Page 98 – Mechanical Sympathy

Gear Upgrades & Bike Tribes

After a couple of weeks on a bike, I’m starting to get a feel for what I like in kit. I think having a real set of boots and pants really paid off at the course (near freezing and windy). Windproof clothes are worth their weight in gold. The other day I did my longest ride wearing the jeans I wore to work and it wasn’t very comfortable. I’m a big fan of wearing kit that suits the activity, jeans are a poor second choice.

The other piece that I’m not feeling are my gloves. They’re sufficient (they are Joe Rocket biking specific gloves) and they are comfortable, but plain black and not particularly warm. I was aiming for a white/grey vibe when I started, the Alpinestars SP-1 gloves shown are a nice, gauntletted glove that look like they offer a much wider range of comfortable temperature options (they close up or vent as needed). They also cost four times what the beginner gloves I got cost. I imagine they are whole levels of awesomeness beyond the basic gloves I started with.

I did the same thing with boots, I picked up the cheapest pair of bike-specific boots that were available. They are warm, dry and quite tall. I’ve always wanted an ankle boot, for cooling and the Alpinestars S-MX1 boots on the right give me the monochromatic look I’ve been looking for in a boot that isn’t huge. I purchased pretty low-rent gear to begin, mainly because what was available in the shop in the budget I was looking for. It was all purchased without any time in the saddle, so I didn’t really know what I needed, other than it should be motorbike specific.

The pants I got (I hadn’t planned on buying pants), happened to be on sale. They’ve been great, and as early/late season pant they’re wind resistant, have a liner that would let you ride in a snow storm and have a zipper, so you could get some air going through them. They are too long and way (WAY) too hot for summer driving. Looking for well ventilated pants I could wear over shorts, these Rev’It Airwave pants fit the bill, and continue the monochromatic theme I’m looking for. A light coloured pant would also help keep the heat out.

The one piece of kit I wouldn’t want to change is the jacket I got. The Joe Rocket Atomic 11.0 textile jacket is fantastic. Great wind resistance, a removable liner, vent openings, it fits me perfectly and feels fantastic… this is a jacket for all seasons, I have no regrets with it at all. I imagine the more expensive jackets might offer lighter weight, but this particular jacket is my favorite purchase. It’s padded in all the right places and I even like the break with my monochromatic vibe. I’ve yet to find a situation where the jacket hasn’t been just what I wanted it to be.

The other purchase I’ve been really happy with is my Zox Helmet. The funny part was I was treating it like a

full face helmet until one day I wondered what the red button on the chin did, and suddenly it was a modular helmet that flipped up! It’s comfortable, but the wind noise isn’t ideal. I’m guessing more expensive helmets offer a tighter fit and finish meaning less wind noise. It has nice venting, and when I treat the visor with a bit of soap, it’s fog free. As a cheap first helmet, I’ve no regrets. It does more than I hoped it would and didn’t break the bank to do it. It also lets me live my inner Stig, which is never a bad thing. The built in sun visor is a nice touch too. It really is a full featured helmet. The double adjustable top and bottom vents work very well and the storm trooper vibe is cool.

If I had any advice for buying kit your first time it would be: don’t rush it, try on lots of stuff, and then walk away and think about it. Waiting a couple of weeks saved me a couple of hundred bucks as things went on sale for spring time. Trying on a number of different styles also lets you decide what fits you better, and what feels right. I need to adjust the pants (too long in the leg) but I can probably pin them up. After a bit of looking, I’ve found pants that offer the same size with a shorter inseam. My next purchase will be more pinpoint accurate in terms of sizing.

In riding I’ve noticed that there are tribes. I definitely fall into the sport bike/standard bike crowd with my textile gear and full face helmet. The ‘I’m too cool’ leather cruiser crowd are so busy putting out a vibe they don’t have time to wave. I’ve found everyone who isn’t a Harley knob makes a point of giving me a wave. As a new rider, that’s a nice feeling. To all the ZZ Top chopper types, I say, “whatever dude.”

ECOO16: Virtual Reality & The DIY School Computer Lab

A chance to see some of my favourite
people and study one of my favourite things!

ECOO 2016 is coming this week. As a chance to catch up with tech-interested teachers from across the province it’s unparalleled. It’s also a wonderful opportunity to see what those people are doing in their classrooms and get tangible information on how to work with technology in a classroom. I end up with a full brain and a great deal of enthusiasm after a few days at the annual ECOO conference.

I’m beginning the conference on Wednesday by demonstrating virtual reality to teachers from across the province at Brenda Sherry and Peter Skillen‘s Minds on Media. MoM (or in this case MEGA MoM) is a showcase of #edtech in action, and a must see event. As an emerging technology VR is going to have a profound influence on education in the future. Having a chance to give people a taste of that future is exciting. The only reason I’ve been able to explore VR as it emerges is because of the DIY lab I’m presenting on Friday.

I get to spend the Thursday soaking up the latest in technology and how it can amplify pedagogy. On Friday I’m presenting on why you should develop your own do it yourself school computer lab and how to do it.

I first presented the concept at ECOO four years ago. It’s taken me that long to develop the contacts and build a program that can do the idea justice. I’ve always felt that offering students turn-key no-responsibility educational technology was a disservice, now I’m able to demonstrate the benefits of a student-built computer technology lab and explain the process of putting one together. I realize I’m swimming upstream from the put-a-Chromebook-in-every-hand current school of thought, but that’s my way.

There are a couple of things that have changed over the years that have made this once impossible idea possible. Our board’s IT department underwent a major change in management and philosophy a few years ago. The old school was all about locking everything down and keeping it the same for ease of management. The new guard sees digital technology as a means of improving teaching rather than as an end in itself. They encourage and enable rather than complain and prevent.

The other major change was that my department got reintegrated into technology (it was formerly a computer science based mini-department of its own). Back in tech I was suddenly able to access specialist high skills major funding and support and found I was able to build the DIY concept – something I could never have done without our board’s tech-support funding model.

Thanks to that new, adaptive, open concept IT approach I’m able to access a BYOD wireless network with anything I want. I don’t have to teach students on locked down, board

imaged, out of date PCs. My computer engineering seniors helped me build what we now have and the results have been impressive. In addition to students in our little rural school suddenly winning Skills Ontario for information technology and networking, we’re also top ten in electronics and, best of all, the number of students we have successfully getting into high demand, high-tech post secondary programs is steadily rising.

When I thought it might be interesting for students to get their hands on emerging virtual reality hardware in the spring it was only a matter of finding the funding. We built the PC we needed to make it happen and then it did. We’ve had VR running in the lab for almost half a year now at a time when most people haven’t even tried it. Because we were doing it ourselves, what costs $5000 for people who need a turn key system cost us three thousand. We’re now producing those systems for other schools in our board.

A do it yourself lab is more work but it allows your students and you, the teacher, to author your own technology use. Until you’ve done it you can’t imagine how enabling this is. My students don’t complain about computers not working, they diagnose and repair them. My students don’t wonder what it’s like to run the latest software, they do it. Does everything work perfectly all the time? Of course not, but we are the ones who decide what to build and what software to use to get a job done, which allows us to understand not only what’s on stage but everything behind the curtains too.

If that grabs you as an interesting way to run a classroom, I‘m presenting at 2pm on Friday. If not, fear not, ECOO has hundreds of other presentations happening on everything from how to use Minecraft in your classroom to deep pedagogical talks on how to create a culture that effectively integrates technology into education.

Thursday’s keynote is Shelly Sanchez Terrell, a tech orientated teacher/author who offers a challenging look at how to tackle technology use in education. Friday’s keynote is the Jesse Brown (who I’m really looking forward to hearing), a software engineer and futurist who asks tough questions about just how disruptive technology may be to Canadian society.

If you’re at all interested in technology use in learning, you should get down to Niagara Falls this week and have a taste of ECOO. You’ll leave full of ideas and feel empowered and optimistic enough to try them. You’ll also find that you suddenly have a PLN of tech savvy people who can help, enable and encourage your exploration. I hope I can be one of them.

If you can’t make it, you can always watch it trend on Twitter:

#bit16 Tweets
note: to make a feed embed on twitter, go to settings-widget-create new and play with it, very easy!

Spring Riding On-Bike Photography

A Sunday in the teens (Celsius) meant that riding was inevitable. The Tiger had been sitting in the garage as it hailed and snowed outside this past week, but once again we get a break in the neverending Canadian winter, so off I go.

In the fall I got a Ricoh Theta V, so this was the first go at on-bike photography with it. Using the mount I made last year, I attached the new camera (same form factor and similar size to the SC I’d used before) and off I went for the first ride over to The Forks of the Credit and Higher Ground.

The ThetaV has better processing power for video than the older model, but the camera is similar spec, so still photos, where I like to work, weren’t likely to change. Once nice thing about the V is that it processes way faster, so can do a photo every 4 seconds instead of the old camera’s one every eight. Having twice the chance of catching a good corner was no bad thing and resulted in a number of good shots as I rode up and down The Forks, usually behind confused people driving beige minivans as slowly as they possibly could. I waited for a gap on the return ride and got a bit luckier with space, though it was pretty busy on the first sunny Sunday of the year.

Winter run-off everywhere meant a cautious line, but the Tiger on Michelins is always sure footed whether it’s on snow runoff or piles of sand left over from winter.

I guess someone missed the switchback – bet it was a fast and furious type…

Stuck behind that tool in a big maroon mini-van again, so I’m waiting for a gap. Nothing more frustrating than riding for an hour to find some curves only to be stuck behind a yobbo in a mini-van.

Quality of photo is similar between the ThetaSC and the ThetaV, but the V takes way more photos quickly, so you’re more likely to capture a good moment.

Parked up at Higher Ground in Belfountain. Don’t order a specialty coffee if it’s busy – the regular brew is good and you get it right away.

As capable as the V is, it suddenly flashed out on me when I went to ride home and wouldn’t start. This was a bit of a surprise as all previous Thetas have been astonishingly tough. The Theta V seems to have magically fixed itself today, but now I’m wondering if it’s up to the job.

In the meantime they’ve come out with the Theta Z1, a higher resolution 360 camera with a faster lens and even faster processing performance, including in-camera stitching of images together. It looks very nice, but if my first upgrade won’t take photos when I need it to after it’s first real weekend of use, I’m second guessing a bigger, more expensive step further.

In another meanwhile, GoPro has the Fusion 360 camera, which is tough and offers similar high resolution imaging. It’s a bit of a brick, so the Theta still seems like a more aerodynamic and logical choice for on-bike photography, but not if it doesn’t work. More to come. Hopefully this in-and-out Theta V was a one time thing.

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via IFTTT

Across the Halliburton Highlands

411kms across the Highlands

After a few days of R&R recovering from our ride out to the 1000 Islands and seeing the sights, it was time to pack up and prepare for our return home. The plan was to travel through the Halliburton Highlands, where it is claimed that Ontario’s best roads reside.

The Tiger morphed from light weight, single rider mode to two-up, full luggage touring mode in about ten minutes. The rear suspension was tightened up for the extra weight and we were ready to go.

The plan was to cut north west from the Thousand Islands and get onto the twisties as soon as possible. It worked well. We soon found ourselves leaning into corners more than we were upright (a rarity in Ontario). When I’m in corners like that i don’t stiffen up in the saddle and I can ride for hours without fatigue.

Regional Road 15 got interesting almost immediately, weaving around lakes and pieces of the Canadian Shield peaking through the earth. As we travelled north those rock outcroppings became the norm rather than the exception and the roads only got better. 38 up to Highway 7 was a lovely ride with constant bends and big elevation changes as we bounced in and out of river valleys that had cut their way through the rock. If this road was a sign of things to come, then the riding the highlands was going to be special.

We stopped at Fall River Restaurant on Highway 7 because I figured it would be the last place with a busy enough road to warrant an open business, except it didn’t. This turned into a theme on this ride: don’t depend on the tourist trade to keep a business open, instead look to a stable community to keep a business open.

The lady from the post office came out and told us only the post office is open, the general store, ice cream and restaurant are all closed and only open on the weekend. There wasn’t even a toilet available. Three vehicles pulled in looking for a stop while we were there, but were turned away. We drank our own water and stretched in the empty parking lot before hoping on the bike and continuing up the winding country road 38.

In Elphin the plan was to turn with the 38 and continue west, and even though Elphin is a tiny place with only one major turn, we missed it. This spoke to another thing we learned on this ride; you’ll see signs for corners and bumps everywhere even though these things are self evident, but navigational signs are small, missing or incorrect. I guess most people follow a screen telling them what to do nowadays, but for the rest of us, some accurate navigational signage would be appreciated.

When I saw a second sign for regional road 12 which we weren’t supposed to be on, I pulled over at the Mississippi River (when I take a wrong turn, I don’t mess around!). It was a beautiful, shady spot and we had a good stretch and watched the kingfishers getting their breakfast before saddling up again and u-turning back to Elphin.

Back on the 38 again, we wound around lakes before finding the 509 I turned left toward Ompah, but it turns out that should have been a right (turning signs around is fun!). When we arrived back at Highway 7 I just shook my head and made a right turn, figuring I could angle north again on either Kaladar or Madoc. By now the heat was back and moving at speed down Highway 7 was a nice way to cool off. This was the prettiest part of 7, with few towns and no reduced speeds, so everyone was clipping along nicely. We stopped in Kaladar for gas even though we didn’t really need it and got sports drinks. By the time we got to Madoc it was wicked hot and we sought air conditioning in the only open restaurant we’d seen so far – a McDonalds. I was beginning to despair for local food in the Highlands.

Coe Hill Cafe – cool ceiling, good
bakery and coffee.

After a much needed cool down and hydration we hopped back on the bike and hiked up highway 62 to Coe Hill, which is where we learned that you’ll find local businesses, but only in small towns where people live year round. The cottage crowd and travellers are too fickle and passing to support a business up here.

The ride up 62 had us stopping at various bridges for up to five minutes at a time due to construction, so we got into Coe Hill ready to get out of the sun for a few minutes again. Fortunately, the Coe Hill Cafe was open and got us sorted out even though we were looking a bit ragged. It’s amazing what a good cup of coffee in a cool shady place can do to get you back on your feet.

I missed the poor signage for Lower Faraday Road (the reason we’d come this way in the first place), and then missed another turn thirty seconds later. I cannot over state how random the road signage is up this way. I really wish the MoT would take the money put into redundant cornering signage and apply it to identifying the roads themselves.

They show a couple of sports bikes riding down Lower Faraday on the website, but the section they’re showing is the last mile up to Ontario 28. While this road is indeed twisty, much of the surface is atrocious with big pot holes and gravel everywhere from the many driveways that feed onto it. You’d find it frustrating trying to explore any section of this road on a sports bike.

Even with the big shocks on the Tiger it was a rough, perilous ride. You couldn’t push any corners because of the debris, quality of the road and traffic. Lower Faraday has no centre line for much of it and every vehicle coming the other way was the largest possible pickup truck you’ve ever seen moving well above the speed limit in the middle of the road, and this was on a Tuesday afternoon. We road out of our way to see this ‘ten best’ road, and it wasn’t.

We headed in to Bancroft after the disappointing Faraday experience and stopped at the information tourism building. They have an excellent little mineral exhibit showing the various mining that goes on in the area, as well as being a cooling centre. Half an hour in the air conditioning with cold water and some cool rocks got us ready to ride again.

Some of the best roads of the day were ahead of us. We took 62 north out of Bancroft and then cut across toward Highland Grove. This roller-coaster of a road was well marked, clean and had a consistent surface. Corners varied from tight switchbacks to long sweepers with big elevation changes, what a joy! We followed the 648 around to the 118, passing Old Ridge Authentic BBQ (closed) where I’d hoped to have dinner.

The bike looks fine, we were
exhausted!

We quickly discovered that the 118 is no boring connecting road, with beautiful scenery and engaging corners all the way in to Haliburton. Even though it was heading towards evening the air temperature was still well in the thirties and humidity was high. We’d done over 400kms entirely on twisty back roads and were wiped. We limped in to Pinestone Resort just south of Haliburton and parked it up.

The Pinestone offered a quiet room with good beds for a reasonable price. We went for a swim (salt water indoor and outdoor pools) and then had an excellent dinner at Stone 21, the onsite restaurant. By the end of the evening we were back on our feet again.

I had us up early the next morning, hoping to beat the heat. I’d looked up good local breakfasts and found The Millpond Restaurant in Carnarvon, right on our way to Bracebridge. It was a short hop over there on very windy, but rough backroad for an excellent breakfast. Great price, great food, great service. If you’re anywhere around Haliburton, give the Millpond a go, you won’t be disappointed.

The most perfect 100kms of the trip.

Outside afterwards the hydro line-men who were there for breakfast were curious about the bike. For the fifth time this trip I explained the resurrection of Triumph and how they are building new bikes. The general public seems to recognize the brand as historical, but our post-modern/art-deco Tiger raises a lot of questions.

It was only just past 9am at this point, we were well fed, well rested and it was a perfect 20°C under a cloudless sky. We pulled on to an empty 118 and rode the weaving, smooth pavement in bliss. No sweat, no traffic, beautiful scenery, this was the moment we’d been searching for.

We passed through Bracebridge and got into Port Carling about 10:30am. Traffic had picked up once we were into the Muskokas, so we pulled over at the information/tourism place for a stretch and a heads up on where to get a coffee. Stopping at the info/tourism spots on this trip was never a disappointment.

Port Carling is a pretty little place. We were told it was a short walk to the Camp Muskoka Coffeehouse which helps support a camp that teaches leadership to students. The coffee was excellent and the walk into town offered a good stretch.

Back up at the info-stop we bumped into a fellow from Barbados who was puzzled at our very modern looking Triumph. He said there are lots of old Triumphs on the island, but they’re very expensive. Once again I told the phoenix like story of Hinckley Triumph and how they are building some of the most modern bikes on the planet. He had no idea, but thought there would be a huge market for a modern, small Triumph (they have cc limits in Barbados). Perhaps he’ll contact Hinckley and see about the 250cc little Triumph that hasn’t happened yet.

We saddled up and left the shade of the info stop. The sun was blistering now, but we were nearing the end of our Highlands road ride. We quickly got to Bala, but I missed the poorly marked turn out to the 400 (surprise, surprise). No worries, we just stayed on the 169 down the Gravenhurst. A couple of ten minute stops at bridge construction had us both sweating heavily by the time we got into Gravenhurst. I’d only ever seen the highway side of Gravenhurst, so I was surprised that it took us 15 minutes of traffic lights to get through it.

Ahhh…. air conditioning!

Once clear I hopped on 11 South and made time. We pushed through the heat and steady but fast moving traffic all the way past Barrie before stopping at an ONroute for gas, lunch and a cool down. I’d been getting over 49mpg solo without luggage. The astonishing Tiger was still getting 47.2mpg two up with luggage. We’d done over 430kms since our last fill up the day before in Madoc.

I used every trick in the book to cool off, soaking my head and arms to let the water evaporate and drinking a lot of fluids. We took our time before stepping back out into the oven. It was over 40°C with humidity when we finally left.

We bombed down the 400 and turned toward Orangeville on Highway 9, which was chockablock with traffic on a Wednesday afternoon. Aggressive drivers on the highway were lane changing without indicating around typically poor Canadian lane discipline (you’re supposed to pass on the left). We got cut off a couple of times, once badly enough to prompt a salute from me. On Highway 9 with eighteen wheelers spitting hot gravel at us and cars sitting at green lights while staring at their smartphones, I was at the end of my patience. We finally got around Orangeville only to almost get hit by a car passing a line of traffic coming right at us on the Fergus Road. This was as far from the 118 on a cool, quiet morning as we could possibly get.

We rolled in to Elora mid-afternoon. Once parked I pulled out the laser temperature tester from the garage. The driveway was over 50°C. A cold shower and feet up on the couch ended our 750+km ride through the Haliburton Highlands. The last leg back into Southern Ontario was the most dangerous part of the whole trip, and made me wish those sublime Ontario Highland roads weren’t so far away on the other side of these overcrowded, frustrating and tedious Southern Ontario roads.

The whole shebang – including the boring straight bits at the end.

Top of the tower in 1000 Islands

Canadian rider…

Riding through the Canadian Shield… literally!

The beginning of the big bake-off to get home

Data Exhaust

At a recent educational technology conference in Phoenix Constance Steinkuehler mentioned the term ‘data exhaust’ in passing to describe the numbers pouring out of testing. The idea of data as pollution has been with me for a while. The statistics I’ve seen derived from data in education have often been farcical attempts at justifying questionable programming. It’s gotten to the point that when someone starts throwing charts and graphs up in a presentation I assume they are hiding something.

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Constance’s term ‘data exhaust’ had me tumbling through metaphorical implications. If the data we generate out of education is the exhaust, what are we doing when we turn the education system toward producing data exhaust for its own sake? No student will ever face a standardized test in the working world, it’s a completely unrealistic and limited way in which to measure learning let alone prepare students for the rest of their lives. Using standardized testing to measure learning has us revving the education vehicle at high rpm in neutral; we’re making a lot of smoke and not going anywhere.

Is data always useless? Not at all, but the tendency to find patterns and turn data in statistics takes something already abstract and abstracts it even further. That people then take these inferences and limited slices of information as gospel points to the crux of the crisis in American education. We end up with what we think are facts when they are really fictions that use math of lend an air of credibility.

Even with statistics and data metrics off the table, the idea of looking at the data exhaust pouring out of education as a way of directing future action demonstrates staggering shortsightedness. Education is not a data driven, linear or binary enterprise, it is a complex human one. We are not producing expert test takers, we should be producing well rounded human beings that can thrive in a complex, competitive, data rich century. No standardized test can measure that.

If you took your poorly running car into a mechanic and they just kept revving the engine harder and harder while watching smoke billow out of the back you’d think something was wrong with them, yet that is how American education is tuning itself. They then wonder why they aren’t scoring well in world rankings. If we want the education vehicle to take us somewhere we need to crack open the hood and take a look at the engine, but what is that engine? What actually makes the engine of education run well? It isn’t fixating on the data exhaust.

Canada has performed very well in world education rankings. We find ourselves able to keep up with some of the world’s best education systems, like Finland, and we do it at a much lower cost per student than the US has managed to. It looks like all that testing and data exhaust fixation costs a lot more than your students’ well being, it’s also hugely inefficient.

A well running education system focuses on pedagogy. It is what fuels it, it is what makes the system serve its students using the best possible learning practices. Pedagogy is a tricky concept, and it doesn’t offer simplistic solutions that digital technology companies can app-up, but it does give everyone, no matter how much they may disagree on the details, a common goal.

There was a lot of talk about coming together and pulling in the same direction over the Common Curriculum at this conference. We aren’t all on the same page in Canada when it comes to processes or how the system should run, but pedagogy is on everyone’s mind. Best practices have to drive education. Having standards isn’t a bad thing, but when you’re so fixated on the data exhaust you’re producing that you forget fundamental pedagogical practice, you’ve lost sight of what education should be in the data smog you’ve created.

In Canada we pay less and produce more by focusing on pedagogy rather than empty data gathering (aka: standardized testing).

via USC Rossier’s online Doctor of Education

Archetypal Emotional Response In High Stress Learning

An editorial piece I read in Bike Magazine a while back has stayed with me. In it the author (a veteran motorcycle trainer) was describing how a rider’s emotional response to high stress situations limits their ability to learn from them. It struck me because I still catch myself falling into both of the archetypal mind traps he describes. I now struggle to get beyond them and adopt the clinical approach of a master learner that he suggests.

In a high-stakes, emotional environment like riding you can’t be trowing tantrums or assigning blame (though many do), you need to be calm and aware in order to both assess a situation as its happening and accurately recall and learn from it later. Emotion is a natural response to high stress situations but it often gets in the way of attaining mastery.

The author of the piece (I’m still looking for it but I think I lent the magazine out) suggests that people fall into archetypal behaviors when they are stressed and emotional. These behaviours prevent you from making coherent decisions in the moment as well as preventing progress by hiding memory details behind ego and emotion. The two archetypes we fall back into are child and parent. Since we’re all familiar with these roles it only makes sense that we’d revert to them when we are under pressure.

The child throws tantrums and reacts selfishly, aggressively and emotionally. People falling into this mind-set shout and cry at the circumstances and focus on blaming others. The child is emotional and blind to just about everything around them except the perceived slight. This approach tends to be dangerously over-reactive. Have you ever seen a student blow up in an asymmetrical way over a minor issue? They have fallen into the child archetype emotional trap.

The parent mind-set seems like an improvement but it is just as effective at blocking learning. The parent shakes their head disapprovingly and focuses on passing judgement. You’ll see someone in this mind-set tutting and rolling their eyes at people. The parent is focused on passing judgement loudly and publicly. You can probably see how easy it is for teachers to fall into this one.

The child is selfish, emotional and immediate. The parent wraps themselves in a false sense of superiority that makes the user feel empowered when they might otherwise feel helpless. Both archetypes attempt to mitigate frustration and ineffectiveness behind emotion and ego.

I’ve seen students stressed out by exams or other high-stakes learning situations fall into these traps but it took that motorbike instructor to clarify how students can lose their ability to internalize learning by falling into these archetypes. He describes riders who shout and yell at someone cutting them off. They are responding to their own poor judgement and lack of attention with the emotional outburst. Suddenly finding themselves in danger, they lash out emotionally in order to cover up their own inadequacies. That emotional blanket effectively hides any chance of reviewing and learning from a situation objectively.

The parent adopts that judgmental stance. Last summer I had a senior student who rides a motorcycle get involved in an accident. He had bad road rash and was bruised all over. He went with the parent approach. The woman who hit him was panicked and frightened because she hadn’t seen him. Her own mother had been hurt in a similar motorcycle accident and she felt a lot of guilt over being the cause of this one. The student said ‘she came out of no-where’. I said, ‘that’s odd, cars weight thousands of pounds. I’ve never seen one appear out of nowhere before.’ Rather than review his own actions and perhaps learn to develop better 360° awareness, the student was happy to piggy-back on the driver’s emotional response and pass judgement. He never felt any responsibility for that accident and still believes that cars can come out of nowhere.

I enjoy riding because it is a difficult, dangerous craft that it is very important to do well. In pressurized learning situations you need an alert, open mind. I’ve never once seen this the focus of consideration in school (except perhaps in extracurricular sports). What we do instead is try and remove any pressure and cater to emotionality rather than teaching students to master it.

Other Links:
Comparing Teacher PD to Motorcycle Training
Training Fear and Ignorance out of Bikecraft
Archetypal Pedagogy

Busy Winter Garage & Kawasaki Industrial Art

I never intended to become hooked on Kawasakis. The motorcycle fixation of my younger self was always Hondas, but when I finally got into motorcycling it was Kawasakis that kept appearing in the right place at the right time, and they’ve generally been good to me. To date I’ve owned three Kawasakis, two Yamahas and a Triumph; not a Honda in sight.

After selling the Yamaha XS1100 custom project bike last summer I decided to double down on the wounded Concours which, in spite of a lot of work and money spent, wasn’t sellable. When I can ride I ride but when the snow flies I tend to get busy in the garage, and this winter is no different.

The winter garage is a busy garage. The Tiger’s having a rest while I work on the Concours custom. Before the spring season begins the Tiger’ll have new fork oil, spark plugs and a coolant flush.

The Concours is in an unprecedented state of undress. With the rear end removed and the plastics off it looks like a completely different machine. Yesterday I removed the coolant reservoir located under the oil cooler behind the front wheel. It’s going to get relocated to the back of the battery box so it’s out of the way of rocks being kicked up from the road. There are a lot of after market options for a coolant reservoir, so finding an alternative that fits well in the new location shouldn’t be hard.

The 7 inch round headlight with built in LED indicators showed up from Amazon but I’m still waiting on the tail light. I’d initially thought of doing some kind of front fairing but now I’m going bare bones with only metal framing to mount the light and minimal instruments.

I purchased some stainless steel framing and I’ve been cutting it into muffler mounts and the rear light fairing bracket. That rear fairing piece is going to be as minimal as possible as well. Perhaps even a box for the rear light in bare frame. Visible girder frame pieces are going to become a part of what this will look like when it’s finished.

I took the instrument cluster apart to see if any of it was salvageable (it wasn’t), but the insides look like something out of the DaVinci Code!

Some 90° brackets on the upper fork clamps has me ready to try some headlight mounting ideas.

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Experimenting with Geometry on 360° On-Motorbike Photography

My 360 degree on-motorcycle photography experiment continues. The process has evolved over time from handheld, manually shot photos to automatic, bike mounted shots. I’ve tried half a dozen different cameras and mounts on locations all over the bike, most recently on the tail rack.

I’ve always wanted to be able to catch the front of the bike while in motion. Mounted to the windscreen the Ricoh Theta doesn’t quite reach. This time I purchased a 1/4 inch threaded rod and cut it to size (about a foot long) and used it to extend the camera out front of the bike. Double fastening the camera at one end and the tripod at the other with extra nuts meant I had no trouble with the rig moving.

The results speak for themselves…

Early shots are using the extension rig mounted on the upper windshield. It clears the camera from the fairing and gives clear shots of the whole machine and rider while in motion. The rig is stable and holds the camera for steady shots. It never budged on a variety of roads at various speeds.

From the windshield I moved the camera rig to the right rearview mirror. There was a bit of flex in the windshield with the rig attached, but none from the mirror. The shots were once again very stable and steady at a variety of speeds on a variety of different road conditions. This one is at about 80km.hr on a country back road. This angle still shows the front of the bike, but gives more of a 3/4 view of the back of the machine.

The distance further off the fairing means a wider view of corners. Even with energetic riding on the twisty bits the rig was problem free.

Further along I angled the rig up higher for a more top down view. The tripod ball joint that lets you easily angle it. If kept tight you can do this on the fly with ease.

One of the benefits of this on-bike camera rig is that it gives a good sense of speed and captures the intimacy of riding because the camera is doing everything the bike and rider are. Here I’m up to triple digits on a highway.

For the last angle I put the camera as far up and out to the side as I could angle it off the rearview mirror. This catches the whole side of the bike and rider well, as well as offering a good sight lines up and down the road.

That worked. All images are screen captures in the Ricoh imaging software cleaned up in Adobe Lightroom.

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The New Efficiency

This African proverb passed me on the
internet last week, and left me thinking.

Originally published on Dusty World in June of 2015:

https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-new-efficiency.html

Last semester I had an energetic grade 9 suddenly stop his interaction with the internet and wonder out loud (and it was asked in all seriousness): “why is it in video games and movies old people are so cool, with hidden knowledge and special powers, but in real life they just suck?”

He received an avalanche of ‘how could you say that?!’, but then everyone went on to say how wonderful their grandparents were. Everyone loves their grandparents, but no one was willing to defend age and by extension experience in and of itself.

When this African proverb popped up I immediately felt the pinch of that class discussion (yes, I know, we were talking about the value of age and experience in a class where I was supposed to be teaching computer engineering, I guess my kids won’t be ready for whatever standardized test they invent for it).

What role does age and experience have in the information age? This proverb also refers to libraries, which have been facing their own test of relevance thanks to the Googliable nature of information.

Information technology has made personal knowledge irrelevant. The life experiences of human beings have become meaningless, replaced by internet searches. Why would you bother to ask your grandfather how to change the brakes on your car when you can just Google it? Once a useful source of information, the elders around you are now objects of affection and little more, they serve no function. You can get the information you need without any of the static (anecdotal stories that accompany the information). This sanitized, machine driven version of knowledge has many benefits.

You can reduce complex human knowledge (for example, the development of literacy) into simplistic, easy to quantify standards and then make sweeping suppositions about the results. Banal opinion based on internet ‘fact’ is the new intelligence. Like any opinion you hear online, carefully crafted grading schemes end up becoming the truth, which fits nicely into the antiseptic version of knowledge the information age peddles.

Another benefit is the downward social pressure on human communities. When you plug people into a centralized source of information you wean them from the social necessities of family, community and even nation. When no one needs anyone else (but they do need an ISP), you have removed all the social static and laid the groundwork for a kind of hypercapitalism that will make past look like the middle ages!

When we try and argue for meaningful learning (in anything other than a poster), we are met with educational administration making sad faces and saying it’s not viable. The reasonable provision of caps on class sizes is just such an attempt, which is why the meme on the right goes straight to the heart of this issue.

Tangible data that grossly oversimplify human endeavour are how we roll nowadays. As the poster states, class caps mean nothing, but fail to hand out a piece of paper with grades so abstract that they are meaningless along with computer generated comments, and ‘everyone loses their minds!’

There is some push back against the dimensionless facts that drive the information age. You find it in the physical world in grass roots movements like slow food or maker spaces where you see individuals trying to wrest control of production from the hands of remote systems. In these places the idea of human interaction is key to the process of learning. They are trying to build communities in an arid digital landscape that is bereft complex human interaction… unless they are under a corporate banner; communities designed for marketing purposes. What would be the economic sense in creating a community solely for the benefit its members?

Ironically, human interaction is less and less a factor in human education. The push to integrate technology into pedagogy without considering its implications has infected education systems with the same efficiency that we now enjoy everywhere else. We can hardly expect the personally demeaned yet highly efficient funployees in the private sector to demand anything other than consistent menial labour, it’s what they do. Developing complex personal relationships in order to effectively mentor and teach aren’t very efficient/economically viable. They are certainly discouraged in the brave new world of 21st Century education where teachers are now facilitators, reduced to getting out of the way of learning and making sure the #edtech is working.

One of my students from many years ago is now out in the world. She was sitting in a restaurant a few weeks ago watching two employees, a teenage girl and an older woman on their break. The older woman kept trying to start a conversation. The teen ignored her, buried in her phone until she finally snapped, ‘What? What do you want?” She was incensed that this woman had interrupted her texting time. She was probably in withdrawal because they don’t let her have the phone while working. I can bet which one of those two employees gets better performance reviews, though she sounds like an ass.

Maybe human experience is meaningless nowadays. Maybe old people are useless and libraries are a waste of space (great idea: replace every one in school with franchise coffee shops to balance the books!). Maybe we don’t need each other to learn any more, it’s certainly not as efficient.

LINKS

Watch the new efficiency infect the UK’s Labour Party
“In 2015 we are living in a cold, cruel, and desolate country in which benefit sanctions, foodbanks, poverty wages, and ignorance reign, governed by a clutch of rich, privately educated sociopaths whose conception of society has been ripped straight from the pages of a dystopian novel.”

What’s In a Name?

Originally published on Dusty World in March of 2019: https://temkblog.blogspot.com/2019/03/whats-in-name.html

Last year we drove across Canada. We were having breakfast in Drumheller, Alberta when a big family came in. The grandfather/patriarch of the family was talking to a granddaughter he obviously dotes over. She was going into high school the next fall and he asked her what she was looking forward to and she said, “wood shop!” He immediately responded, “why would a pretty girl like you want to do that?” She did the only thing she could think to do without causing a scene and laughed. I didn’t laugh, I was staggered by that exchange. Welcome to the world of #girlsinSTEM.

***

We’re taking our second run at the CyberTitan cybersecurity competition this year. Last year’s success suddenly meant a surge of interest, so I was able to quickly put together two teams. When none of them were female (again), I started asking the keenest girls from my junior classes if they would be interested in forming an all-female team.

Cyberpatriot, the competition that Canada’s CyberTitan works out of, has also recognized how few women there are in STEM in general and information technology / cybersecurity in particular, so offered to waive the application fee for all-female teams this year. At national finals last year an ICTC organizer noted how few girls were in the competition. With that observation and support I was able to convince six of my strongest former grade 9 girls to give it a go.

Early on I noticed how differently they approached the intensity of the competition from the two boys teams. Where the boys tended to specialize and generally work independently, the girls were constantly conscious of how everyone on the team was contributing and were always finding ways to integrate each other into what they were doing. In some cases, members of the male teams did very little, but none of the girls were so relegated.

All three teams were new to this (all of last year’s team graduated), so no one had previous experience of the competition, but the sense of ownership was much more absolute with the male teams. That sense of male ownership and dominance has been an ongoing theme in teaching technology – I’ve been writing about it for years.

One of my standard team building approaches is to encourage the teams to name themselves to help bring them together. Both male teams took names that were almost an afterthought because they were only loosely teams and didn’t feel like it mattered, because it didn’t – they all feel empowered and capable. The female team came back to me with something that spoke to their experience, charged them up and caused a sense of belonging vital to survival in such a difficult circumstance.

I have to admit, the name did cause me to pause, but my first reflex was to support this sense of edgy self-identification, especially when I saw how it unified the girls and helped them deal with the pressures on them. I passed on the name to admin and it was ok’d for competition with no discussion, which surprised me a bit, but also delighted me because it meant (I thought) that the the difficult circumstances of this team were being recognized.

A byte is 8 bits of information – typically a byte is used to denote a character in a computer using ASCII code, so each letter you see in this blog is a byte of information. A terabyte is an almost inconceivable number of bytes – about a trillion of them. How big is a trillion? If you spent a million dollars a day since year zero to now in 2019, you still wouldn’t have spent a trillion dollars. It’s a powerfully big number used in the male dominated field of computer technology to denote massive amounts of memory.

The girls’ team came upon the idea of combining terabyte with bitches into the Terabytches. I doubt the grandpa telling his granddaughter to do girl-appropriate things would approve, but anyone with any degree of feminist sympathy would recognize the power in combining a traditionally derogatory term used to limit and belittle women (especially smart, vocal ones) with a powerful technology term from deep within tech-bro culture.

The Terabytches put up with the condescension (most of it unconsciously delivered without malice) of their male colleagues throughout the competition by looking after each other and generally ignoring it. In our conservative, rural school, the idea that tech is for boys is firmly entrenched in spite of my ongoing best efforts. At one point one of my seniors who is also an engineering lead (and a genuinely nice kid) said, “why are there so many girls in here?” at lunch one day. There were two girls in a room of 20+ people. I immediately called him on it and said, “you mean the two girls in here are too many?” and he quickly backpedaled, but the assumptions implicit in the comment still echoed around the room.

My male teams both did very well in this competition, but at no point did they ever feel like they shouldn’t be there, the girls frequently questioned their presence in it. This was a subject that boys did in a room almost always full of boys. Even in my most gender diverse class I’m lucky to approach a 20/80 gender split, most are much less. Many of these culturally enabled boys will go on to successful careers in digital technology while being told, ‘atta boy’ by family and friends. Meanwhile, girls are being asked why they are wasting their prettiness on technology… and that’s the nicest kind of negativity they’ll get. More often it’s outright dismissive chauvinism. The fact that they had each other to lean on allowed them to battle on in a chauvinistic field of fierce competition.

I had a female teacher tell me last week in Ottawa that she won’t run all-female teams because it’s unfair unless all of her students can participate. That kind of pick-and-choose-equity when it comes to fairness is very frustrating to hear, especially from a female colleague. When we don’t live in a remotely equal society, saying that everyone should get the same supports is really code for maintaining status-quo prejudices.

The chauvinism the Terabytches face hasn’t been limited to passive aggressive face to face situations. When we discovered that they had gotten through to nationals and neither of the male teams had, the first thing out of most of the boys was, ‘they only got through because they are girls.’ My response would be, ‘they got as far as they did in a workspace and field of study that they were continually alienated and dismissed by.” That included barbed comments from anonymous people online and having to study material written almost entirely by men for men while competing in a contest created almost entirely by men for men. A better question would be, with all of those advantages, why didn’t you boys do better? The Terabytches finished right behind our senior all-male team in points and beat them in some aspects of the contest.

Picking a sharp name that counters stereotypes is not only a smart move from a competitive point of view, it also highlights all of those assumptions people make around gender and technology. Boys teams can name themselves after generally european rapists and murderers, often with names that glamourize the violence. They can be raiders with creepy viking logos and (white) crusaders battling (brown) infidels, they can be marauders and pirates, cavaliers and knights. Pick your strong male historical context and there’s your team name. The male culture of team naming also likes to identify with violent animals and revel in that association with male predators. If you see a bird logo it’s a male-centric one. The cardinals are red, the blue jays are blue, the orioles are orange and the falcons are big and burley and aggressively male in appearance. If you want to go mythical, you’ll see all sorts of griffins, dragons and argonauts, but medusas, sirens and harpies? Not so much, because the connotation is different. History and culture aren’t kind to strong female stereotypes. When ‘babe bunch’, ‘daisy dukes’ and ‘fembots’ are in your list of ‘top powerful female team names‘, you know we have a long way to go on this.

With media attention ramping up now that the Terabytches are the top all-female team in Canada, concerns have arisen around the name. Worries about how the media will spin this to create sensationalism are fair, but my first reflex is still one I’m comfortable with, especially knowing how intelligent and outspoken these Terabytches are. Having any male tell these young women that they can’t create a strong, edgy team name that speaks to their experience in facing obvious and open sexism while outperforming all-male teams from all over the country is something I’m going to dig my heels in about. Should they face reductive, sensationalist press in the process of being national finalists, I have no doubt that everyone on the team will be a spectacular ambassador for girls in STEM.

Jaime, the reporter at out local paper, had a great interview with the girls the other week. She has written a newspaper article about it, but it’s only the tip of a thirty minute interview that had the Terabytches talking so frankly about the challenges of competing as girls in such a male dominated contest that I was tearing up. The fact that they are an all-female team has allowed them to weather the negativity and succeed in spite of it. Though several of them are very competitive by nature, they all want to reform the team again next year and aim even higher.

Competitive teams tend to double down on the male stereotypes when identifying themselves. If a female team attempts to do the same thing from their own lived experience, there are questions around appropriateness that start to feel like status quo sexism. Competing in bro culture of technology in the male dominated world of cybersecurity in a conservative, rural community was always going to be an uphill struggle. I know the Terabytches are up for it. I need to lean on the strength of my convictions and back them through the continuous and sometimes overwhelming static. If every educator approached the sexism systemic in our subject areas with the same zeal, we could eventually level the playing field and let everyone participate on equal terms.

In the meanwhile, I’m proud to be a Terabytch!

Think I’m over stating male dominance in cybersecurity? As one of the most conservative specialties in a male dominated industry, women in cybersecurity face challenges a lot more perilous than an edgy team name. If you’re an ally, be an ally: