“Teach” is another reality show. I’m not sold on reality shows in general. This one also felt . . . → Read More: Teach]]> The last couple of nights I’ve been catching up on the new A&E show, “Teach: Tony Danza.” “Teach” was filmed in Northeast High School in Philadelphia, not far from where I grew up. I like Tony Danza. He seems like a pretty nice, well-meaning guy. He seems like a hard worker and certainly has his share of talent.

“Teach” is another reality show. I’m not sold on reality shows in general. This one also felt like a ‘stunt’ show, where a recognizable, but waning, celebrity does something odd or shows you his life to get back in the public eye. That really bothers me.

I wanted to see if I was right, so I watched the first episode. They tackled that stunt issue head on. They had to, of course, but still I give them credit. The principal expressed her misgivings on allowing this, and Tony made the case for doing it, and though it sounded a little rehearsed (on both sides), I think they were expressing true feelings and intentions. So they passed that test.

It’s still a reality show, though, so you have to remember that what you’re seeing is an altered reality. Students having cameras in their faces for a class period and periodically through the day has to create an altered environment, and the kids may have been chosen for the class in order to present certain problems.

Here’s the thing about that, though. Aside from all the verbalized introspection, and looking past some  of the oddity of a celebrity in a classroom, this actually does seem real to me. And I do have some experience with it.

I have a degree in Secondary Education. I taught in a classroom for part of one semester as a student teacher in 11th and 12th grade Social Studies – primarily Psychology and Sociology. Those are elective classes, so to some degree most of the students I taught wanted to be in that class. The students in Danza’s class all agreed to be there – I don’t believe any of them were forced. Tenth grade is a whole different animal than 11th and 12th, though. I taught one 10th grade history class for a while during my student teaching – the subject matter wasn’t nearly as hard as the classroom management. It was mayhem at times, and I was pretty good at discipline. The juniors and seniors, by contrast, were way easier (most days) to deal with, but they demanded more academically.

I only taught for that one semester. It’s almost 20 years later, and I still think about those kids sometimes, and the work they did (and didn’t) do. Writing skills, for some of them, were appalling. Appalling. I mean, really, shockingly bad. There were kids who were really smart, but didn’t do the work. There were kids who were really smart who did the minimum work because they weren’t being challenged. There were kids who were trying as hard as they could just to manage a B or a C. There were kids who needed extra help. And there were kids who had given up on themselves and played the system well enough to get a pass, barely, with a D – and they were satisfied with that (I wasn’t, but they were). I even had a narcoleptic in one of my classes (as a teacher, that was an interesting experience – he was a smart guy, but that disease really interfered with his ability to learn).

So as I’m watching “Teach” I’m seeing every one of those categories reflected in the show (well, except the narcolepsy). And I’m seeing some of my own reactions in his as he comes across them. He wears his heart on his sleeve and verbalizes everything, which is totally not me, but his reactions, though exaggerated, mirror what I felt at the time.

The overriding question so far seems to be “how do I get these kids engaged?” “How can I inspire them?” Those are the questions every teacher has to ask. And when you fail at it, as you inevitably will, it can be extremely disheartening.  As one assistant principal tells Danza during one of his ‘defeated’ moments, “this is an emotional job.” It really is. You get invested in teaching, and in the kids, and it all becomes personal very easily. It’s a very difficult balancing act to be as invested as you need to to succeed while also not letting high school students define your self-worth.

Speaking of defeated moments, Tony cries a lot on the show. So far not in front of the kids, but he loses it a few times in all three episodes so far. While I think that may be excessive, or at least played up a little in editing, I totally get it. And I’m not a visibly emotional person. What he’s expressing is what many, if not all, teachers feel on some level in their early years (and probably some in their later years as well). There are times when it does get to you. I was inches from totally bawling in front of a class near the end of my run, when problems had mounted with certain students over a project I had assigned. I had to turn and write something on the chalkboard to pull myself together. That is the only time in my entire life that I had that much trouble controlling my emotions in public. Teaching can strip you raw if you let it.

I could probably write way more about this show and how it parallels my own experience, and I may come back to it later, but I want to get to this: I know a few people who think they could just step into the role of a teacher. I hope this show really does get across that it’s not as easy as many people think it is. The principal has some strong words for Danza along those lines after a couple of his screw-ups. Teaching is HARD on multiple levels. I hope this show manages to communicate that, and that the reality is not easy to dismiss.

I’ve got about a billion more things that this show makes me think about (100 teachers quit in a week, the resource room, the geometry teacher talk, the parents, the kids I taught, etc.), but I gotta stop somewhere. I hope future episodes continue to evoke these memories – along with hope for my own kids’ and their teachers.

The Oatmeal, while not very old, has become an insanely popular site, and with good reason. It’s really funny.

I first saw it when I got a link on Facebook to How addicted to Facebook are you? and then How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunkbed with a Velociraptor?

Since then I’ve been pointed . . . → Read More: Semicolons: the only grammar related poster I’ve ever been tempted to buy]]> Okay, that may very well be the longest title I’ve ever written on this blog. New milestone! Woo hoo!

The Oatmeal, while not very old, has become an insanely popular site, and with good reason. It’s really funny.

I first saw it when I got a link on Facebook to How addicted to Facebook are you? and then How Long Could You Survive Chained to a Bunkbed with a Velociraptor?

Since then I’ve been pointed there a few times. Nothing there, though, is as truly useful as this post without giving up the humor:

That’s just inspired and perfect. And it’s very needed; almost no-one uses semicolons correctly.

Well, okay, there is one other contender for most necessary and useful post from the Oatmeal…

These are important posts that should not be missed. You MUST click on them, read them, learn them, and live them.

None of you have any excuses anymore for leaving comments on this site that contain misspellings or improper semicolon use.

It’s not at all new either. In fact, there’s a multi-award winning film that uses something very similar in its most famous scene. (Comment below if you know what it is.)

What is it, and why does it excite me?

Don’t laugh.

It’s a bar graph.

Yes, seriously.

Wait, wait! Don’t go… it’s not just any old bar graph. This one moves. . . . → Read More: A colorful cavalcade of classical coolness]]> This excites me on many levels. It’s so simple, and yet so cool.

It’s not at all new either. In fact, there’s a multi-award winning film that uses something very similar in its most famous scene. (Comment below if you know what it is.)

What is it, and why does it excite me?

Don’t laugh.

It’s a bar graph.

Yes, seriously.

Wait, wait! Don’t go… it’s not just any old bar graph. This one moves. And it lights up. And there’s music.

Starting to see the cool yet?

Yeah, I probably wouldn’t either, if I was just reading this. Stick with me.

Let’s package it this way: This is a different way to experience music – visually and accurately. We’ve all seen light shows of one kind or another accompanying music, but most of the time it’s just pulsating to the beat or rhythms or some approximation thereof. What we’ve got below is accurate parts, durations, and relative pitch of the notes in a song depicted in a way that you could actually learn something about the music itself.

Check this out as a “simple” example from J.S. Bach:

I call that simple only because it’s one instrument and pretty easy to see how the thing works. But check out the first movement from Mozart’s Symphony #40 in G-minor (one of his best, for my money). For some people this may be a better example because you can actually follow a single instrument through the symphony (for instance, green is the violin (with other strings in shades of green)):

Beyond that fact that I just think it looks neat, I really think this could be used to get people to think of music in a different way. It could be used to help people see the connection between music and math (you can’t get a bar graph without math!). In our increasingly visually driven society, it could be used to help show the ebb and flow of the musical lines, and the intertwining of parts to create the whole. Heck, maybe it could even be used to help the deaf experience music in a new way (maybe it already is, for all I know).

Because this is based on MIDI, it would be pretty easy to single out a given part or parts for display to focus on just the brass, for example. All sorts of ways to slice and dice this.

Like I said, this excites me in many ways: as a music lover, as a technology geek, as an (extremely) amateur composer, and as a trainer/educator. It’s just plain cool.

In case you’re interested in how this works (from the technology side), it’s actually pretty simple. It’s a visual representation of MIDI, which has been around for quite a while (I actually programmed my computer to play the “Ghostbusters” song in MIDI back in the 80′s). MIDI is a mathematical representation of pitch and duration for each note in a score/song. Run that MIDI file through this free software, and it reads all that math and gives you that scrolling bar graph (or even a few other visual options). It’s fun!

Do did you figure out which movie used a colored bar representation for music yet? Here’s a hint… ba-ba-da-BUM-BUM!

I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what I’ve got open in my browser right now and see if that . . . → Read More: What’s in YOUR browser?]]> My wife can’t figure out what I do online for hours at a time. I can’t blame her for being confused. Sometimes I don’t even know how so much time can go by before I get out of this chair and do something besides attempt to contract cancer from my monitor.

I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what I’ve got open in my browser right now and see if that can provide some answers. Strap in… I’ve got over 40 tabs open at the moment.

More tabs than fit on the screen...

1. The “new post” window in which I’m writing this post
2. This blog
3. Google Reader (which has over 300 unread items at the moment)
4. An unscrambler tool to help with brain-dead moments of Scrabble
5. Facebook
6. Newegg.com – search results for memory upgrades for my wife’s computer
7. Pipl.com – the most effective search engine I’ve found for locating people
8. Today’s Deals of the Day – nice aggregator of daily deal sites (related post)
9. SmartMoney.com article “How Much Auto Insurance Do You Need?“
10. Gizmo’s list of the Top 10 Free Game Sites
11. Caddickisms Store search for “The Losers” comic books
12. Wikipedia article on Y: The Last Man
13. Osalt.com – article on Open Source alternatives to Microsoft Publisher
14. XXClone – site for software that will copy your system disk to a new drive
15. MorphThing.com – site to morph two pictures of faces
16. Review of Morpheus Photo Morpher
17. Download page for FotoMorph 6.0
18. I Will Teach You To Be Rich article on ways to make more money
19. Computerworld article: FAQ: How Google Latitude locates you
20. YouTube: Caddickisms Channel page
21. Secunia.com’s Online Software Inspector
22. Fat 2 Fit by 50 (a friend’s blog)
23. YouTube: Microsoft Songsmith’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” video
24. YouTube: Microsoft Songsmith video when fed data from the stock market
25. Review of Ashampoo’s Clipfinder
26. Review of Format Factory
27. PostSecret.com
28. Get Rich Slowly article: 2009 tax guide
29. Get Rich Slowly article: Top 10 tips for preparing your tax return
30. Frugal Dad article: Recession-proof your debt snowball
31. Medical article on CCAM
32. YouTube: Marvel/DC: Wolverine/Dr. Manhattan
33. Article on designing e-learning courses in Moodle quickly
34. TurboTax version comparison page
35. David Pogue article on Google Voice (really impressive sounding service, btw)
36. Our Daily Bread article: Thomas Time
37. Funeral home obituary for my grandmother who passed away on Sunday
38. Slate.com article on a link between diabetes and alzheimer’s disease
39. NY Times Op-Ed column on how people choose news to fit their preconceived ideas
40. ING Compare Me
41. ING Your Number

Well, that’s it. Many of those are intended to be the topics of blog posts (a good percentage of which won’t see the light of day). Some are work related. A few are just for fun. Some have been open for weeks, as I keep procrastinating whatever task I have that relates. All of them are interesting to me in one way or another.

Here’s what I take from this list: I’m interested in many topics, and procrastinate a lot. Most of my attention seems to be focused on money management and technology.

What’s open in your browser? (Other than this site, of course.) What does it say about you?

Lee and Sachi have done a great job creating a successful company that uses simple tools to explain some rather complex topics, and they make the videos fun to watch as well (skip to the bottom for the funniest).

The trick, and where they excel, is taking those complex topics and boiling them down into . . . → Read More: Tuesday TubeWatch: CommonCraft]]> CommonCraft videos make me want to hurt myself. I can’t help but think “why didn’t I think of doing this?”

Lee and Sachi have done a great job creating a successful company that uses simple tools to explain some rather complex topics, and they make the videos fun to watch as well (skip to the bottom for the funniest).

The trick, and where they excel, is taking those complex topics and boiling them down into something simple to understand without losing the value of the training. That’s not always easy to achieve.

Early on, their efforts focused on technology. Their video on RSS is still one of the better, and most accessible, explanations for those unfamiliar with the topic.

While their production quality has increased since then, that basic style has served them well and become their brand. They have videos explaining Wikis, Blogs, Podcasting, and many more, all released for free on YouTube. One way they make their money is by selling high quality versions of these videos to companies.

They’re now doing videos on all sorts of topics – not limiting themselves to technology topics. Want to understand how to save money? How we elect a President in the US? Why to use CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs? They’ve got those.

And of course, they also have the most important video you’ll ever watch. This things a life-saver:

Friday, December 9th, 2005

Looks like I am officially blogging. I am too cool for words. (Ironic, isn’t it.)

Thusly did this, my first blogging experience, begin. Pretty sad, really, but there you have it. Now here we are, three years and over 400 posts later, and I figure it’s about time I looked back to see if I’ve ever . . . → Read More: Three years of yammering on…]]> Three years ago today, at 11:48pm, I wrote these amazingly insightful words:

Check it out…

Friday, December 9th, 2005

Looks like I am officially blogging. I am too cool for words. (Ironic, isn’t it.)

Thusly did this, my first blogging experience, begin. Pretty sad, really, but there you have it. Now here we are, three years and over 400 posts later, and I figure it’s about time I looked back to see if I’ve ever written anything worth reading. (I figure I must have said something worthwhile at some point. It can’t be complete inanity, can it?)

To that end, here is a list of the posts I’ve written over the last three years that I think are worth a second look, roughly broken by category.

Comics (not much to choose from here, really)

• An attache case, an underground government, and a Spider-Man on the edge

Corporate World/Learning (there’s too much overlap between these to justify separating them for this purpose)

• Technical writers, pay attention
• A series reviewing Oprah’s “A New World” online training with Eckhart Tolle: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
• Alice: Through the Monitor (or Creating new worlds for Novices)
• How to leave a lasting legacy
• Corporate Gaming: Recruiting and Training – this is a subject I should actually get back to at some point.
• Media and Technology issues for Learning and Persuasion
• Re-igniting Passion – This is a personal favorite
• Fight trolls with math!
• e-Learning Glitz: Misunderstanding video games
• Instructional Design reminders – This one actually shows up in a resource list on The Learned Man

Movies & TV (includes Reviews & Sci-Fi)

• Doctor Who reviews: 2005 & 2006, 2007, and 2008
• The best cancelled shows
• Review: The Second Chance – A movie by Steve Taylor with Michael W. Smith in the lead? Could this possibly be good?
• 11 minutes ago – I still want to see this full movie.
• Review: The Spider-Man Trilogy
• Top 10 most quotable geek films
• Review: The Prince of Egypt (and a quick review of the trailer)
• Review: Crash
• Review: Superman Returns
• Review: Justice League
• Crusade: What would have happened

Music

Hmm… honestly this category is pretty new and I like almost all the posts. If I had to choose just three though:

• MTV Yearbook – where does it take you?
• Five songs that altered my perceptions
• I’m a prejudiced idiot

Other

• What futility doesn’t feel like
• C.S. Lewis on living by hope
• Some people have REALLY short fuses
• Stuck in the office (or your in-laws’ house) during Christmas week? – Christmas Specials!
• Look out for the edge!? What edge?
• Swiping a sirloin is certainly stupid
• What I’ve been thinking
• Pennsylvania Gas Prices – Find Cheap Gas Prices in Pennsylvania – I actually use this all the time
• Does a sex offender live near you?
• Impairment while driving on phone > drunk driving and the related Cell phones + driving = drunk Driving
• Bryce Zabel: Those who can, teach
• Traffic jams
• Humility
• Stop everything

Parenting

• Kids in the movie theater
• Facebook points to the past, and I consider the future
• Grilled cheese and the science of successive approximation
• Little Mommy moments
• Heroes?
• Little Mommy drops the… um… ball
• Bad parenting confessions
• The Silence of the Lamb – actually my wife wrote this one.

Personal Finance

• Why I don’t have a dog
• I want to end my life, but I’m too lazy
• Saving 12% in interest in 10 minutes and its off-site follow-up: Don’t make the Dr. Evil error of assuming
• Unexpected costs, things that have broken lately, and lessons learned
• Why I hate unions
• Is a meal preparation service a good deal?
• The Simple Dollar – and other personal finance links

Technology

• Fixing published audio problems in Captivate 2
• I’m a casualty of war
• Free music and sound effects for podcasts
• Video: Photosynth demo – awakening to the true power of the web
• Dynamic Image Resizing
• Web 2.0 applications / free conferencing
• Making MP3s playable on a website, the easy way
• A slow day in the world of computer usability reporting
• The disfiguration of beauty
• Podcasting for corporate training example – how I did it
• Wiki’s in a corporate environment

Well, what do you know… that list turned out longer than I thought. I probably wasn’t as judicious as I should have been in a couple categories, but I really think most of those posts don’t get the traffic they deserve – especially the Corporate World/Learning set, though I know the audience for that is limited.

Anyway… I hope you click through to at least a couple of them. It’s been a fun experience to write this stuff for the last three years, and I hope it hasn’t been too boring for you (but then, no one’s forcing you to read this… unless you’re my wife).

Also, if you have any suggestions for things you’d like to see here in the future, please let me know in the comments. I really do like feedback.

In the generally focused Tech Tips for Basic Computer Users, he points out things that all us geeks think everybody knows about computers. There are a fair amount that I didn’t know, however, so the list’s worth a look (though the article is so popular . . . → Read More: Technical writers, pay attention]]> New York Times columnist David Pogue has had two extremely good posts lately. One is aimed squarely at general computer users, and both are of great use to technical writers.

In the generally focused Tech Tips for Basic Computer Users, he points out things that all us geeks think everybody knows about computers. There are a fair amount that I didn’t know, however, so the list’s worth a look (though the article is so popular that it may have overloaded NYT’s comment system – the page took a really long time to load).

Here are two examples:

1. Pressing ALT and the Tab key together in Windows will cycle you through all of your open programs. I’m frequently amazed when people don’t know that simple time-saver.
2. Pressing ALT and F4 together will close the current window. So if you do it now, it will close this browser.

Takeaway for technical writers: Don’t assume your readers know these shortcuts. Be specific in how to perform required tasks.

The other article is good for any business writer, really, but it’s especially well suited to technical writers.

It’s really easy, as a writer, to slip into jargon. We’re comfortable with the specialized language and the meanings of all these words that confuse regular people. If you’re responsible for communicating with someone who doesn’t live and breathe in your corner of the world, though, you’ve got to be careful to use plain language.

Here’s an excerpt from Pogue’s article:

* Display. “Display” can be a noun (“a display of fireworks”). It can also be a verb that takes a direct object (“He displayed emotion”). It is not, however, a verb without a direct object, except in magazines like PC World: “Shows filmed in high-definition end up displaying in letterbox format.”

Displaying what in letterbox format? Fireworks? Emotions?

The word this writer was looking for is “appearing.”

[...]

* Enable. Who on earth says, “Enable the GPS function”? Only user-manual writers and computer-book authors. Say “Turn on GPS” instead.

[...]

* Functionality. WOW, do I despise this pretentious word. Five syllables–ooh, what a knowledgeable person you must be!

It means “feature.” Say “feature.”

I’ll add my own pet peeve here: Utilize. I want to scream every time I see this word. It’s another example of trying to sound smarter. It’s “use”. There is absolutely no difference in meaning. “Use” is much simpler and more common. That’s a good thing. Use it.

Oh, and while I’m talking about writing skills, here’s another tip for everyone, and it applies to speaking as well: be careful with clichés. If you’re not 100% sure you know it, don’t use it (or better yet – GASP – look it up!). Example: it’s not “for all intensive purposes,” it’s “for all intents and purposes.” “Intensive purposes” doesn’t even make sense. Think about what you’re saying. Most of the time, that will help.

Okay, I’m off to utilize the functionality of the TV remote control to enable the screen to display. For all intensive purposes, that should wrap up my night.

But what was most disappointing was that they expected us to learn fresh, new topics like Maxima and Minima on the dot, and the lessons weren’t even constructed by our teachers, but by this Dr. Brain series that was created by some . . . → Read More: Where are the humans?]]> To continue in the vein of dissatisfaction with training, let’s take a look at the experience this high school student in Singapore is having with e-Learning (found via Corporate eLearning Strategies and Development):

But what was most disappointing was that they expected us to learn fresh, new topics like Maxima and Minima on the dot, and the lessons weren’t even constructed by our teachers, but by this Dr. Brain series that was created by some polytechnic whose name I have completely forgotton.

I mean, COME ON! You’re expecting us to complete an entire assesment (or more) just by being educated by a talking flash movie?? What if we have a question to ask?

Now, there could be a whole host of reasons why this experience was difficult for this kid, but who can blame him for wanting to ask questions? It is frustrating to try to learn new concepts, skills, and tools with no interaction. To be effective, self-paced training has to be designed exceedingly well, and even then there still needs to be the option to follow-up with a subject matter expert, because it’s impossible to accurately predict everyone’s questions.

For all I know, this “e-learning day” experience had all sorts of support – chat rooms, email, discussion boards, phone mentoring, whatever. Maybe this guy just didn’t take advantage of it. Or maybe it wasn’t there, but the teachers figured they’d provide that support the next day when they returned to their classrooms. Whatever the case here, the reality in the corporate world is that frequently employees are sent to take online training with little to no human support from a subject matter expert. And that’s a shame. With the tools I mentioned above, there’s no reason to leave someone hanging and alone. We need to do a better job.