A favorite author of mine has some sage advice for bloggers and people participating in social networks and why it can be a valuable activity:

[An account of a trivial event] would be rather pointless were it not for the instruction that I derived from it for myself [...] Now as Pliny says, each man is a good education to himself, provided he has the capacity to spy on himself from close up. What I write here is not my teaching, but my study; it is not a lesson for others, but for me.

And yet it should not be held against me if I publish what I write. What is useful to me may also by accident be useful to another. Moreover, I am not spoiling anything, I am using only what is mine. If I play the fool, it is at my expense and without harm to anyone.

He goes on to address the question of the value of the privilege granted to “experts” as opposed to exploring and thinking for oneself:

I have no doubt that I happen to speak of things that are better treated by masters of the craft, and more truthfully. This is purely the essay of my natural faculties, and not at all of the acquired ones; and whoever will catch me in ignorance will do nothing against me, for I should hardly be answerable for my ideas to others, I who am not answerable for them to myself, or satisfied with them. Whoever is in search of knowledge, let him fish for it where it dwells; there is nothing I profess less. These are my fancies, by which I try to give knowledge not of things, but of myself. The things will perhaps be known to me some day, or have been once, according as fortune may have brought me to the places where they were made clear. But I no longer remember them. And if I am a man of some reading, I am a man of no retentiveness.

[...]

I have no other marshal but fortune to arrange my bits. As my fancies present themselves, I pile them up; now they come pressing in a crowd, now dragging single file. I want people to see my natural and ordinary pace, however off the track it is. I let myself go as I am. Besides, these are not matters of which we are forbidden to be ignorant and to speak casually and at random.

[...]

I speak my mind freely on all things, even those which perhaps exceed my capacity and which I by no means hold to be in my jurisdiction. And so the opinion I give to them is to declare the measure of my sight, not the measure of things.

And, as many bloggers have been noting lately, it is important to honor our own diversity:

Not only does the wind of accident move me at will, but, besides, I am moved and disturbed as a result merely of my own unstable posture; and anyone who observes carefully can hardly find himself twice in the same state. I give my soul now one face, now another, according to which direction I turn it. If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. All contradictions may be found in me by some twist and in some fashion. Bashful, insolent; chaste, lascivious; talkative, taciturn; tough, delicate; clever, stupid; surly, affable; lying, truthful; learned, ignorant; liberal, miserly, and prodigal: all this I see in myself to some extent according to how I turn; and whoever studies himself really attentively finds in himself, yes, even in his judgment, this gyration and that discord. I have nothing to say about myself absolutely, simply, and solidly, without confusion and without mixture, or in one word. Distinguo is the most universal member of my logic.”

And to embrace the diversity of others who do not think like us… no groupthink!

I do not hate all opinions contrary to mine. I am far from being vexed to see discord between my judgment and others’, and from making myself incompatible with the society of men because they are of a different sentiment and party from mine, that on the contrary, since variety is the most general fashion nature has followed… I find it much rarer to see our humors and plans agree. And there were never in the world two opinions alike, anymore than two hairs or two grains. Their most natural universal quality is diversity.

However, in being an individual who is also part of a networked community, we must carve out the space for ourselves… the participatory network should be the small visible part of an iceberg of contemplation, consideration, and thought:

We must reserve a back shop all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude. Here our ordinary conversation must be between us and ourselves, and so private that no outside association or communication can find a place; here we must talk and laugh as if without wife, without children, without possessions, without retinue and servants, so that, when the time comes to lose them, it will be nothing new to us to do without them.

In solitude be to thyself a throng (said Tibullus).

And in a disclaimer more than worthy of adaptation to my own, he notes:

If I had written to seek the world’s favor, I should have bedecked myself better, and should present myself in a studied posture. I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice; for it is myself I portray. My defects will here be read to the life, and also my natural form, as far as respect for the public has allowed. Had I been placed among those nations which are said to live still in the sweet freedom of nature’s first laws, I assure you I should very gladly have portrayed myself here entire and wholly naked.

Thus, reader, I am myself the matter of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and vain a subject.

I agree, too, that we don’t need less of the personal, introspective and individual in blogs and other networked communications, but more– don’t buy into the lie of the “merely” personal:

Custom has made speaking of oneself a vice, and obstinately forbids it out of hatred for the boasting that seems always to accompany it. Instead of blowing the child’s nose, as we should, this amounts to pulling it off.

[...]

My trade and my art is living. He who forbids me to speak about it according to my sense, experience, and practice, let him order the architect to speak of buildings but not according to himself but according to his neighbor; according to another man’s knowledge, not his own…

Perhaps they mean that I should testify about myself by works and deeds, not bare words. What I chiefly portray is my cogitations, a shapeless subject that does not lend itself to expression in actions. It is all I can do to couch my thoughts in this airy medium of words. Some of the wisest and most devout men have lived avoiding all noticeable actions. My actions would tell more about fortune than about me. They bear witness to their own part, not to mine, unless it be by conjecture and without certainty: they are samples which display only details. I expose myself entire: my portrait is a cadaver on which the veins, the muscles, and the tendons appear at a glance, each part in its own place. One part of what I am was produced by a cough, another by a pallor or palpitation of the heart– in any case dubiously. It is not my deeds that I write down; it is myself, it is my essence.

Montaigne wrote these wise words almost 500 years ago… maybe we should start listening.

[It seemed worth interrupting my blog silence to share this appeal from a friend and former colleague... a small service that is long overdue.]

Executive Summary: In 2006 my wife and I bought a house. A few months later we discovered a major mold problem, and were forced to move out for the time being. We are currently in the middle of a massive remodel. The labor, for the most part, is free, but we still need funds for materials, thus this letter. You can help by donating (even small amounts help!) and by spreading the word.

In February of 2006, my wife Crystal and I found a house for sale in Fairbanks, Alaska. The house was large enough for our growing family, and had room to lodge and entertain guests. We did the standard due-diligence, had certain repairs done, and went ahead and made the purchase.

We soon began to notice that we were congested more than usual. Crystal, who has sensitive lungs due to being born 3.5 months early, had some severe “deep lung” coughs, and even contracted pneumonia during her pregnancy with our latest child. After our latest, Jonathan, was born, we noticed he was constantly congested, which we wrote off to a cold since Crystal had pneumonia during the pregnancy. When it didn’t go away, we started looking for other causes. We had realized there was a mold issue shortly after moving into the house. Some people could smell it when they walked in. We did not, however, realize exactly how bad it was until a couple of events transpired.

The first was a “simple” bathroom-repair-turned-tub-removal. While removing caulk in order to re-caulk the tub in our upstairs bathroom, I pulled back the plastic wall around the tub. Everything was black: dry rotted plywood. So, the next weekend my father and I tore out the bath tub. Behind the plastic was was sheet rock with mold on it, as well as dry rotted plywood eight inches above the tub all the way around. The second event that caused us to realize just how bad it was happened that Thanksgiving (2006) when our family went to stay with my parents for five days. During that five days, Jonathan cleared up almost completely, but became congested again on returning home.

At that point, we knew we needed to move out, and did so in January of 2007. The remodel began shortly after that, with our progress being tracked at our blog, so I will not repeat all the updates here. You can also see photos of the mold we found.

There are several reasons for the wide-spread mold in this house.

1. In the case of the bathroom, it was because the caulking was not done well, and water began leaking into the areas behind the plastic wall.
2. The dryer: for at least 13 years it was vented to the inside and pumped hundreds, if not thousands, of gallons of water into the house, which then soaked into the walls and carpets.
3. The forced-air furnace (unusual for this area of the country): moisture, and mold spores, were pushed to every part of the house, exacerbating the problem.
4. The flood this (and many other houses) went through in the 60’s. We have no way of knowing what repairs were done at that time, or if the walls were sufficiently dried before being closed back up.
5. Wood paneling which covered much of the wall space in this home: once moisture was trapped behind the wood paneling, the unpainted sheet rock served as a perfect breeding place for mold.
6. Simple laziness: sheetrock behind the bathroom counter and kitchen counters was not painted. With no sealing, mold grew wild.

So, now we are to the point where it’s time to start putting things back together. So far, we’ve paid for everything ourselves and using gifts, and 99% of the labor has been donated, for which we are very thankful. We’re to the place where we need material to put the house back together (sheetrock, doors, paint, moulding, fixtures, etc), and that, of course, isn’t free. That is why we are asking for donations.

The cost point we are looking at right now is $50,000 to $60,000. Yes, that seems like a lot, but we know God can provide, and we know that lots of people giving small gifts will get us to our goal. You can help by donating, and by spreading the word. We can make it!

To donate, please see our donation page..

Thank you for your time and your prayers.

Sincerely,

Joshua, for Crystal, Elizabeth, and Jonathan

Subject line about says it all.

For most it shouldn’t matter. I’m just one of myriad blogs that aren’t without audience but aren’t top-tier either. My contributions are easily replaced. I’ve gathered enough useful information to perform my job well for the next five years and can add another five just by lurking. I’ve always been more of an observer of ideas than a generator of them.

For those who know me more personally: don’t worry. I’m not in danger! I’m just… done. Not finished. Done. Done blogging, micro- and otherwise. Not forever (no such thing) and not for a day. As I started saying, the subject line says it all.

Play nice.

Like the rest of the cool kids, I finally rendered some of my music listening via LastGraph. LastGraph munges my data from Last.FM, my favorite, unobtrusive, social music service and listening recorder. A snippet from last year showing who I was listening to (click for larger size):

I also find the artist history quite interesting, such as this graph of my Aimee Mann listening habits (click for larger size):

For geeks, the data: by artist and time period is available in Excel, CSV and JSON format so you can play with it yourself.

Is coming from those who spend their time worrying about a research basis for a phenomenon that is easily observable in any classroom, followed very closely by those who presume that the net-gen is determined by biology. I still can’t post comments to George’s blog, so I will respond to his Net Gen Nonsense post here.

George: The Net Gen Nonsense blog fits right in, of course, with your predisposition– perhaps borne of seeing too much extremism ala Prensky– to be against the notion that learners are changing. And you seem to equate the idea, again ala Prensky, with being mostly– or even significantly– biological.

I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!

More importantly, a whole lot of learning is not about biology but about cognition and the mental processes built on top of that biology. The two points with which you conclude your post (”1) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and create information, and 2) the changed ways in which we can access, interact with, and connect to each other.”) are changes in learners, and they are changes that happen as a result of living in a very different and quickly changing technologically mediated environment than others. Fight it all you want, but those learners are different. It has nothing to do with age and the biological origins are at best unclear… but it is immaterial. Anyone who pays attention to their students can see this in the divide they face within their classes between the haves and knows and the have not/know nots. Whatever the label, a host of educators nod in recognition of the characteristics regardless of the question of the origins, which has always been my central point in this debate: I don’t care about the reasons as much as I care about the solutions, and I won’t discount what I see and experience because the research (which hasn’t been an enviable guide when it comes to education so far, but that’s a different discussion) isn’t there or isn’t unclear. A refutation would make a difference, but there’s an obvious reason why there isn’t one, and I don’t mean the philosophical bit about proving a negative.

I don’t know how much you teach and how many of those you teach are adolescents, but clearly you see these changes or you wouldn’t so explicitly point out some of the conditions effecting that change in your two concluding points. It’s not as if all of us who teach are likely to be suffering a mass delusion and I think too many people with too many different, varying backgrounds when it comes to experience teaching and knowledge of technology and communication hear the squeaky wheel to be convinced that it’s just an illusion they are bringing to the table.

David Warlick, blogging about a presentation by Stephen Heppell, pointed to this incredibly cool video demonstrating a visual method for solving math problems. These are just the kind of alternative approaches we need to incorporate to be an expansive teacher. I love one of the last comments, presumably in response to an earlier expression of mystification: “Brilliant visualisation. Compare this with the ‘normal’ way and you are doing real mathematics.”