Thank Goodness the Market Crashed

These were the words out of the furnace repairman's mouth that really startled me! Why would a stock market downturn be good news for anyone?

Our repairman has worked in the field of heating and cooling systems for many years now; over 20 years. When I asked him how the trades industry (specifically his field) was doing today, his response was that the graduates of technical schools today do not have sufficient training to do the job at his level under pressure, but are demanding high wages and getting them because the trades industry has not been able to find enough skilled workers. Getting a job is easy, but keeping it when you don't have skills or the drive to learn more than what you learned in school makes it hard to keep a job. You become someone's short term solution.

Check out the resume. A worker who wants to be paid first, learn later has worked a huge number of job sites in a short period of time.

Why did you leave this last job?
Things didn't work out.
What about the employer before that?
Uhh...the boss was a jerk.

They don't seem to notice a pattern, or are unwilling to do anything about it.

Now with the downturn in hiring thanks to the stock market crash, Dave figures that this will help weed out the less skilled workers, and there will be more unemployment. This will enable him to hire the more skilled, more experienced workers.

Have realistic expectations with respect to wage for your level of experience. If you don't know something, ask. Be relentless until you solve your problem. Employers hire, fight to retain, and head hunt for employees like this. And employees who show passion for their job enjoy their job more.

The other guys try to cruise through their jobs, crossing their fingers that the market won't crash again.

How am I supposed to know what I need to know?

Yesterday my students and I were using sketchup. This is a free 3d architecture program that I really enjoy. But, we ran into a problem. We thought we knew how to do something with the program (for those of you who know sketchup we were trying to create "groups" and "components", but it doesn't really matter what we were having problems with). I had taught the basics of sketchup using video tutorials from the Sketchup YouTube Channel.

I knew the answer was in this one video tutorial that I embedded in our classroom website. I told three students at the end of the period to review this video (approximately 7 minutes long). I reviewed the video myself and found out what I was doing wrong. When I asked my three students the next day who reviewed the video to solve their problem, here is what I found. None of the students had reviewed the video. Only 1 student went home and did some experimentation to see if he could solve the problem, but didn't review.

This tells me either:

A) My students are used to being told to find answers but have realized that if they wait someone will find the answers for them and tell them.

B) They don't understand review is an active process where you seek out what you need to know because you don't know it yet! They view review as a passive process, like waiting in line at the grocery store.

Either way, this is not good. 21st Century learners have to figure out what they don't know yet, and how to go and find the knowledge they need.


I reviewed and I learned. I have to teach them to figure out what they need to learn. I have to teach them to review. That is the real lesson I am teaching.




Drives me nuts that people think I am teaching "computers."

Korea is Only a Click Away

A student of mine is in Korea right now. We are exchanging e-mails. She has gone to our classroom website, watched the screencast of today's lesson, and is downloading the freeware software application so she can work on her assignment (Pivot - the stick figure animation project) in Korea. I just marked some of her work in my secure "hand in box" at my website, and now she is checking her marks.

It boggles the mind! It is not hard at all.

Kick a Ginger Day

Who thought this was a good idea?!?! Someone started a facebook group ""National Kick a Ginger Day, are you going to do it?" got about 5000 members for the purposes of coordinating attacks on red haired kids on Friday, Nov. 20th. This is based on a South Park episode. Let me just say this:

I have seen this episode. I watch South Park. I also have (had, actually) a Facebook page. So who is to blame? South Park or Facebook?

Neither. It's the kids that kicked another kid in the hall because they thought they had strength in numbers on their side.

Watching South Park doesn't make me want to kick people with red hair, any more than it makes me believe that if I can't find a pair of my boxer shorts it is because gnomes that have taken them.

Reading something on the Internet, even if its on Facebook (insert sound of sarcasm dripping from my voice) does not make me immediately believe it to be true. Or even a good idea.

It's the kids who depend on others for thinking, decision making, and moral judgments that are to blame. The kids that hurt people if they think there's a chance they can get away with it. Hold them accountable. Let them know that they are mindless sheep who hurt people for fun. Let them know that the kid they kicked will never forget that they did that. Ever. Then find a suitable consequence and levy it without second thought. Like deleting their Facebook account. Seems a bit harsh? Consider this - if I as an adult went up to another adult and kicked them, I could be arrested for assault.

Kids who are so easily swayed by things on Facebook should not have access to it.

EA - Electronic Arts and Careers for Kids

I just had the most interesting conversation with a guy who make games for a living. Computer games. He was a programmer who helped create the FIFA series of video games. He recently left EA, and I asked him why leave Electronic Arts? They are among the biggest and best in game design. They make NHL, NFL and FIFA video games just to name a few of their big titles. He replied "to start a new company."

I asked him what advice he would give to younger kids looking to get into game design. While he didn't specify any particular school subject, he said math was a strength of his, and there is lots of math in programming.

What he emphasized was that kids who want to make games should take some programming courses, and then complete a project. It doesn't have to be fancy. They have to start something and take it to completion; The ability to finish what you started.

Also he said you need to have communication skills. These games are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the team for FIFA had about 150 people working on it. Communication skills and teamwork are key.

Finally when I asked how he felt about the future of programming and he thought it was really good. Games are semi-recession proof. They provide a lot of entertainment for only a little money, and people are always buying games.

Food for thought.

Reason number Umpty-Billion to Twitter

If you haven't heard about it, Twitter is a great web application where people write very short posts for the world to see. What do people write about? Rather than tell you, I'd rather show you:



I keep in touch with other teacher twitter-ers. My twitter name is jagill. The ideas other teachers post are like springboards for my own thinking. And now very smart companies are twittering.

Lately I have been blogging and tweeting (making posts on twitter) about Jing, the screencasting software. Today, someone from Jing started following my posts. This also happened with Voicethread (the great online presentation tool). So this time I turned around and started following the person from Jing so I could send him a direct message on twitter. In only a few minutes (5 or less) I got two well worded responses that solved my problem.

Thanks TechSmith (the company that made Jing). Thanks Dave McCollom. You have made it that much easier for me to teach using tools that save me time and effort, and help me reach more students.

Librarian Takes Leap of Faith

My librarian has an exhausting job. We are the biggest middle school in the province, and Karen Ferguson has a lot of kids coming through her doors each day. Each week she is teaching entire classes new skills, such as research skills, reading skills and writing skills. She is tireless.

However this is not to say she doesn't get tired. Having to teach the same lesson over and over again has a cost. But, then I realized she could save herself time and effort by using Jing.

As I mentioned in previous posts, Jing is free software you can use to make a narrated video (if you have a microphone) showing how to do something on a computer. It records your mouse, and everything you click on and show on your screen. Karen had been teaching lessons using a computer and LCD projector. So I suggested she "Jing It".

Today she spent 30 minutes playing with Jing, getting a little frustrated, but then finding great success, and she created her first Jing video on how to use the library online catalog. As she was recording it, a teacher asked her if he could bring his class in next block. She said ok, finished her recording, put a link to it on her library website, and voila! Now she can show the video she made, and walk around monitoring kids learning while the video plays. It saves her time, and saves effort.

I applaud Karen's adventurous spirit, because she could have given up in the first few minutes, but she didn't. I hope that this small investment in time has a big payoff for her in the months and years ahead.



Librarian Takes Leap of Faith by James Gill is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Based on a work at gone-digital-native.blogspot.com.