Day 2 DFI Friday 2nd August 2019

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Last week I learned a few things I’ve already used. The indexing for google docs example; turns out it works in slides as well. This year our school is putting out our subject selection as a google slides presentation. There are 127 slides packed with information about achievement standards and endorsements available at each level, in each class so I stupidly volunteered to index it. Well, otherwise people are going to be frantically scrolling to find anything. I copied the scavenger hunt and am using it as a relief activity -I may use it on our staff too. Thanks Dorothy. I had a go at it and it took a wee while - I got a bit jammed up inserting an equation but aside from the maths, not too bad I think. Google groups - I’ve made a couple and will be presenting these as part of a google shortcuts and tips section. I’ve got to deliver a staff PL module for the next four weeks and will be sharing this stuff with the unlucky 16 staff who have opted in to my module. Any other tips will also be passed along. For example: a mate showed me a great app called Vevino that I think will be a hit. You can scan wine bottles and, if you’re at a restaurant, the wine list. Vevino will give you a rating and the usual price - to see if you are getting a bargain and whether it will double as paint stripper. I used it on the wine list at Portafino. Unfortunately it was after I had ordered a glass of wine and it confirmed just how cheap I am. Currently investigating apps that do the same but with beer is also a priority.

Today we’ve looked at a few more things. The filter function in gmail looked so appealing that I immediately filtered our school spammer bastard who sends stacks of emails every day. Boring stuff. To everyone. I bypassed the inbox so they won’t show. I then filtered the mailing list I subscribe to for media studies teachers throughout NZ. I get some worthwhile stuff but there’s a lot of dross and it clutters up the forum section of my inbox. I don’t know where that stuff has gone now. I assumed it would make a folder. Asked Tim, who was sitting next to me. He responded, ‘Who cares?’. That’s pretty much why you filter. Also appealing: Google Keep and the capture text from photo function. We started the day with a whole lot of theory: Bloom’s taxonomy. Learn, Share Create. Great stuff - I’m sure someone else’s blog will cover the nitty gritty. Create, incidentally, is right at the top of Bloom’s pyramid. This afternoon: further exploration of google hangouts where, in small groups, we discussed a blog on a dinosaur by a kid called Tanner. With some shock, I noticed that he'd posted this blog on the 22nd of December and his teacher had commented on the 24th and later on the 29th. Another kid called Zephaniah had commented. Zephaniah! Josie, our MC asked us about what 'soft skills' were the focus and thought that Tim and I were pretending to be ignorant about these. We weren't. We had an illuminating discussion about these. Thanks Josie.

So I also looked up the Marie Kondo that some of the ladies on the DFI were enthusiastically talking about the previous week. She’s got a T.V. show called Tidying up with Marie Kondo. It’s a series. I don’t know how many seasons. I also don’t care. The first episode: Tidying with Toddlers. (insert your choice of expletive) Now I like Netflix and Netflix, like just about everything else, is running algorithms to figure out what you like and make suggestions based on your preferences. Netflix has never suggested that I watch Marie Kondo. Good to know those algorithms work then; at least some of the time anyway. Back to Kondo, according to google, the process of tidying is supposed to bring you joy. So unlike any tidying I’ve ever done. And people watch this stuff - which doesn’t surprise me either. People watch golf. There is-or was- a programme on T.V. where you could watch other people watching T.V. People (mainly young males) watch videos of other kids playing video games. I once caught my father-in-law watching competitive darts (some of the most un-athletic competitors ever). There was an enormous crowd of fans going batshit crazy every time some pudgy, middle-aged bald guy (with a scraggly pony-tail) threw a dart. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not a slob, but I don’t find tidying appealing. I’ll do it but I’m not watching anyone else do it for entertainment. Or play darts, golf, video games or watch T.V. While it’s true that there’s been an artistic elevation of television ,(Breaking Bad, The Wire, House of Cards, Black Mirror etc) we also have to deal with the opposite extreme. That’s a general statement too, not an inference on the quality - or otherwise - of Kondo tidying. Another side note, I was talking scornfully to my wife about ‘joy’ and its association with tidying - kind of like ‘fun run’ but she assured me that it was actually a thing.

Further thoughts while I'm sitting here: in 1978 a guy called Jerry Mander (interesting name) published a book called Four Arguments For the Elimination of Television. Pretty stodgy sounding title. And misleading. Mander had a lot more than four arguments. Some of the arguments were about the light emitted being the wrong sort of light for people to absorb. One argument that stuck with me though, was the argument that watching T.V. destroys some of our innate creativity. How does that work? Well, think of the disappointment you felt after watching a movie of a book you enjoyed. It wasn’t what you expected. Or (and this got me), picture in your imagination, the following scenarios: a preoperative conversation between two doctors, the maiden flight of Jean Batten, Eskimos preparing a meal (I think they prefer to be called Inuit).  Close your eyes if you have to. Now let me ask, did your mind create a picture for you or did it reference something you saw on a screen? Here’s another mental exercise. Picture an important moment in a rugby game. A try, a kick, a tackle - whatever. Got it? Well. Most of us have seen an actual live game. If you are a kiwi male, you have almost certainly participated in an actual game. I have watched and played in many. But when asked to picture a moment from a rugby game I almost instantly pictured something I had seen on T.V. In slow motion. Rather than a game I had played in or been on the sideline for. Now those two examples are different. One asks for a creative act, the other is memory recall. But the similarity is the pervasiveness of the screen. And this is significant.  Also, once you have seen something on T.V. it removes your ability to imagine it. I was fortunate enough to read Tolkien’s Hobbit, Lord of the Rings before I saw the film versions. Same as the Narnia books, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter etc. And I can’t read the books now without picturing something from Peter Jackson’s mind rather than my own. I cannot imagine Harry Potter as someone other than bespectacled Daniel Radcliffe or Aragorn as someone other than Viggo Mortensen. Dinklage as Tyrion and so on. What’s an exception? Glad you asked: casting Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher - I can still read a Lee Child and not ‘see’ Cruise. 

Now I’m watching with interest some of the cautionary stuff I see on TV3 news and on websites such as Stuff.co. Advice to get young people off screens and limit devices. Articles that point out the effects of looking at screens too much before going to bed. Others point out that Jobs and Gates didn’t let their children on devices. Mander published his book in ‘78. And it has proved insightful - even the stuff about different types of light -which I initially thought was a steaming pile of crap. Using devices, or so I thought, was akin to learning to drive and depriving kids would be a luddite setback. But Mander (and Gates/Jobs) may be correct and in 30 years people will look back at our attitudes to kids using tech like we look back on early cigarette ads that promoted healthy smoking. Or wonder why kids are being marketed caffeinated diabetes like V, Mother, Demon and Lift Plus. Or maybe even wonder why we use glyphosate herbicides so readily. That’s beside the point though. The point is, what is technology taking away from us? Mentally. And will we even notice?

Footnote to these rambling thoughts: Unlike his name;Jerry Mander never, as far as I can ascertain, tried to change electoral boundaries.

TL:DR
Some more stuff this week like google keep and organise your calendar and emails.