Budget dust

For many school districts, the fiscal year end is coming right up on June 30th. So now is the time for librarians and techs to go panning for budget dust. "What's that?" you may well ask.

• Most principals and other administrators have budgets with some discretion about how they are spent.
• Most principals and other administrators save a little money back in their budgets all year long just in case of an emergency.
• Most principals and other administrators know that if they don't spend all their budgets down to nearly zero each year they run the risk of having their funds reduced the following year.

Ergo... 

There may be some small amounts of money in your boss's budget that s/he is looking to spend prior to the end of the school year. And it is your professional obligation to help him/her spend it well.

Now is a good time to slip a list of tbings you need (projectors, extra workstations, book sets, software, etc.) to your boss. S/he'll thank you for helping make his/her job easier. 

For other pragmatic budgeting ideas click here. Or here (page 20)

Oh, if you are a Mankato school employee reading this, I have NO budget dust in any of my accounts this year. Sorry.

Application triage

There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going - Edna St Vincent Millay 

Laura Pearle's post "A-flutter about Twitter?" on the AASL blog struck a chord with me as I read it last evening. She writes

 I'm trying to provide a good program for my students. I'm trying to create passionate learners, independent thinkers and be a partner with my teachers in curriculum. I've got to consider budgets and previewing books and websites and databases for student and faculty use. I don't have all the staffing I could want (or use). There are standards and testing that I need to support. Our website could use an overhaul, not to mention our A/V equipment (which I'm responsible for maintaining). And let's not forget all the union/district/school meetings and professional development/in-services I need to attend. At the same time, I'm reading blogs and e-lists to connect with other librarians, and reading professional literature.

And then I'm supposed to Twitter and set up IM reference and create a MySpace page and be a real Friendster (or is it Facebook?) and Furl and... and... and...

and adds

The problem is that many of us are trying very hard to keep up, but technology expands while time seems to contract. 

and cites a great post by Kathy Sierra about  how new technologies like Twitter decrease time between interruptions.

Most of us can identify with Laura and Kathy. A new technology or two seems to pop-up almost on a daily basis. I know it is my job to keep up with all this and to figure out how it might benefit my students and teachers. But just how possible is it to keep up with everything?

I find myself practicing "application triage" more and more. I look at the same factors I identified seven years ago in a column named after the opening quote when reviewing a new application:

1. Simplicity.
2. Ubiquity.
3. Reliability
4. Usability
5. Affordability

And I tend to move through three stages as I work with a new program: 1) Awareness and understanding, 2) Personal application, and 3) Educational application. I will stop considering a new application at any one of these stages - I have to to survive.

Ning hasn't even got to stage one yet - I don't understand it clearly. Twitter did not made it past stage one - it sounds dreadful.  And Second Life is in stage two - I'm practicing and looking for ways I might actually put this program to use.

I spent a significant amount of time in Second Life over the weekend. Thanks to the patience and generosity of Kathy Schrock (fast becoming a Second Life guru) and Kevin Jarrett I now have a home (be it ever so humble) in this virtual world. Drop by anytime. I changed my hairstyle (from an accidental mullet), adopted a new skin color, and bought a pet mouse (rat?) who rides on my shoulder. Learned to make objects and create a SLURL. My walking is getting better but I have to work on my landings.

I also have a better understanding of the world's educational offerings thanks to a great tour conducted by Ryan (Existential Paine) Bretag on Saturday morning. We visited libraries and classrooms and even had a chance to visit with a "real" instructor using Second Life as a classroom.

 I haven't quite yet figured out how to actually put Second Life to use professionally. It's very engaging, even addictive, but right now it doesn't really pass my 1. Simplicity, 2. Ubiquity, 3. Reliability, 4. Usability 5. Affordability tests of promoting it to my teachers. But then, it will improve, I'm sure, and it will be interesting to follow its use by educational pioneers.

Application triage - give it a try... 

Sisyphus

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on - Omar Khayyam

Then the Moving Finger comes back,
And re-writes - Doug

You remember old Sisyphus from Greek mythology. The poor guy in Hades doomed to roll the big rock up the hill only to have it roll back down just as he reaches the top. Condemned for all eternity to keep pushing that darned rock. I'm thinking about him this weekend as I  look over the handouts and slides for my upcoming workshops and presentations in Saskatoon and Chicago.

Little did I realize when I signed on as author, as speaker and as consultant that nothing I wrote or prepared for presentation would stay written, stay prepared. A talk I created what seems like only moments ago, turns out to be two years old - ancient in Internet years. (If one dog year equals seven human years, one Internet year must equal at least twenty human years.) This basically means that every handout and every set of slides and every bit of content needs to be reviewed, revised and updated every single time I go anywhere. Once in a while I will miss something in my talk that is a couple years old and really embarrass myself. I hate it when that happens.

Where was the warning that once one has written a book, one has a life-long obligation to keep cranking out revisions? My books came out in 1997, 2002, 2003 and 2004. And they all need revising again. I've been putting this off for years now to the extent that my publisher isn't speaking to me any longer. If you pride yourself in being a lazy person like I do, writing books is not for you!

Or write fiction. Now there is writing that once writ, stays writ! I just finished Cormac McCarthy's allegorical The Road. No names, no dates, no technologies mentioned - only a bleak landscape populated by starving survivors of some unnamed cataclysm, all described in gorgeous language.  Depressing enough that every 11th grade English teacher will slap it into his/her curriculum for years to come and royalties will flow into perpetuity. McCarthy is a smart guy.

If you want to write a book, write a potboiler or a "modern classic." Trust me on this. 

Cartoon source unknown, but I like it.