A clutter-free 2015?

Blame is just a lazy person's way of making sense of chaos.
Douglas Coupland

I like little lists like these:

5 ways to unclutter your digital life in 2015

1. Upgrade software, programs and apps
2. Cut the cords — and organize the ones you can’t get rid of
3. Organize your desktop and browsers, and clear the cobwebs from your files
4. Organize your smartphone
5. Cut clutter from your inbox

So simple. So necessary. So unlikely to happen. And this just uncluttering my technology - what about all the junk I'll never use again in my file cabinets, kitchen cupboards, my sock drawer, and garage workbench?

Unclutter - it's been my life-long goal. Over the holidays I've undertaken a project to de-clutter my digital photos - all 11,000, 55 Gig of them. I'm about half done moving them to SmugMug and organizing them by category and by year. As I move them online, I'm deleting them from my poor old MacBook Air's drive, actually freeing up enough memory to finally ungrade to the Yosemite OS. (Big whoop.) In explaining this task to my father-in-law, he predicted that it is hopeless - just organize the photos you take from now on. We'll see.

I do a few things by habit that make decluttering a bit easier:

• When I buy a new pair of shoes, I throw an old pair out. (Same goes for shirts, socks, pants, and other articles of clothing.)
• When I bought print books, I weeded my personal collection before visiting my mother and brother - taking books to them to read and then donate to their small public library.
• I scan as much paper, both at home and work, as I can and organize it online.
• I keep my computer desktop clear. No files cluttering the lovely picture of my grandchildren.
• I regularly delete unused apps from my devices.
• I never buy when I can rent, especially media.

All of us lead complicated lives - at least most of the people I know do. Without a system, habits, and intention to be organized, we would be swamped and important tasks buried among the trivial.

Next to organize - all my writing files! Onward and upward.

Any de-cluttering ideas you're will to share?

BFTP: Cynicism and distance

I worry no matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.
Jane Wagner

In a recent comment, a reader pondered, "I found myself last week wondering if it is possible to grow old without growing cynical. So far the answer for me is apparently, no."

I've asked myself the same question wondering if aging must leads to a permanently skeptical view of the motives of others. Unless one deliberately adopts a Pollyannaish mind-set, can the thinking person avoid cynicism?

Reflecting a little on this, I've noticed that the farther away, more abstract or larger something is, the more cynical I tend to be about it. Some examples...

• I am cynical about religion on the whole (especially fund-raising TV evangelists, moralizing political philosophies, and the general ju-ju that is a part of most religions), but I have absolutely no doubt that my pastor son-in-law and his church is a genuine blessing and comfort to its members and community.
• I am cynical about the teaching profession and its willingness to change, but I know and admire lots and lots of individual teachers, librarians, and administrators who are changing and have devoted their lives to making schools a better place for kids.
• While I am deeply, deeply cynical about both federal and state government and politics, the few individual legislators and state employees I know personally are dedicated, thoughtful people, and I still believe in participating in the legislative process as much as possible.

Studies often show that while the general population gives "education" in the U.S. negative approval ratings, individuals give their own children's schools high marks. While most people are against higher taxes on general principle, we often vote increases to fund local projects like schools, libraries, recreational facilities, or civic centers. And no matter how reprehensible politicians are as a species, we nearly always return the incumbents to office.

Any take-aways from these idle musings???

• Probably the fastest and most meaningful way we could decrease cynicism and actually improve schools is to allow no district to grow over 10,000 students in size. Small school districts (not small schools or small class sizes), lead to more parental contact with administrators, less bureaucracy, and more local accountability by elected school boards. After a certain point, economy of scale is not economy at all.
• When anyone proposes a good "change theory," I will continue to respond: "Yes, that sounds good. Can you give me an actual example of a time that worked in a school building?" Let's start with what works in practice and build theories from that.
• To avoid cynicism, look at individuals, not groups. We are better spreading the word about fantastic individuals and programs that we are bemoaning the "state of education." For every problem stated, one should be required to report on an example of an antidote to that problem. Or it simply becomes whining.
• I will continue to advocate that individual teacher and librarian bloggers "Praise locally; complain globally." Not just to keep out of trouble with one's administrators, but to increase the likelihood of their writings making a difference.

Peanuts character Lucy once said, "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand." This old cynic just might reverse that. 'I don't trust mankind, but I have faith in people."

Thus endeth today's sermon.

Original post November 29, 2009

Out of the lab, off the cart, into the classroom

Today should be a quiet day in the office. Schools are out on holiday break and it seems anyone who has a spare vacation day is using this and next Friday to create a couple five day weekends. (All my vacation days are committed until next July. Poor me.) Anyway, it should be a good day to work on budget.

I love creating budgets. (See here, here, here, and here.) While most of us have a fixed, zero-sum budget ("You have $X - make the most of it."), there is no excuse for not preparing and presenting an outcome-based budget ("$X is how much is needed to do what we want to accomplish.").

This year's budget proposal will differ from that which I prepared in the past, however.

The old model of simply replacing labs and staff computers on a regular basis is crumbling. Best practices, user focus groups and surveys, and curricular demands are increasing the pressure for technology to be portable, individualized - and in the classroom.

This fits with the "convenience" criteria in my old formula for predicting the Probability of Large Scale Adoption (2008) of a technology:

We need to take a hard look at several things in our district to make the most of our technology budget and increase the probability of technology being used by all teachers, not just the "pockets of wow" folks:

1. Maintaining an absolute minimum number of separate labs.  While we will need at least one lab for the foreseeable future in elementary buildings for state testing and doing high-end productivity work (video editing), having labs dedicated to word processing, adaptive learning system use (Read180), educational gaming, or "computer literacy" makes little sense when these tasks can be done in the classroom using portable devices and the wireless network. Secondary schools will continue to need business ed and tech ed labs, along with a general testing/productivity lab - but do English teachers really need to drag kids to a separate room to write? 
2. Breaking up carts and assigning devices to classrooms. As long as the devices remain on carts which need to be retrieved, reserved, and easily forgotten, some teachers will choose not to bother using them. Having a 3:1 or 2:1 device to student ratio in the classroom at all times will allow the teacher to regard these devices as a regular classroom equipment that can be used by teams, as part of teaching stations, or for interventions in differentiated instruction. And if a 1:1 ratio is needed. the teacher works with his/her next door counterpart to share.
3. Replacing computers with full blown operating systems (Macs and PCs) with iPads and Chromebooks. Schools can purchase about three smaller devices for what they would spend just one full-blown laptop or desktop. For GAFE schools, 90% of the processing power of a Windows or Mac OS will just go unused.  And I would argue this goes for lab machines as well as classroom devices. As we old Iowa farmers like to say "Never use two mules when one will do."  
4. Replacing teacher laptops with a classroom assigned workstation and a teacher-assigned portable device. Teachers needed laptops to take home when their files were tied to the device itself. Now work is stored in the cloud and can be accessed from any device, anywhere. While this not necessarily a change greeted with enthusiasm (How to be unpopular - no more teacher laptops), it make sense for teachers have access to the same technologies their students are using.

A budget which redeploys technology spending will be met with some resistance, I'm sure. What change doesn't?

But creative educational initiatives need to be met with creative budgeting as well.

Any economic strategies you can share which put more tech in kids hands without breaking the bank?