2009/365 Project. January in the bag.

I started the year with a goal of taking a photo a day for 2009 and so far I have not missed a beat. Not too much pressure yet, even though there are only so many subjects you can photograph with snow and fog dominating the weather pattern for the month.

Below is my January slide show ... all the chose pictures in one short slide presentation.


One thing that, in hindsight, stands out... where are photos of my grand daughters? I'll have to rectify that in days to come. Judy and I are going to Mexico shortly, so I watch for some February shots from there.

Are there guidelines for student publishing

Clarence Fisher is a teacher, Twitter correspondent, blog writer, and from what I can gather from reading his posts, someone who can generate interesting ideas to consider. Tonight, I read his latest entry, Of Opinions and Platforms, an article he wrote about freedom of speech and student writing within the context of school.

At one point in the article he notes:

Now, however, students have a global platform and the possibility of a global voice. What does this mean for students, teachers, and schools? While students are in our care, do they have the right to expect freedom of speech? Does the school have some ability to restrict this right if students are writing things that teachers or school administrator's don't agree with?

He raises a question that is not one highly applicable to our district, not because of the issues he relates to in his examples, but simply because we have so few actively blogging students or classes and the ones that are in place are, primarily in the elementary school where issues like abortion or suicide bombers seldom arise.

It did give me cause to look at our acceptable use policy for our students and examine where that written policy would stand in dealing with the examples in his article.

Keeping in mind that this policy statement is quite old and prior to Web 2.0 - it really should be amended - I can see some difficulties here.

The current policy reads:

1. The use of our system must be in support of education and research and consistent
with the educational objectives of School District #46.
2. Use of other organizations’ network or computing resources must comply with the
rules appropriate for that network.
3. Transmission of any material in violation of any national or provincial regulation is
prohibited. This includes, but is not limited to: copyrighted material, threatening or
obscene material, or material protected by trade secret.
4. Use of the system to access obscene or pornographic material is prohibited.
5. Sending material likely to be offensive or objectionable is prohibited.
6. Subscription to Listserv, bulletin boards and on-line services must be pre-approved
by the district.

I am thinking that it is #5 in this list that would be a discussion point for administrative staff if postings about abortion or suicide bombing were under discussion.

I think I need to review the policy in its entirety, and certainly have a discussion about our #5. I'm inclined to agree with Clarence ... if only our students were more prolific public writers from within the school walls.

Pay at the pump

Pay at the pump
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

I took this photo as part of my project for the year and some questions i might ask students about it (depending on grade)

1) How much did I pay per litre for the gas?
2) I had to "pay at the pump" You can see the note in the picture. Why do I have to do this? What has happened to make some cities or other government bodies pass such a law?
3) I earned PetroPoints for this purchase. What are these? Can you name some other companies that give points for purchases? Do your families have any of the "loyalty card" programs? Why would a company have such a program?
4) If the gas had cost another 10 cents a litre, how much would I have had to pay?
5) Can you find a site on the internet that would let you input the number of litres I purchased and return the number of gallons?
6) What is the currency difference today between US$ and CDN$? How much would my purchase have been in US$? How much per gallon would that have been?
7) Can you think of any reasons why gas is so much more expensive in one country or the other? Where in the world do you think gas is most expensive.

I'm sure there are lots more.... have fun if you do this exercise and if you do, send me a comment to say how it worked out.

It takes a community

It takes a community
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

One of my goals for 2009 is to upload a photo a day to Flickr and to write about some of them on this blog or in other places. One thing this project has done for me ... and we are only a week in to it.. is recognizing things I might otherwise not notice and, in the case of this photo, rediscovering something I had grown to take for granted. I was visiting one of the schools where I previously served as principal and seeing this mural and the maze table in front of it reminded me of the parent group who spearheaded its creation to enhance the foyer some years ago.

Though you can't see much detail in the image, the theme is that it takes a community to raise a child and as the road winds and moves through various mazes and twists and turns, there are wise sayings, and key words.

Under the table, on the floor, is a continuing representation of the road, much like the yellowbrick road, that leads to the hallways.

Thank you Cedar Grove parents for all you do for your children.

Looking outwards

Looking outwards
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

I can't ever recall there being so much snow wherever I have lived in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. And, certainly not in Gibsons, BC. Although the precipitation is supposed to turn to rain by tomorrow, I have to wonder how the roads will be for the buses to run to schools on Monday.

Resolving a VoiceThread issue

Off and on since I have been using Voicethread, I've collected links of projects I've thought were interesting to share with staff. Sometimes, though, I'll click on the link, the project will say loadiing, and then I'll be dumped to my own main page. This has been frustrating and I finally decided to look in to it.
In the Voicethread Ning group there is a discussion, Share your threads. Lori Feldman posted this link to what looked like would be an interesting project that I could share with our Special Ed teachers, but I ran in to the stall issue. I let her know, but it sounded like others were able to make the connection.
A day or so later there was another project I could not access - acting in the same way. I follow @voicethread on Twitter, so I asked a question about it. The response was that the project opened fine for him. Puzzled, I created a small screencast of what was happening for me and posted it to my Voicethread account. That smalll posting can be found here. Soon after posting and letting @voicethread know what I had done, he responded with a quick Twit back to me and also created a more detailed response to my issue. I know this solution will be very helpful as we get to the point of publishing more projects publicly and I want to ensure that the URL we give out is one that will work well with Safari as well as other browsers. I gather from his response that this is a bug that they are working on.

Oh yes... if you are using Safari, you can get to Lori's project with this link.

6 people 2 days good wine

6 people 2 days good wine
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

For over thirty years, with only a few exceptions, we have enjoyed bringing in the New Year with friends who used to live in Gibsons. Over the years we have alternated who hosts and this year it was our year to host them. Two years ago, we met another couple who are friends of theirs and when the suggestion was made that they might join us this year, we thought that was a great idea.

All of us love wine, particularly wine from BC. For two days we enjoyed converstions, introducing one another to new web resources, great food (at least four of us love to cook), and wine.

It is a great way to start the new year and despite the consumption of significant numbers of calories, we know we have this gathering to look forward to next year.

Duffy New Years Day

Duffy New Years Day
Originally uploaded by bobsd46

Thanks to many, including @shareski and @courosa I've decided to give the 365/2009 project a go.

Our house guests here celebrating New Years don't think I'll be able to complete this project .

This seems to be a much better idea than a resolution to lose weight - that's the one I usually make and then give up on by dinner time on January 1st.

Creative Commons Flickr Search

@AngelaMaiers in my Twitter PLN, posted a link to this set of Flickr search tools. One of the tools mentioned in that article is Flikr Storm, a site which gives the user a very simple interface to search for Creative Commons licensed materials. I used this site for my last blog post to find an image that I could freely use that would give "fork in the road" article some visual imagery.

I've been encouraging students and teachers to use Creative Commons and to give attribution to the creators of the media. In creating the blog post and using that image I forgot to give credit!

I'd like to correct that...

Here is the source of that image. Thanks, SkyWhisperer for making this image available for free use.