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Collegiality vs Teamwork and Digital Technologies

We re-aligned our computer courses last year.  Our school formerly was one of the few with a Computer Studies Department, with computer science and computer technology courses all existing under a single banner.  Last year the department was dissolved and computer science was put under the Mathematics Department while computer technology was re-integrated with the Technology Department.

I transitioned from Computer Studies Head to a co-head of Technology, but I’m finding working in such a diverse (we cover everything from metal work to food school to digital design) department challenging.  With so many horses pulling in so many directions, I can’t help but feel that digital technologies tends to be a second thought.  Rather than feel excluded I’ve been finding ways to develop a stronger digital technologies continuum.

The computer lab has always been next to the design lab, though run by different departments.  Now that we’re on the same team so to speak, I’ve been re-thinking how digital technologies, always minimally represented in terms of classes, should work within the school.  We’ve been developing an integrated digital technologies curriculum in order to facilitate that.

With the dissolution of Computer Studies the realigning of our school’s digital technologies was inevitable.  No longer is Technology Design the lone digitally focused technology course in the department.  Combined with Computer Technology, our digital technology courses can now offer a continuum of learning across a wide variety of digital platforms.

I initially felt that dissolving the computer department was going to be bad for the discipline, but now I’m feeling a new synergy.


By drawing together our digitally focused technology courses under the many common threads they share we’re able to offer 9-12 curriculum in a wider variety of areas.  For students in a rural area where digital-tech doesn’t have the social impact it has in more urban settings this is a big deal.

The first step was to diversify our high-tech offerings.  I argued successfully at Heads for Tech-Design to offer Robotics (our tech design teacher has a background in it).  I also argued successfully for a Software Engineering option that would allow students interested in the field to experience industry standard practices around software development rather than the mathematics focus offered by computer science.


From the junior grades students get a wide variety of choice in 11 & 12 around what aspects of digital technology they want to pursue.  And even if the student isn’t going into a tech-focused profession, they are at least able to develop the kind of digital fluency that will be handy in any 21st Century workplace.  Of course, digital-tech doesn’t end at the workplace.  If we’re going to graduate citizens capable of communicating in the 21st Century, they need to have digital fluency.

I always felt isolated as the head of computers with only a part time comp-sci teacher who wasn’t interested in collaborating.  Now that I’m the co-head of tech, or perhaps Head of Digital Technologies fits better, I’m able to empower our tech-design as well as my own computer-tech fields and build a more complete set of options for our students to benefit from.

Change isn’t always easy, but in this case I feel like it’s led to a good place where teamwork and a common goal has replaced cold, distant collegiality.

A 9-12 Digital Technologies Continuum with a healthy variety of choice that will develop graduates ready to take on the challenges of the 21st Century:


The layout is so helpful I’ve expanded it out to the Technology Department as a whole:
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Old Motorbike Electrics



Turns out the Concours didn’t need a new bulb, it just needed some more electrical connection cleaning.  After replacing the bulb that wasn’t blown I finally took off the fairing only to discover that, like all the other electrical gremlins, it was a matter of dirty connectors.

After cleaning up the wiring harness, suddenly all the lights work again.  I posted what happened on the COG discussions and got this pearl:

As usually happens in a case like this, you immediately see the good advice repeated. Only a couple of nights later I was reading Performance Bike Magazine. They do a bit each month on what to look for in finding an older model sport bike, in this case the thirteen year old Honda VTR1000 SP2. In the article they suggest that cleaning and protecting all electrical contacts on a bike that old is a good winter-time activity.  If it’s true for well cared for sports bikes half as old, it’s even truer for my field-found Connie.


As WillyP states above, bikes aren’t built to keep out the elements, even the most covered bike is virtually naked compared to a car. Even in the case of a well cared for, covered sports bike, cleaning the electrical contacts is a worthwhile off-season ritual. In the case of a field-found Concours, it’s where I should have started in the first place.  A breakdown and electrical cleaning is my go-to next time around.

As a project bike the Concours continues to teach lessons even as it becomes more and more roadworthy.

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Dream Stable (this week)

This changes on a moment to moment basis, but in this moment, here is what I wish was looking back at me when I opened the door to the iron horse stable:

1) An outfit fit for my son and I:  A Royal Enfield Bullet Classic with a Rocket Sidecar.

500cc Bullet Classic: $6350
Sportmax Rocket sidecar: $3500+~$1200 installation

The whole outfit would cost about ~$11,000 new… I found a used outfit for $8000, might find another for less.



2) A scooter for my wife: Vespa 946

It’s a dream list so I’ll go for the fantastically expensive Vespa, though Honda makes some mighty nice alternatives for one third the price.

The Vespa?  $9999 for a year old new one (!?!)

(the similarly spec-ed Honda PCX150 comes in at $3899).  I’ve found clean, used scooters for about $1000.





3) State of the art Hyper-bike:  

This has always been a Hayabusa, though I’d chuck it all in for the new Ninja H2R.

Hayabusa:  $14999

Ninja H2R:  ???



4) A Light Weight, Swiss-Army Knife dual purpose bike:

The Suzuki DR-Z400S: $7299

Over 100lbs lighter than a KLR, a super capable, light weight enduro machine that can manage weight, still has good power, but follows the Austin Vince minimalist ethos: nimble, efficient, ultra-capable off road.  Found a used one in good nick for about $4000.


5) A matching off-road bike for my son:

Not sure of the spec on this one.  It would have to be the one he feels most comfortable on because he’s a cautious fellow.

~$2-3000 new – there seem to be a lot of used ones about for ~$1000



I’d be looking at about $50,000 in new (dream) gear.  On a budget I think I could pick up (used) the two dirt bikes for $5000, a hyperbike for $7000, a scooter for $1500 and an outfit for $3-5000.  So $16-18500 for a more realistic dream stable…

Inclusivity is what I’m aiming for with this collection.  We three could go for a putter on scooter and outfit.  My son and I could go off roading together.  Only the Hayabusa really smacks of selfishness.

Of course this will all change again next week, so I’m not holding my breath.

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Dodging a Bullet: Assumptions of Safety & Extreme Defensive Riding

We had a tough week at work.  A colleague, the kind of guy who you assume will outlast you because he does everything right, was killed last weekend in a motor vehicle ‘accident’.  I put accident in quotes because it’s not really an accident when the other driver blows through a stop sign while speeding and kills you and your wife (and himself).

You’d be right to say I’m a bit angry about this, but I’m also rather desperately looking for a reason for it.  That things can happen for no reason bothers me, but they do.  They did nothing wrong.  They were driving home after dropping their son off at university.  They were driving in an SUV with a five star safety rating.  I want there to be a reason (the guy who hit them was drunk, distracted, somehow incompetent), but I fear there is none; there is no reason why they are dead other than the most basic one: motor vehicles are inherently dangerous and a number of people who operate them aren’t able to do so well enough to ensure your safety.

If we are going to let pretty much anyone strap themselves into a metal box powered by exploding gases and shoot themselves down roads at high speed, we have to accept that there is an inherent risk, no matter how capable they may be, of death.  Whenever you get into any kind of motor vehicle you accept this risk, or you don’t get into the vehicle.  

It’s generally understood that getting on a motorbike makes this calculus so obvious that people can’t help but tell you (over and over) how dangerous it is.  Those same people will go out and buy five star rated SUVs thinking they’ve beaten the odds.  Those big vehicles mean you’ll always come out of a minor incident, and if you find yourself in a lot of minor incidents then I suppose they make sense.  Better to spend the money on a bigger vehicle rather than making efforts to reduce your inability.  Driver training courses are significantly cheaper than operating a large vehicle, but pride prevents most people from considering them.  We end up in an arms race with the most distracted, incapable drivers operating larger and larger vehicles for their own safety.

I’ve been trying to suss out government safety statistics.  I have a feeling that people who have taken motorcycle safety training have fewer accidents than the general public.  The kind of defensive driving presented to new motorcycle riders is foreign to most drivers in cages who don’t respect the dangerous position they are placing themselves in.  I suspect that there would be way fewer accidents if everyone had to ride a motorbike for the first year of their license.  Exposure gives you a healthy respect for the dangerous mechanics of operating a motor vehicle at high speed.

Were I in my mini-van with my wife and son, I would have probably driven into this disaster just as that colleague of mine did.  Were I on my motorbike, I’d approach that intersection with the same everyone-is-trying-to-kill-me attitude that I’ve adopted since my initial motorbike training course.  On a bike I’d have sworn at the idiot who ran the stop sign after braking hard to avoid him.  In an insulated motor vehicle, remote from the world around me, I’d have assumed I was safely following the laws of the road until it didn’t matter any more.

Followup:  just to make things weirder, this past week I died in a car accident (same name, similar age, lived about 100kms west of me) and a guy who started teaching at the same time I did and is a year younger than me also passed.  Maybe this is just what getting older feels like, you see others around you dropping out of life and can’t help but wonder why you’re still here.

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Bike Bucket List

Tim’s bike-hole, once a storage place for unused furniture,
now an insulated work space with two Kawis in it.

Season 1 ended with me getting my license, my first bike and getting over 5000kms of riding in, including a full month of long commutes.  The original bike bucket list included getting the license and first bike.

As season two began I was looking to expand.  Bike bucket list 2.0:

  • build a garage worthy of the name (almost done!)
  • have a bike holiday on some less-Ontario-ish roads (done!)
  • ride more different bikes, done and done! (and that second one even got my wife scooter curious)
  • work on my bike-craft (done & ongoing!)
  • buy a fixer-upper (done!)
  • do an overnight bike trip (didn’t manage it… but the season isn’t over yet!)

Here’s the bucket-list 3.0.  Some of these might take a bit longer to complete:

  • a bike to dance with one on one (light, single seater, lower displacement)
  • a distance bike (get the Concours up to snuff)
  • live the 3-wheel dream, get an all-purpose outfit for Max & I
  • take Max to an off road school
  • then do an off road riding school with him
Some of these are well beyond what I can pull off at the moment, but you never know when circumstances might change.  Besides, if you’re gonna dream, might as well dream big!  If I’m going to do that, retiring into my own little shop would be awesome!  Custom mechanical, digital parts fabrication and finishing!
 
 
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Yogacycling

I came across YogaMotorSport on Google+ and began looking into yoga from a riding perspective.  It turns out many professional riders practice yoga.  I’ve never really done yoga before so I wasn’t sure what I was getting into beyond some stereotypes.

Where yoga happens in Elora – via Michael Tan

Our little town has a nice yoga studio right down by the Grand River, a 15 minute walk away.  Awareness Yoga happens in a large basement studio with old stone walls and the sound of the Elora Gorge thundering away outside.  I’m a firm believer in ley lines, and there is definitely a lot of energy coming out of the ground in the middle of Elora.  It’s a nice spot to do yoga.

I went in thinking it was some deep breathing and stretching.  It is that but it’s also a lot of core strength building and I found myself sweating buckets simply following the workout.  I’ve had three classes so far and find the combination of stretching and strength training intense, but combined with the mindset you’re encouraged to follow, it’s also remarkably relaxing.  I don’t come out of it all worked up like I do after a hockey game.  I come out of it calm and loose (though it tends to be sore the next day).

Yoga looks to flexibility, core strength and mental focus, all things that should be in frequent use while riding, I can see why professional riders do it.  I was lucky that my local studio does stiff guy yoga, it’s a men’s only class and I’ve got to say, it’s a really nice change from your typical guy-sports workout, and something uniquely suited to motorbike riders.

Meditative rides through India
Motorcycle Yoga by Lisa Haneberg



Motorcycling & yoga… it’s a thing!

Yoga & Motorcycling

motorcycle yoga mats

yoga and the motorcycle journey

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Gaming Everything

Via NBCnews: the glory of the hardcore video gamer.  Not
 the kind of thing that’s ever going to challenge the Olympics
for public attention I think.

I’ve had a lot of trouble playing video games lately.  My problem seems to be around that idea of scripted experience.  If I’m playing a video game I’m working through a narrative someone else created.  I enjoy narratives but what irks me about video games is they pretend to have an element of choice in them when in fact they don’t.  They suggest that they are the next evolution in entertainment but the interactivity they offer is so limited that it’s really just a hidden script that you follow under the illusion of choice.  Gamification in general seeks to use this illusion to hook people into otherwise tedious situations.

The first step away from video gaming occurred when I found I couldn’t get into single player games anymore.  Even the good ones with epic narratives felt banal.  I went to multi-player games for several years hoping that the human element would create choice, but I find that these too are scripted, and worse, they force players into scripted responses to the point where you can’t tell the players from the bots.  When a game is so restrictive that it makes the people in it act like machines it’s not a game I care to play.

There is a particular situation in which we’re happy to turn people into bots if the illusion of engagement is preserved.  That situation also happens to be seen as quite tedious by many of its participants.  Education is eager to digitize if it ensures engagement, even if that engagement mimics the dimensionless engagement found in online activity.  Standardized testing feeds this thinking, producing learning outcomes that are easily quantifiable as data even as they fail to demonstrate learning.  Deep contextual human activities (like learning) are lost in simplistic digital data.

Doubt is cast on an individual teachers’ ability to teach a subject.  Consistency is demanded in modern education as a result of this doubt and the slippery nature of digital information encourages this by eroding the space between classrooms and lessons.  This is shown as some kind of great step forward in terms of fairness, but what it really does is reduce teaching (as it has done with many other human activities) to a vapid exchange of information, incidentally what digital machines do best. 

We fill in templates, teach centralized material and are encouraged to sync how we teach it.  Proof of success is found in standardized test scores.  There is little interest in assessing teaching or learning in any other way.

This digital infection also carries the parasitic idea of gamification, usually championed by video game evangelists who believe that the structure of gaming can overcome every obstacle.  Teachers are encouraged to design student success through scripted outcomes pretty much like a video game does.  If the game you’re playing is designed to have you eventually win it isn’t much of a challenge and certainly isn’t something you can be proud of, but then modern learning isn’t about challenge, it’s about engagement.  The idea of gamification makes me uneasy for this very reason.  When we gamify situations that aren’t games I’m afraid that we pollute complex situations with the implied success found in most gaming outcomes.  If education is supposed to prepare students for the world beyond school this isn’t going to do it.

Gaming the game has a long and storied history in geek culture. Can you suspend your disbelief if you’re always looking to subvert the delivery method?

If you offer open ended, ‘real’ experience many digital natives shy away from a situation where the rules can’t be gamed for advantage.  The hacking mindset implies that the system is more important than the content.  Perhaps that’s why I can’t play video games anymore.  It’s hard to get lost in a narrative when you’re constantly looking at ways to subvert the delivery method.

Wilful suspension of disbelief is lost in the digital age.  This is the root of the pessimism and disengagement you see in many students.  When education becomes another process you hack to guaranty your own success it becomes increasingly impossible to do anything useful with it.

This grew out of Scripted Lives which itself grew out of Unscripted Moments.  I’m pulling at a lot of threads here.  I’ve been a fan of RPGs since I got into D&D when I was 10.  I love sports and would describe myself as a serious gamer.  I’ve spent most of my life learning digital technology so I’d hardly call myself a tech-hater either, but watching digital technology and gamification aiming for society wide acceptance has made me very uneasy.

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Unscripted Moments

Steve Hoffarth has a good editorial piece in the August/September 2014 edition of Inside Motorcycles that got me thinking about scripted experience.  Steve was lamenting his inability to go racing this year.  He compared going on rides at a theme park and found them lacking.  A scripted experience like being a passive rider on a roller coaster has nothing on the complex, non-linear and entirely participatory experience of racing.

I was sitting in the garage last night working on the Concours when my wife stuck her head in the door and asked how I was doing.  “I’m in my happy place,” I replied.

What made it happy was that I was fixing a problem that had no instruction manual.  Success wasn’t guaranteed and I had to approach it from several different angles before I could finally come up with a solution.  Real satisfaction followed a resolution to a situation that could easily have ended in failure.  It was an entirely unscripted situation, the kind I long for after your typically scripted day in the life of a 21st Century human.

So much of our lives are scripted nowadays, from phones telling us when to be where to GPS units telling us how to get there.  Brakes script themselves for us because we can’t be bothered to learn how to use them effectively, traction control leaps in at a moment’s notice to script your acceleration, vehicles will park themselves, warn you when something is behind you because you couldn’t be bothered to turn your head, and even avoid obstacles you couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to.  I used to enjoy driving, now, at its best, it feels more like sitting on a roller coaster.

All this scripting is a result of software.  It may sound funny coming from a computer technology teacher, but that software kills it for me.  If I wanted to watch machines race I wouldn’t put people in the cars at all, it’s safer that way.  It’s been a long time since a driver could take a car by the scruff of its neck and drag it around a circuit.  We do all this in the name of safety, but ultimately I think it’s lowest common denominator thinking; software engineers design life for the least capable people, they can sell more of it that way.

There are places in mechanics where it just makes sense to incorporate computer control, especially when it amplifies an operator’s nuanced control of a vehicle rather than overwriting it.  Thank goodness for fuel injection.  It allows us to create responsive, linear fuelling and use less of a diminishing resource, it’s all good, as are disc brakes and other technological advances that improve rider feel.  I’m certainly not anti-technology, I make my living teaching it, but I am anti-technology when it takes over human inputs instead of improving them.  That kind of thinking breeds sheeple.

Traction control (many settings!), antilock brakes (many
settings!), hill start control and more electronics than a
moon shot – perhaps bikes aren’t the last bastion after all.

Unscripted moments are increasingly hard to come by.  Perhaps that freedom we feel on a motorcycle is one of the last bastions of unscripted moments when a software engineer isn’t deciding how you’ll spend your time, or worse, spending it for you.

Except they increasingly are.  After I started riding last year I was astonished that this is legal.  In a granny state-world where safety is all that matters, where SUVs are considered better because they’re bigger and collision avoidance systems are desirable because you shouldn’t have to pay attention while operating a vehicle, motorcycles too are succumbing to our vapid, software scripted lives.

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Perfect Moments

Riding a motorcycle feels special every time I do it, but I had a couple of perfect zen moments on Wednesday that approached nirvana.  After dropping off my son at day care I was trundling down an empty country road in a golden, early morning fog on my way to work.  


You feel more connected to the world around you on a motorcycle because you’re vulnerable and exposed to it, and in that moment the beauty of creation came flooding in.  Unimpeded by windshields or closed off in a box, the sights, smells and sounds of the world filled me with happiness.  The machine and I were a single thing, gliding through the golden morning mist.

I got to work with a smile on my face that wouldn’t go away.

Later the same day I was riding home from a meeting after dark.  The half moon was so bright it lit the few scudding clouds in the sky, the rest was a dome of stars.  

Riding through the dark countryside I would drop down into pools of ground fog, my head just above the silver mist.

If you’re on two wheels you feel like you’re flying most of the time, but as I tore through that ground fog I felt like I was was truly learning to fly.

From the golden fog of sunrise to the moonlit night, it was a beautiful day to be out in the world, and my motorbike delivered it to me as only two wheels can.

Night Ninja
beneath a darkened sky
skimming through the dark
under a dome of stars
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Do What You’re Paid For: the distance between the mediocrity of work and the goals of education

The majority seem to follow the science.

The Weather Network had an interesting poll today.  The American Academy of Pediatrics suggested that later start times for adolescents would allow them to function better with their funky circadian rhythms.

It’s a fact of our biology that our sleep patterns change during adolescence.  Being a teacher I’ve been aware of this for a long time because my job isn’t to punish students but rather to develop their best expression of skill and ability.

The comments on this poll are your typical internet nonsense.  It makes me wonder how most people think (or don’t).  The most vocal opponents (a minority in this poll) seem to think school should be about forcing students into alignment with adult expectations, however mediocre, biology be damned.

Some pretty nasty assumptions in these acerbic comments…


Is school about ‘commitment, dedication’ and the benefits you get from these values?  Of course it is, but it is also seeking your best work.  Unlike the ‘adult’ world where showing up and doing what you’re paid for is the expectation, school is (should be?) about excellence.  I don’t want a forced effort and I’m not looking for a pass, though many of my students are.  I wonder where they learn those values?

There are jobs and companies that do embrace excellence, but they are a minority.  If you’re working for a pay cheque (and the vast majority are), you’re an advocate of the show up on time-do what you’re paid for-and-grow up school of adulthood.  For a lot of students school is the last place where they are encouraged to seek their best effort.  The rest of their lives are spent venting their spleen and dragging everyone down on internet comment forums.

Top performance isn’t only a matter of effort.  I hear a lot of students tell me, “I’ll put in an effort in senior years and get the grades I need to get into university.”  They get to grade 12 and suddenly realize what squandering years of foundational skill building really costs.  I have that Incompetence poster up in my class.  It’s not meant to be cruel, it’s meant to remind students that I’m not there to waste their time or hold them in room for a certain amount of time (like most jobs they’ll have when they graduate).  I’m looking for optimal skills building for each student (they’re all different).

One of the reasons so many people enjoy watching professional sports is because you’re seeing people performing at their very best.  A pro athlete isn’t just putting in an effort, they are maximizing their anatomy with diet, sleep and hours upon hours of training and practice.  You’re seeing their excellence as the tip of a massive iceberg of commitment.  The doing of unpalatable things isn’t the point, excellence is, and you don’t reach it by ignoring basic facts of biology.

I worked in private business for fifteen years before I became a teacher.  With very few exceptions, work involved being there on time and doing what you’re told.  When I attempted to display initiative it was considered difficult to manage.  One of the reasons I became a teacher is because I have the professional latitude to produce my best work.  I don’t just work to a clock, I work to a higher goal.  Rather than aim students at the lowered expectations of the working world, perhaps it’s time to embrace excellence.

A few months ago I read an interesting article on the conflict between capitalism (read: neo-liberal devaluation of human capital) and education systems.  These Weather Network poll responses are firmly in that neo-liberal mindset of reduced human capital.  You’re a cog in the machine: do what you’re told, be consistent, show up on time… if that’s what education becomes then we truly are lost.