An expert is... (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 

Illustrations by Brady Johnson

1. An expert is someone who has a somewhat defensible position but can state it with extraordinary confidence.

Why should you believe anything you are about to read? Maybe you shouldn’t.

To my credit, I have had a pretty good education, have had moderate success in the field of education, and have managed to convince quite a few people to publish things I’ve written. But that is about it. 

Be warned: My school doesn’t make many headlines. My income still requires I pay my overdrafts one dollar at a time. My personal life should be nobody’s model (although I’ve enjoyed it.)

Agree or disagree with any of my observations. Feel free to say “I’ve said that myself a million times.” Get mad enough to write your own book.

But have fun reading this.

2. It’s always, always, always better to be a nice person than an ass. 

You will make mistakes at home and on the job. So keep this in mind: People will forgive your mistakes if you are generally a nice person; they never forget them if you behave like an ass.

One of my technicians once warned a teacher: “I am beginning to think it is easier to make you mad than to make you happy. Remember, you are a lot more fun to watch when you are mad.” The teacher got nicer.

 3. Go with the person, not the firm.

We once hired a company to do a network installation and it did a bang-up job. We hired the same company a year later and it did the worst work we had ever encountered. During the course of the year, one guy, the guy who did the first job for us, had quit. Don’t trust companies – trust the people in them.

A corollary says that the worst schools have good teachers in them and the best schools have poor teachers in them. Seems a folly to worry a lot about what school your children go to. Just make sure they get the best teachers in the school. 

My never-ending writing project continues

Now that I have had a COVID vaccination, I feel safe enough to "hit the road" and find a nice warm place to sit outdoors and write for a week or so. While I have gone to the Dominican Republic in the past for this writing retreat, I am still not 100% confident of air travel and international destinations.

So my plan is to follow the Mississippi River south, eventually steering toward Atlanta to visit my son and his wife. From there I'll head toward the Gulf Coast, checking out small resorts along the coast. (Any recommendations for cheap places to stay for a week would be appreciated!) My plan is to visit my daughter and family in Kansas City on the way home. I miss my children and grandchildren very much.

My writing project is more personal than professional. For some time, I have been compiling portions of Blue Skunk entries that might be considered "keepers." Originally I planned to write a sequel to my "back of the room book," Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part that I wrote and my son illustrated in 2004 (free download here). Unlike my other books, published by respectable national companies, this little 126 booklet I self-published, allowing me to be a bit more personal, less formal in sharing my pithy insights and riotous humor. (Hah). Its primary audience was teachers, librarians, and technologists. I’d bring a few print copies to my workshops and give them as door prizes. It was, and still is, a fun little book. And did I mention it is a free download?

But I am changing the audience for this yet-to-be-named sequel. To help me focus on what writings might have a better shelf life, my grandsons will be my target readers. (Not that I actually expect them to do so.)  I doubt either will go into teaching, educational technology, or librarianship, so my thoughts need to be sufficiently generic to have meaning to engineers, doctors, and post-hole diggers.

Writing about education - especially when it comes to technology and librarianship - has always been tricky - being relevant without soon being dated. I felt my professional books really only had a shelf life of about five years before they needed a revision. Nothing like a reference to Myspace to have readers question your work.

To sort of put myself in the mood for writing, I will be posting chapters from Machines Are the Easy Part over the next couple of weeks. 

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From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 

Illustrations by Brady Johnson

Forward: the true miracle of the pyramids

I once visited the Great Pyramids of Giza and have always remembered an observation made by the Gaddafi look-alike tour guide:

“Most people marvel at the engineering and building when looking at these ancient wonders. But the true miracle was the sophistication of human management 4,000 years ago. How did this early civilization feed, house, train, organize and motivate the workers in order to complete these giant undertakings?”

Many books and articles on educational technology focus on the equipment itself – what software to use, how to create and manage networks, how to write lesson plans that incorporate technology, what technology skills all students need – all sprinkled with a generous dose of TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms). Heavy on the machines; light on the humanity.

This little book takes a somewhat skewed approach to educational technology. It’s focus is on the human elements to which attention must be paid before technology can have an impact on teaching and learning.

The book is designed to be read in one sitting or in lots of little sittings. (I know where I will be keeping my copy!) It doesn’t replace anything already available. It’s not definitive on any topic.

But it is my hope it will make you think, give you an insight or two, appeal to those of you who wish to think about technology only a healthy amount of your waking lives, be reassuring to those of you who are top-notch educators without being technology gurus, and perhaps give you a chuckle or two. No “feature creep” here.

Will you be remembered for what you did right or what you did wrong?

For me, one of the most memorable images from Egyptian mythology is the "weighing of the heart." After death, the ancient Egyptians felt, one's heart was placed on a scale opposite the "feather of truth and justice" . If the heart, which recorded all things one did in life both good and bad, was too heavy, you did not go to heaven - simple as that.

A good number of people's lives seemed to being judged in a similar way right now - especially literary and historical figures. Figures from the Civil War, not just Confederate Generals, but even Abraham Lincoln, are being evaluated on their worthiness for public statuary. Here in Minnesota, Henry Sibley, our first governor, had his name removed from a high school and renaming Sibley Park in Mankato is being seriously discussed. The depictions of Native Americans, Blacks, and Asians by beloved authors Laura Ingalls Wilder and Dr. Seuss are being criticized, and by implication, the characters of Wilder and Seuss as well.

When Anubis weighed Sibley's heart, I would not take a bet on the outcome. Letter writers' (historians both amateur and professional) opinions in the Mankato newspaper about the renaming of its largest and most well-known park show two very different interpretations of Sibley's role in the Dakota Uprising of 1862. Was he a primary actor in a baseless genocide of Indians that included the hanging of 38 Dakota natives who may or may not have been part of what may or may not have been a justified uprising that killed white settlers? Or did he stand up to public opinion and save the lives of hundreds of Dakota men, women, and children from whites out for revenge in his role of military commander? Anubis, did Sibley gain access to heaven or not?

Theodor Geisel's (Dr. Seuss) heart may also be an interesting case for the postmortem scales. Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham were fun read-alouds both in my home and in my libraries. Seuss's pro-conservation and pro-kindness lessons were good for kids. Yes, some images were drawn in what are now considered stereotypical fashion. Do we leave his books on the shelves for their humor and sound messages - or do we remove them because he colored a "Chinaman" yellow and showed him with chopsticks? Will the scales of social media and the press consign him and his works to heaven or hell?

Most of us are lucky (or unlucky?) enough to not be sufficiently famous for the public to have an opinion of our value. But in our families, in our communities, and especially in our own consciences we are judged. I hope to be more remembered for the good works, however small, I tried to do than by wrongs I have surely committed. Or by the standards of a future generation.