Story with a lesson

I don't usually re-post jokes on this blog, but I like the message of this one...

On a busy boulevard, a stressed out woman was tailgating an honest man.

Suddenly, the light turned yellow directly in front of him. He did the correct thing. He stopped at the crosswalk even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman went ballistic, pounded on the horn, dropped her makeup and cell phone, and screamed in frustration and was swearing a blue streak as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up.

He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday-School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated 'Christian Fish' emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car."

 

Yes, it's your WWJD thong... 

Two modest suggestions to my profesional organizations...

Both ALA/AASL and ISTE are much on my mind, having just returned from ALA Midwinter in Seattle and anticipating the ISTE board meeting in Santa Fe in a few weeks. If I might make a couple suggestions:

1. Opt out, not opt in.
Both organizations seem to have a constant (lack of) membership  problem. As I remember, only 1 in 7 school librarians belongs to AASL with 60,000 potential members out hiding in the stacks somewhere. If you count ISTE's potential members as every educator, its ratio of members to nonmembers is even more lopsided. A piece of low-hanging fruit I've proposed to both groups, loudly and seemingly in vain:  Automatically renew current memberships every year. Send a post card or e-mail  that says, Unless you let us know by XX/XX/XXXX, your membership will be automatically renewed. $XX.XX will be charged to your credit card.

This is how my newspaper subscription works, my cell phone account, my photo sharing service and blog host. I can opt out, but I don't have to re-up. I like the convenience. Is it ethical? Well, does your church ask you to "renew" your membership each year? I doubt it. My sense is that a lot of people just don't get around to renewing their professional memberships. At least this way we would retain, instead of lose,  all the procrastinators.

Let the members write their own standards
As I commented yesterday, the new AASL Standards will be challenging to write. Here is my second modest suggestion: Let's do a draft and then put the standards out for member revision as a wiki, following the editorial practices of Wikipedia.  I suggested this to the committee that is overseeing the revision and I did not feel the suggestion was taken seriously. The idea has merit, dammit:

• Real people writing the standards will make them realistic.
• The organization shows it has respect and trust in its members.
• The standards, if remaining in wiki form, would always be current.

Will AASL do it? Of course not. ALA/AASL is an institution that has the turning radius of a 747. Too bad we are living in a time where all the fun stuff is being done in experimental two-seaters. But then I have not seen the "refreshed" NETS standards available online for editing either.

I believe in people being a part of a professional organization. It is good both for us and for those we serve. But as a member of such organizations, I also have the obligation to fight for their improved effectiveness. If we don't get smart, flexible and nimble, we will become irrelevant.

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

The periodic table of visualization methods.  Hover on each block for an example of the visualization method.

Pretty cool.