation with the Findlay Police Department, the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office and the Family Resource Center (gosh, sounds scary).  “We need to make sure they are educated at an early age about the responsibility of the cell phone. It is a great tool for families to use, but it also has its downfalls,” Steiner said (ooh, they said something good about cell phones!).

Don Williams, principal of Donnell Middle School, said being proactive works when it comes to teaching students about the downside of technology (how would he know this?).  Donnell hosted its first parent meeting about Internet safety and the legal perils involved with sexting last year.  “I’d like to think that’s why we aren’t seeing a lot of problems, but it concerns me, too. I’m sure it is happening, but we haven’t been hearing about it,” Williams said (so, is it working or not?  if it’s happening anyway then it’s not).  “We’ve worked to bring attention to it,” said Williams. “The unfortunate thing is kids can make a mistake with this stuff, and it won’t just be a lesson learned, no harm done. I don’t think they realize how permanent these things can be and how it can come back years later and haunt them. I think at this age, it is hard for them to look that far in the future” (be afraid, everyone is watching… the panopticon!).

Ha, I wonder if anyone is still reading this blog post?  That was fun.

Exhibit B: I received a second email, this one from Oprah (yeah, I get emails from Oprah, I know that’s a problem).  This one shows the discourse of “technology is necessary but not our ‘nature’”.  There were lots of links to articles on oprah.com in the email, but this was the intro:

“Make Time for What Matters
Is the technology that’s supposed to be helping you—your BlackBerry, cell phone, laptop—actually keeping you from the things that matter most? Power down and start living life to its fullest instead of letting your devices get the best of you.”

What if technology was part of helping you work with “what matters most”?  Why must we separate “living life to its fullest” and “letting your devices get the best of you”?  What if it’s not either/or, but both/and?  What is “natural” anyway?  Is there a “natural”?

Exhibit C: The third email I received was from MIT’s MediaLab.  At ODE awhile back, I created a unit on Game Design for gifted kids using a free software called Scratch (created by MIT).  Here’s the implied discourse of “technology can change the world”.

“Dear Lauren,

I’m writing to you on behalf of the Scratch Ed team at the MIT Media Lab.  I’d like to invite you to an online community of Scratch educators (at http://scratched.media.mit.edu). ScratchEd is an online space where educators around the world can meet and connect. You can find out about some of the cool things other educators are doing with Scratch, and share your own teaching experiences and resources.

I came across your Scratch unit plan at Curriki and had the pleasure of sharing it with other members of our community (here’s the link).  We’d love to hear more about what you’re doing with Scratch!

Hope you’ll join us online. Please let me know if you have any questions.”

I guess I’m biased toward this discourse more than any others, though I know it’s more complicated (see the much overstated Exhibit A).  Here, technology has enabled a community of educators to share and get feedback on curriculum.  These are the types of things that couldn’t happen in the same way before these technologies were available.

So, is technology good, bad, unnatural, natural, the same old thing, life-changing?  Yes.  It’s not simple.  It’s not black and white.  Our job then?  To be constantly aware, critical, creative, but never satisfied or finished.

Even though I have less to read for next week (one class is canceled due to Veteran’s Day), I’m still feeling anxious about getting work done.  Probably because I assigned myself extra work to “get ahead” which I of course couldn’t get to, so now I’m getting nervous about the extra work that doesn’t really need to be done this week (but very soon, and it would feel great to be ahead, but now I just feel nervous because I am behind).  I’m stupid.

So anyway, Thursday after class I went to see bell hooks.  She wrote Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics.  She’s pretty famous and she was inspiring and funny.  The auditorium was standing room only.

Friday, I was at work all day, but at lunch we got to go see a canon fire on the statehouse lawn for Veteran’s Day.  Who doesn’t like to see a good canon every now and then?

And then last night, we finally got to see Where the Wild Things Are (Spoiler alert).  Overall, I thought the movie really sucked you into the world of the wild things, but it was a bizarre, sad world and I was hoping for something a little more joyful out of a children’s book turned movie.  I mean, did Carol really have to rip off Douglas’ arm?  And did KW really have to talk like an angsty teenager?  So weird.  Vicki wrote a really great review about how the movie sucked the joy out of the book.  I agree.  However, I did leave the theater in sort of a trance and I like that because it means that I was really in the world of the movie and, like Coraline, I really wanted to write a story when I left.  Did I?  No, but I was in the mood.  I also loved Max (he was a good little actor) and the music (Dan liked it too, so that probably means it’s actually decent).  I think it’s worth seeing, but not if you want to be uplifted and not with kids (some of it’s downright scary… see arm comment above).

Today, I was on campus for about thirteen hours.  It began at about 8:30am.  I started teaching my second group of students in my Digital Tools course.  They seem like a very cool group of women and I’m excited about teaching it.  After class, I headed to RPAC to run and shower.  Then, I needed to go back to Ramseyer (where I teach) to go through my former advisor’s books.

If you remember, my advisor passed away this summer.  What I found out a few weeks ago, was that she willed her books to her advisees.  I was touched by that sentiment.  What better to leave to your students, but the words that formed you?  I was hoping to find a certain book.  During my second quarter at OSU, Suzanne had a small group book study on Sherry Turkle’s The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit.  I really enjoyed the book and I knew that Suzanne’s copy had her notes and underlining and, for me, it has sentimental value.  When I got to Suzanne’s office, my current advisor and Suzanne’s partner were there and books were everywhere.  It was sort of nice to chat and look through her books.  I did end up finding the one I was looking for, and much much more.  I ended up with a whole box and even though I have no idea where I will put these books, I am happy.

I had to sort of hurry out and get to my next class over on the Oval.  Then, I went to the library, got bored reading there and moved to Brennen’s, the coffee shop, where I read until my last class at 7pm, back in Ramseyer.  9:30pm, I was finally home.  I was thinking about making a little map of my travels on campus today, but you know, I think you can see why I don’t really feel like it (but, think zigzags).

City Hall

I worked all day today.  I was the only one in the Gifted Department in the office, so I had to answer a few phone calls.  Well, that was entertaining.  I had to do detective work to even get close to finding answers.  Ah well, I did my best.  The good news is that when I left work, it was the most gorgeous day.  I walked home and stopped in a few shops.  Then, I got a bunch of work done at home and I’m feeling all ready for the busy school week.  I just hope I can remain this productive.  We shall see.

This weekend, for me, was less a weekend, more an extension of the week.  I had a lot of work to do.  The main culprit was a midterm for my Visualizing the Curriculum class.  It was supposed to be ten pages, but when I did all I needed to do, it was more like seventeen.  And all I did was analyze the About page of two blogs!  I hope I don’t get dinged for being so far over.  I feel good about the paper, but man, it took me a long time.  Here’s the intro:

“Blogs are becoming passe.  “Everyone” has a blog.  And lots of these blogs have minimal readership, and yet, millions of people have begun blogs and many maintain them regularly.  Young girls and women seem to be particularly drawn to this medium.  Though men dominate the blogosphere with blogs related to technology topics, politics, and business, women dominate the “personal” genre of blogs (Nowson & Oberlander) and tend to make use of the social components of blogs more than their male counterparts (Pederson & Macafee).  The medium of a blog is essentially an online space.  Women and girls are engaging with this space in ways that could have implications for critical media literacy and education broadly defined.  I have conducted a study of the ways in which four female doctoral students have engaged with blogs in different ways.  In this article, I use semiotics and deconstruction to take a critical look at the “About” pages of these bloggers as one way to understand the ways in which these women represent their subjectivity in this medium as a part of learning their identities.”

Saturday was basically filled with reading, writing and running (I had my 11 miler for marathon training).  I did get a break that night to watch some UFC.  Sunday was more reading, writing and running (this time only 3 miles).  I also read an ENTIRE book yesterday.  And the “best” part is that, I read the first half, took a “beak” to finish writing my paper, came back to the book, only to find out that Foucault (the author) began the second half by basically saying, “You know all that stuff I put in the first half?  I was just kidding.  Now, here’s what I really think.”  Foucault, I don’t have time for your games.

Ah well, it’s Monday morning, I am NOT well rested and I am on my way to take Dan to the airport (he’s traveling to Arizona this week) and then I have to get myself to work.  Sigh.