I shudder to think how many Americans believe in their right to carry a gun. Use it or lose it.

There is a face in my classroom I’ll never forget (though his name escapes me). He always sat in the middle of the front row with a smile and real interest. One day he was absent. He and his brother had been playing with a BB gun at home alone and the shot pierced his liver. He nearly died and spent months in hospital and rehab.

When I read stories like the one of last Friday I think of him and countless others who believe firearms are only for show. No folks, they are designed to kill and will make you a victim or a killer, or both.

Living in a European country (France) that has one of the last annual military parades, it’s awful to read the testimony of our president up for reelection. He bemoaned the destruction of the Norwegian government building and passed in silence over the killing of young socialists, to whom he is of course philosophically opposed. The end justifies the means for anyone who votes for him. Along with the right to cheat on campaign funds, denigrate opponents and parade over dead soldiers to gain votes.

Sorry to digress from constitutional rights, but that’s what we find in our small change.

What makes a conference special that cannot be found on the Internet? In my experience it is:

Personal connections and reconnection that messages and discussions don’t cover.

Chance discoveries and random delights.

Time out from the regular work place.

Answers to questions, one’s own and other people’s.

There is an ECIS IT Daily from Twitter at http://paper.li/tag/ecisit

Yesterday was a predictable surprise. Take several days of insistent warnings from all the weather stations and keep your fingers crossed it won’t happen – it did. Luckily students were on campus, the roof didn’t leak, power and heating stayed on. There was even enough food in the cafeteria coldroom to feed several hundred stranded people chicken, fries and fruit. Videos and even story-telling bridged the gap until parents trudged in wearily, having abandoned vehicles and board meetings to climb the hill to our school.

Most of our children love to come to school and are proud of what they achieve there. But closing the place is an even bigger accomplishment and that’s what they managed to do today. With a little help from the elements.

There’s never enough education going on overseas. However there’s confusion between a British University and who it lends its name to, in this case a reformed pop star from Malasia. Perhaps the misunderstanding comes from the common idea that whales learn in schools.

Many times I have heard people suggest that educational institutions overseas are not subject to scrutiny in the way British or American ones are. However I believe accreditation in overseas schools is as rigorous as it comes. In addition schools are subject to local labor laws and expected to follow them.

The problem with the University of Whales comes when it gives its seal of approval without examining the porpoise behind the use it may be put to – below the surface?

And no, I didn’t Photoshop the second image – it’s really what they published. Perhaps the webmaster went to the wrong school.

After writing to a friend that I was spending a weekend in Brittany she replied “Enjoy London”

How curious that the two places – ‘Brittany’ and ‘Britain’ are far more than a narrow stretch of water apart.

What we are eating here lives around the same shores but somehow England has retreated from the beaches and only a few fish fingers grace the family tables.

The harbor is right by the fishmonger and the plateau was waiting for us to collect this morning

Simple pleasures of slow food weekend

(When first posted the Linotype was indeed in danger of being scrapped – now it is safely relocated in a convenient rosebed on the parking lot)

1. Everyone moves, fast and often. Getting a camera shot is
   like catching hummingbirds.
2. Children use the available tools and master their multiple
   applications.
3. Personnel management is by need – every game is a tight set
   of ad-hoc teams.
4. People smile more than in the classroom.
5. People learn more than when they are still.
6. Recess creates undefined open spaces and lots of sounds.

I wish I could publish all the faces I took back from these precious
moments. They tell volumes and it’s like seeing into their hearts when
the public mask has dropped away. Still body language says plenty and
these arrested motions show how all is movement, change, surprise.

This is a really quick post – where initially the big buzz in schools was “Wash your hands while singing ‘Happy Birthday to you’ twice over” suddenly this has been replaced by ‘Row Row Row Your Boat’ (much shorter with great optional verses about what happens to your teacher) and now:

3. Wash your hands often and long.

Like seasonal flu, swine flu spreads through the coughs and sneezes of people who are sick. Emphasize to children that they should wash with soap and water long enough to finish singing the alphabet song, “Now I know my ABC’s…” Also use alcohol-based hand sanitizers.

Good choice – this way you can both disinfect your hands (great against germs of course but totally ineffective against a virus) AND learn some basic skills. Think of all the reading, math, biology, history and science embedded in those traditional songs. Think of the amount of soap that can be used to recycle goats, fish and trees

What happened to Happy Birthday? Probably struck off the list, as washing in public could be considered a performance so anyone celebrating those lyrics under copyright until 2030 had better get ready to pay the piper.

Down at the bottom of the great list:

“Cough into your elbow or shoulder.”

Well that’s quite a challenge, especially number two. Rather like sticking your toe in your ear, it certainly needs practice.

Still, when all the rules are spelled out, how much can we really control? The keyboard I’m touching right now is probably a zoological dream for species development. Perhaps I shouldn’t type.

As I greet the cleaning crew at school (I’m weird, I think they are among the most important pillars of our society) there is a choice between a wave, a handshake or even a hug. For the lawyers among us, this happens after the children have left school. Forget it, I’m on the side of the huggers.

So far we have been told to stay away from undercooked meat, raw eggs, flying pigs and now other human beings. This will be a difficult path to navigate. When people start to fall sick we look for a reason, then a big plan. When I was a young teen we had to consider how to build our fall-out shelters in three minutes with brown paper. I guess what I learned had a rather short shelf life.

Having said all that, I’m delighted our community is preparing alternate learning structures, whether it be online or in little packages to take home. Sometimes the true solution comes from doing things differently.

Oh, and if you have a birthday this week I’ll let you choose between Row Your Boat and ABC – we won’t use candles in case it sends germs as you blow them out. Today a child passed me a little piece of almond cake, hand made and handled. It was delicious.

What I meant to say is that the students are glad to be back, mostly safe in our regular procedures and occasionally defying some of the laws of gravity. As usual.

What does it mean to be a teacher in the new world of unlimited information? Some of what we do is what we know, or knew, or what people who used to know taught the people we were.

If our learning was clothing we’d be having some difficult choices. Keep wearing the same old apparel day and night, without washing or pressing it – or try on some new styles that we might be comfortable stepping out in. What used to be off-the-peg wisdom is now tailored (differentiated) to each learner and easy to try on, adjust ourselves and wear as we please. It also has the novelty that for the most part it’s entirely free. Why is it that so many of our colleagues get uncomfortable in a fresh outfit and snuggle back into those old rags that go back centuries?

After years of being cajoled it looks as though we are about to get going with Google Apps for Education – limitless opportunities for developing curricula with strong curricular emphasis. Just like this incredible WordPress universe, the surface of which I’ m barely starting to tickle, let alone scratch. The Web 2.0 is a great tool and also a great teacher.

Let’s log into Google Mail and catch up on some of those cool connected apps that make it all so simple to connect, share and develop!

Isn’t that cool? I can’t wait to try again, as I have for the last fifteen minutes… Google should be ashamed, as should Microsoft, Mozilla, Safari and most of those little icons that ask us what we want to do then shut down our computers without asking. Fail whale and worse, so it’s time to wrap up, give up and shut down!

Just one more try to access my gMail with the iPhone – works first time.

Should I withdraw all my raging and get back to where we started?

Wonderful new clothing, takes a little getting used to and from time to time we lose some stitches. Get used to it, bespoke is out and it’s sew your own.

What didn’t work before will now, and what you were counting on may collapse. Learn to love it, live with it and enliven it.

Meanwhile those students swinging from the chandeliers don’t look so off-course after all. they will be the bungee learners we should look up to and look after (so they don’t break their necks before they graduate). In the classrooms we’ll be hearing “Watch out, here I come” and we’d better learn that Tarzan yell too or we’ll be left under the trees.

(Here is the explanation for the outage and the reason I could read my mail on the iPhone)