Photos from around Campbell River and Tofino, especially in the Pacific Rim National Park. Taken with the Canon T6i, various lenses…
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Photos from the road: The West Coast
Dancing In The Clouds
This guy really seems to know what he’s talking about:
http://ugdsbpd.blogspot.ca/2013/11/working-cloud-with-mobile-edtech.html
Working The Cloud With Mobile Edtech
I got a couple of android tablets for the department… $99 each at Factory Direct! You could pick up a class set of twenty-four of these for about $2500, or about the cost of a single Macbook Pro… crazy.
What could you do with them? Well, my grade 9 intro to computers class are doing a review of information technology. We’re using wikispaces.com to build shared notes for review. What’s so good about shared notes? You can’t trust them, so instead of reading something and blindly accepting it, students are reading it critically because their peer might have done it wrong; a much better review process.
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| wikispace live assessment/engagement tool |
If you get a wikispace up and running check out the assessment button in the top right corner – it shows you a live feed of student activity on the wiki. I threw this on the projector and it turned into a race to see who could get the most material down (the engagement graph updates every ten seconds or so, so it’s almost live).
I set up the tablets with their own gmail and then linked a dropboxaccount to it. As students take pictures and make video using the tablet it is automatically shared to the dropbox account, so they can pull the media out of the cloud and include it in their wiki-pages easily. Automating this process is fairly easy, and means that only seconds after taking a photo with the tablet, students are able to easily access it online for use.
Every android tablet I get now can be signed in to that single gmail address and then auto-linked to a shared dropbox account. Any media generated from the tablets is immediately available online.
The rules for the wiki were specific: all notes had to be in your own words. Students got acknowledged for:
- media: using original photos and video to explain their focus
- media: using the snip tool in Windows 7 to snip screen shots of various parts of our etext
- content: explaining their focus in their own words
- links: to other material online that support understanding of their focus (all links had to include an explanation of the site and why it was useful.
The benefits are many. Students get to use a new device and recognize its uses in a learning context – this often led to more effective use of their own devices. A number of them have since set up their own dropbox backups on their own devices. Because media is easy to create and access students are able to focus on the material at hand instead of worrying about their spelling and grammar in a google doc.
Being open Android tablets, the apps available are many, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what they could do. Next semester in introduction to coding I’m thinking we’ll use them to run the flash games we design and build.
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| TEJ wikispace: students learning about information technology through an etext shared on UGcloud. Notes are created in wikispaces and dropbox is used to quickly and automatically share student-made media. |
All told this set up uses three cloud services (ugcloud, wikispaces and dropbox) and some open, accessible and shockingly cheap mobile tablets to offer students a media rich way to tackle note taking. If we can set up a fluid, information sharing environment like this now, imagine where we’ll be in five years.
Hostage Situation
I’m being held hostage by an authoritarian government. These fascists (they certainly don’t believe in democracy) have demanded that I surrender my rights and work under their terms. In this impossible environment the people who speak for me have begun a legal battle on this government’s attack on my fundamental Charter freedoms. The process of overturning that legislation will take time, but it will eventually be overturned and will result in the end of this nasty, self-serving government and their illegal legislation.
My rep has also tried to bargain a deal to protect me in the meantime. The bargain was made with a Bill 115 Magnum aimed at our heads, so a fair deal wasn’t exactly the result of the process.
There was no negotiation, it was more like begging for our lives. This government was happy to turn the public against us in order to further their agenda.
If you’re held hostage you look for the basics, you don’t start asking for more than you had. It’s a moment of desperation.
If we don’t take the deal our rep has scraped together for us, this authoritarian regime will put us in an even worse situation because it has legislated our rights away. In either case we will no longer have anything like we had. We either lose a lot and keep a bit because our rep got some concessions out of the regime, or we end up in their even worse MoU prison, either way, we lose.
When someone has a gun to your head, do you start moralizing with them?
So do we vote for a contract that strips us of years of concessions because this government would rather flush money down poorly managed ehealth experiments, semi-privatized air ambulances, quarrelsomeness wind power and on again/off again power plants, or do we go to the wall and burn it all down because this is just wrong?
If we don’t vote for this, something even worse is imposed on us anyway. This is divisive no matter how you play it. Junior teachers lose their grid increases, senior teachers (who are the majority) don’t lose their retirement sick-day payouts. Some boards may OK this, others may not. This isn’t going to create labour peace, it’s going to create an uneven mess across the province.
In the meantime that fight to overturn the regime continues. In a year and a half, we could very well be standing over the ruins of Bill115 (and the Ontario Liberal dream of being the government) and be able to bargain a fair deal under Canadian law; we can’t do that right now. Whether we vote for this or not, our agreements will be in tatters because the Ontario Liberals and their Tea-party-Hudak lapdogs have pushed through this ridiculous, undemocratic legislation.
Do you go along with what you know is wrong hoping to protect you and your family as best you can or do you say, “NO, this is wrong, I will not be a party to it”? This isn’t an easy decision.
The lack of clarity, both moral and professional in this makes this a very uncertain, difficult decision to make. Unfortunately I’m a bloody minded kind of fellow; I fear I’ll vote for what’s right, whatever the cost, politics be damned.
PRIVATE TEACHER, PUBLIC JOB
The Seat of my Bike
After the ride to Indy I have a much stronger opinion about the Concours’ stock seat. It’s soft and comfy on short rides, but on long rides it turns into a kind of torture device. There are options for Concours seats that I can’t justify on an $800 bike, but the cheaper option arrived, so yesterday during the rain I gave it a go.
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| It’s tedious, but loosening the staples with a screwdriver makes for clean removal with needle nose pliers. |
The process took about an hour and a half to swap out the seat cover. The seat fabric is held down by industrial staples. I loosened them with a small flat-head screwdriver and then pulled them out with needle nose pliers. It’s time consuming because there are a couple of hundred of them holding the seat to the plastic base.
The cover peeled off relatively easy, only sticking where the Gorilla tape I’d used on the torn seam was touching the foam (that stuff is mega).
With the foam exposed I tried fitting the new seat skin and found that it had much more extra material on it. I was looking to firm up the seat a bit any way, so I took the gel pad I got on the Indy trip and found it would fit under the new cover. It would also raise the seat slightly, which would do my knees some favours.
Attaching a new seat cover is a tricky business. The vast majority of swearing happened while doing this. Rotating the seat so you can put weight on the staple as you squeeze the handle of the stapler helps seat it properly, but it’s a pretty muscley process. Getting the edges tight requires some practice. This one came pretty close, but future ones I’ll be pickier about and get even snugger.
In the meantime I’ve got a seat that feels firmer, sits a touch higher and isn’t covered in tape. I think the end result looks pretty good, and for thirty bucks plus shipping, it’s a good cheap alternative to those sweet Corbin seats.
I found this seat cover maker on ebay. The seat arrived quickly and is as advertised. I can’t speak for its toughness yet, but installing it I found that it was made of thick vinyl and the sewing was very strong. It’s a cool sunny day today, I’m going to give it a whirl and see how it does.
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| The stock seat tore on the stitching, Gorilla tape did the business until I could find a better solution. |
Sense of Accomplishment!
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| It’s alive…. ALIVE!!! |
After fiddling with the speedometer gear housing I was told to make sure I have the line on the back of the suspension and the housing lined up. I put it back together that way and still didn’t get anything, so I took it apart again and tried putting it on 180° from before and bingo, the speedo began to spin. If you’re having trouble with speedo gear housings, try putting it on the other way and turning it to line up with the fork housing mark.
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| Love that red – the Connie will be getting panels refinished over the cold months… |
All the gauges on the Connie work now, so I’m going to begin to reassemble it after changing out the oil and filter. I’m hoping to have it back together in the next week or so and then I can take an honest run at a safety and see how it does. Everything else seems to be in good form. It starts at a touch of the button and idles steadily after a moment on choke. The throttle is clear, sharp and very responsive now. The
brakes feel strong and sure. After reassembly and a final cleanup, hopefully it’ll fly through safety and then I’ll have to make some hard decisions about the Ninja.
It would be nice to get some miles on the Connie before the snows fall.
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| New speedo cable runs in behind the bottom of the front shock from the right. It reads accurately and runs quietly. |
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| Hard not to love that big one litre engine… it burst to life with a growl and revs with surprising eagerness. Smooth as butter too… |
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| Everything comes to life and reads accurately now… |
Summer 2018: Things to do list: Horizons Unlimited Ontario Meeting
Horizons Unlimited is having a big meeting in central Ontario in May and it’d be nice to go. It’s a three hour ride from home but only about an hour and a half from the inlaw’s cottage. I looked into staying over but it’s a pretty penny. Staying at the resort it’s at is north of eight hundred bucks for the cheapest condo type place available. Even assuming I could find some people to divide the cost with, that’s more than I’m willing to pay.
Heading up Friday I could do a loop around the Kawartha Highlands on some twisty, Canadian Shield roads before landing at the cottage. The whole thing would be about 850kms over a long weekend. A day of riding up there, a day at Horizons and then a ride home on Sunday – entirely doable.
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| The ride around Kawartha |
They structure the pricing to get you there for the whole weekend, so even if I just went for the day it’s still seventy five bucks, but then I guess I could always go back Sunday if it really did the business. I’ve had friends attend before and really enjoy it. If there were wild camping opportunities in a less resorty location, I’d be more willing to commit, but refugee camping (in rows, on a site) isn’t my cup of tea, and the alternative staying in a building ends up being money I’d rather spend elsewhere.
Still, for seventy five bucks, it might be a good way to get a sense of the overlander adventure club, I just wish they offered a first time taster’s package. They say ‘come to an HU event and find your tribe’ – but I tend toward a tribe of one. I want to believe, and I want to go, but I don’t want to end up spending a mint on something that ends up not being a fit. The aspie in me wants me to just go for a long ride in the Haliburton Highlands – I’m trying to use that to convince him to go and meet people… something he really isn’t fond of.
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The Tyranny of Paper
Students in my board collect over 17,000 sheets of paper in handouts in their k-12 school careers. Most Canadian schools are probably similar…
Every piece of finished paper has measurable environmental costs: http://bit.ly/p9wpqq
We burn a 60 watt light bulb continuously for 159.1 years so that we can hand out those handouts, one for each student… we burn plutonium to keep them in handouts.
We put 76.5 kilos of carbon into the atmosphere for each student who goes through our system… just so we can give them handouts.
Each student consumes almost one whole tree in paper in handouts from k-12. Think of the tens of thousands of students going through the system. We deforest just to give them handouts.
At 6 cents per copy that’s $1020 per student during their k-12 career. Over one thousand dollars spent on EACH student, just so we can give them handouts.
That’s all end-product related. The paper industry is one of the most polluting industrial processes we maintain, even giving oil a run for its money: paper pollution.
Last year, the wood/pulp/paper industry produced more particulate pollution than oil production in Canada. Only stone and metal based heavy industry were worse polluters.
In addition to all those handouts, I haven’t even gotten into the millions of dollars we spend on the tons of paper in text books, all supporting that polluting paper pulp industry.
I don’t doubt an electronic solution has its own problems, but I can’t believe that with some intelligent design, we couldn’t come up with a dependable, tough tablet device that would take paper and the massive polluting industry out of our schools. A simple reading and data entry device along the lines of a Kobo or Kindle would end the tyranny of paper; we’re close to this technologically now.
Individualizing technology in education isn’t just more efficient, it’s cheaper and more ecological too.
Tiger Pre-Flight Checks
I’ve never monkeyed with the suspension on the Tiger, but since I’m a 250lber and I ride 2-up with my son who’s an easy 130lbs, I thought I’d look into setting the suspension before our 1500km round-Huron trip.
A kindly Dubliner on Triumphrat had a copy of the owner’s manual page that explains how to set the Tiger’s rear suspension. A two-up loaded bike should be spring pre-load set to the highest setting (5), while the rebound damping should be set three clicks out from all the way in.
The rebound damping adjuster is at the bottom of the shock and easily accessible. Turning it in until it was snug was straight forward and the clicks are loud and easily detectable. Turning it out three clicks was an obvious process.
I took the bike for a ride today to get gas and prep for the trip. It feels firmer, less bouncy and taller than before. I’m enjoying the change.
While out and about I stopped in at Two Wheel Motorsport and picked up an Airhawk. I’d been thinking about getting one anyway after the nasty case of monkey-butt I got riding it to The Bruce last week. The gel pad I was using gets moved to the pillion seat, so everyone gets a seat upgrade.
While I was under the seat I found the height settings on it, so I moved it up one from minimum. It might quickly find its way to the top setting, but middle with the Airhawk has already relaxed my knees dramatically, just in time for a Great Lake ride-around.
Appliances & Commitment
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| Car companies use special effects to show what their cars can’t do. This only underlines the absurdity of it all |
I’m having trouble enjoying car ads. I’ve always loved cars since I was a kid, but when I’m watching ads that show driving a car on the road as some kind of noble physical pursuit I’m finding them impossible to take seriously. When you factor in the increasing use of special effects to show what the car being sold can’t do, it only serves to underline how absurd it is to market the idea of car as a physical extension of the self. In addition to being dishonest, it isn’t how and why the vast majority of people drive.
More than most cars, the Acura RLX can make a claim to be a driver’s car. The end tag line about how amazing things can happen when man and machine connect is where this is beginning to break down for me. How connected can you possible be to an automatic, climate controlled machine that weighs two tons? It isn’t what you could call an intimate relationship.
GM seems to have gone all in with the special effects. Their econo-box is a skateboard, robot dogs abound, and the new Corvette can help you battle aliens. The use of special effects to show what a car can’t do (but how it’s supposed to make you feel) is becoming a key part of marketing these transportation appliances.
At the bike course one of our instructors talked about how tiring it is to ride a bike, especially when you’re starting out. We were all sitting there sweaty and tired in the classroom after a couple of hours manhandling bikes around increasingly complicated courses. He asked us about our commute to the course that morning, what were we doing as we drove our cars? One hand on the wheel, a foot on the gas? Listening to the radio? All in a controlled environment remote from the road.
Now, he says, think about what you were just doing out there. One foot on the gear shift, one foot on the rear brake, left hand on the clutch and indicators, right hand on the front brake, both arms steering, using your whole body to lean the bike into corners and resist the wind. Riding is a calisthenic activity, and it demands much more of your attention because the result of inattention is never just a fender bender.
The only time I’ve come close to the same experience on four wheels was when I was cart racing in Japan or doing advanced driver training at Shannonville. Knowing how intense and demanding that kind of driving is helped me a lot in taking the bike course, but it’s not how most people will ever drive a car. To 99.9% of drivers a car is a transportation appliance, a necessary means of getting somewhere; it’s why everyone is so attentive and skilled on the road. You can try and market a person’s connection with their car in mystical undertones of human/machine perfection or simply paint it absurd with special effects, but the fact remains: the vast majority of automotive drivers are in it for the same reason that we buy any appliance: to get a job done we’d rather not do ourselves.
Having ridden for a couple of months now, I’m beginning to see why bike riders tend toward a sense of superiority when it comes to being on the road. Watching car companies go into graphic detail about how athletic you’ll be in your two ton box starts to look absurd when you consider how drab the process of driving a car on public roads actually is; it requires a bare minimum of commitment.
One of the things that strikes me every time I get on the bike is how naked I feel. I’ve never looked at the surface of a road so closely, or been so aware of where the painted lines are, or of what the weather is doing, or what condition my bike is in. I think all riders feel this, even if they don’t articulate it. It’s one of the reasons they tend to give each other a wave as they pass by; they are recognizing the commitment to the road that is lacking in appliance drivers.
This isn’t to say that driving can’t be athletic. I’m an avid Formula One fan and I think those drivers are some of the finest athletes in the world, a truly balanced blend of physical endurance, strength and intelligence. But on a public road there is only one form of driving that comes close to that level of commitment, dedication and focus, and it has never been on four wheels, no matter how exciting car companies want to dress up the operation of their appliances.
Anti-Edtech or Anti-Distraction?
Originally published on Dusty World way back in September of 2014:
Is technology in the classroom a distraction or a tool for improving learning? The results of vastly improved student learning from technology haven’t materialized, yet we continue to throw money at educational technology hoping that it will help.
A wise internet jedi recently shared an article in which a new media professor is putting an end to digital distraction in a class in which he teaches about digital distraction. A better person to explain the assumptions we make about digital technology you’d be hard pressed to find. He had a couple of quotes that really punched assumptions about edtech use in the face.
“Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption.”
“Multi-tasking is cognitively exhausting; when we do it by choice, being asked to stop can come as a welcome change.”
The concept of multitasking has long been championed by the rise of the digital native crowd. It’s something we poor immigrants to this brave new world simply can’t do like they can, except it isn’t. If you want to follow the science rather than the marketing, you’ll find that multi-tasking is indeed a myth. If you want to do something well, you focus on it. That might seem like simple common sense, but you’ll find a lot of digital education evangelists pushing for it anyway.
For the Luddites that want to attack computers themselves for this dilemma, he had this:
“programming, a famously arduous cognitive task, will acquaint you with stories of people falling into code-flow so deep they lose track of time, forgetting to eat or sleep. Computers are not inherent sources of distraction — they can in fact be powerful engines of focus — but latter-day versions have been designed to be, because attention is the substance which makes the whole consumer internet go.”
As a philosophically minded technologist I straddle this uneasy divide between the tech-hater and the fan-boy/girl, and I like neither. Where I see computer technology as a tool to use, many others either vilify or champion it from an emotional angle. I struggle mightily in class to get students to stop this emotional love/hate relationship with computers that many model on the adults in their lives, but it’s a simple truth when Shirky says our computers are now designed to be distractions. If you’re only going to be a user, you’re going to be a loser.
Clay Shirky goes on to describe the intellect as the rider atop an elephant of emotions, desires and urges. The rider may direct the elephant occasionally, but when the two are in conflict the elephant will usually win. This is what happens when you put a distraction engine like the modern internet in front of a child whose rider is still working out how to direct the elephant (not that many adults are better). No wonder I find it a continual frustration to direct students… and I’m teaching computers designed to distract!
The engagement game we play in education nowadays is based on this battle with software designed to distract. As Shirky says, we’re bringing whiteboard markers to a gun fight, and losing badly. When we decide to get in sync with the modern world we are actually downgrading education in order to play the distraction game in the same split attention, broken thinking world that has people driving into each other.
Educational IT should be the leading edge, designed to vary student access to digital technology in order to promote pedagogy at every step. What it shouldn’t be is what it is, a hand-me-down variety of the very software and hardware that is causing the problem in the first place. This realization puts concepts like BYOD, tech-branded education and open internet access in a very awkward place if you want to champion learning over engagement, though I get the sense that engagement has infected educational management much as it has everything else.
This infected thinking, the kind that has monetized the internet and made a generation of software engineers billionaires, demands constant human attention. When everything touched by technological integration gets infected with the idea of deep psychological engagement, people in the world become little more than variables in an economic equation.
Education is now just another enabler in a digital distraction end game that is infecting society as a whole.