Day One (of 2024/25) Year 11 of a ‘days of learning blog’
2053 “in season” blogs on my way to ‘catching’ the Ironman Cal Ripkens in-season record of 2632. Sure, he played baseball and I am blogging each day of learning (2325 overall) but still, a streak is a streak…
But there are times when a change is necessary. Today I am shifting from technolandy.wordpress.com to technolandy.com that is still hosted by WordPress, but as I ran out of memory space, I had to go to a professional account rather than a free one.
I have found the research to be true: synthesizing ones work and practice can be very helpful. That being said, while I find it a useful practice and am looking forward to building a ‘new portfolio’ with a mix of older and newer information and organizations…
DON’T DO A DAILY BLOG
It’s hard. It’s tricky. Some days are too easy – more can be too hard. They take time. And you need to know your audience. Ironically, my audience isn’t really either myself nor educators… I found it interesting to finally find my father’s journal of entries and some thoughts and wish he had more. Fundamentally, this blog is for my kids to look back on at some point in the future. The fact that it benefits me and there have been blogs… really more of my rants – such as my day 150 rant on anxiety that help other educators is great – but it’s a great side effect!.
That being said, today I did reflect on a moment in a grocery store this summer where I overheard a conversation behind me – a second year teacher being asked if they think this year will be easier now that they have some resources – I did butt my nose in to congratulate her for getting a continuing teaching job, but not sure if the job ever gets ‘easier’… the more we know, the more we can’t overlook, and I have never had cohorts that were ’the same’ – not with grade 4 students (except for everyone forgetting how to subtract – to the grade 3 teachers credit I didn’t have to do much geometry, they nailed that!) and neither cohort of English 12. Every group needs different(iated) care, attention, support, and learning.
And of course an added wrinkle this year is a shift away from byod with a provincial ban/limitation of personal digital devices (pdds) due to distraction. Fortunately the caveat remains that they can be used for instructional/learning purposes at teachers discretion…but I do think we are getting distracted ourselves by focusing on the devices rather than the underlying reason there is dependence on devices (anxiety and depression get the win because/if we don’t address them). But I’ll happily change my mindset if students are universally engaged and our mental health staff have nobody to work with and neither schools, parents nor rcmp are dealing with online bullying. That being said, I’m encouraging our staff to model good netiquette and even modelled sharing my inside thoughts while dealing with my tech. I don’t think ignoring the tool will lead to better use… the year is underway! and I think it’s gonna be a fun one!
Technolandy 
Leave a comment