7 for Seven

Today was my birthday.  I don't get many so each one that comes along is extra special.  Here is what made today excellent.

1.  I have an amazing wife. 

2.  While I love what I do and work with great people who do nice things for me like email me happy birthday messages, bring me cake to celebrate, and play happy birthday over the intercom, these birthdays are too rare to spend them at work.  From here on out I am pledging to take off all of my real birthdays.  You get four years to figure out how to handle my absence boss.

3.  My son showed how much he loves an audience today.  He was hamming it up for my co-workers at lunch.  (His mom brought him to visit me.  Refer to #1.)

4.  I got seven....ty messages of birthday love on Facebook as of this blog posting.

5.  McDonalds gave me free coffee this morning.

6.  I noticed my parents were becoming more like their parents.  Then I realized I am becoming more like my parents too.

7.  I am loved by the God of this Universe, who gave his only Son, that I might have life to the fullest.  To Him goes all the honor and glory.         

Second Guest Podcast Appearance

I had my second guest podcast experience with the Ed Tech Co-Op Podcast.  Episode 11 was all about the daily life of an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher (ITRT).  Check it out if you find this kind of thing interesting or you are my mother who just likes to be super supportive of me.  Thanks mom!

 

My Lent Activity

I have been struggling about what to do for Lent until tonight.  My lenten goal is to post a quality post to this blog once a day through Easter.  Will you help hold me to it? 

My first post is to direct you to Seth Godin's newly released manifesto on education.  I am 2/3 of the way through it and am agreeing with a lot of what he says.  In short, our education system was designed with the 1920s and 30s in mind.  It does a great job of producing workers for that time period.  Too bad it is 2012 now.

If you do read the manifesto, let me know.  I want to talk about it with some folks.    

My First Guest Podcast

I had an opportunity recently to be a guest on the Ed Tech Co-Op podcast.  This was my first podcast and my first guest appearance on anything.  We spent the 45 minute show discussing technology integration using a recent New York Times article as our focal point.  If you are an education technology integration specialist, interested in technology use in schools, or my mother, I highly recommend you check out the Episode 10 - Determining the Value of Tech in School.   

It was (insert computer program name)'s fault!

Why is it that we always blame the program when something goes wrong?  I have been surprised at how many times in the last few days I have heard people blame a computer program for supposedly not working.  The assumption is always that the computer messed up. 

Sometimes the program does make a mistake, but more often then not the error people experience is one that they caused.  User error happens more often than we are willing to admit.   

Why do we blame the program?  Did we have bad first experiences with computer programs that have tainted our view towards them for the rest of our lives or is it easier to blame the program because it cannot argue back with us? 

Please, when you make a mistake, own it.  Don't try to hide behind a computer program.