Packing essentials

Heading to Ecuador. I’ll be gone for four to six weeks. I’m only taking a carry-on backpack. 

This will be a multi-part trip. My friend Heidi and I will be spending a week on a small cruise ship in the Galapagos, taking day hikes and snorkeling around the islands. A second week will be spent at a lodge in the Amazonian rainforest. Heidi will then fly home and I will head to the colonial city of Cuenca to spend a couple weeks in a hostel - and chill. I’ve read about a mini-Inca Trail hike near there as well as a long downhill bike ride. I’ll look into those. If I am not too homesick, I may stay in Cuenca for another couple weeks or explore more of Ecuador.

GIven the variety of activities, temperatures, and such, I need to be smart about what I bring. While not the king of minimalism, I can go fairly light… 

• Simple clothes for 7 days. I figure I can always get laundry done once a week. I only take hiking pants/shirts, underwear and socks. Swimsuit and one t-shirt. Packing cubes help organize and compress my clothes. No dress clothes. I wear one rain jacket/windbreaker and sweatshirt on the plane with light gloves and a stocking hat in the pockets. I pack a broad-brimmed hiking hat.

• One pair of hiking shoes and a pair of Crocs to wear in my accommodations and if needed on wet shore landings.

• New razor and toothbrush. My old toiletry bag also includes a washcloth, fingernail clippers, a few over-the-counter meds, small bars of soap, etc. Never hard to find a tube of toothpaste on the road if needed.

• Laptop/Kindle/iPhone. I have a very small, old Chromebook that is my travel companion. I have an old Kindle that still has good battery life. And I have an old iPhone into which I can have a local SIM card installed for internet access. Chargers, of course.

• Paper copies of passport and vax card. I also have scans of these stored in GoogleDocs and on my phone.

• Eye mask, ear plugs and neck pillow for my flights. Umbrella. Highly compressible pack for day trips.

I hope to leave behind cold weather, bad habits, and routine. They probably wouldn’t fit in my backpack anyway. 

* My friend and I pass the required COVID test yesterday! Off we go...

Making Facebook your friend

Facebook gets a lot of bad press. It enables the spread of misinformation, some of it quite dangerous. It seems to inflame divisiveness in politics. It causes friendships to melt down and families to break apart. It enables target marketing of users who may then spend money unwisely.

But me? I kind of like Facebook. There are a number of rules I follow that seem to eliminate many of the negative aspects.

1. I only “friend'' actual friends. This may be the single smartest thing one can do when using social media - period. I know the people personally whose posts I read and who can read mine. One of the joys Facebook brings me is seeing photos of family and friends having good times.

2. I drop the inciters. Now just because we are friends or relatives, doesn’t mean I read your posts. In fact, if you have a tendency to be overly-political, I will remain your friend but turn off your post feed. 

3. I only post things I would not be ashamed for my mother to read. I learned many years ago when I started blogging that my mother, my daughter, and my boss all read my posts. I got called on a few of them, but I was a quick learner and tried to keep anything I put online PG, as rational as possible, and respectful of others’ privacy.

4. I don’t click on polls. “If you could choose only one dessert to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?” “Write a line from a movie that would indicate the title of the movie.” “Take this quiz to see what house at Hogwarts you’d belong to.” You’ve seen these things. They are simply a method of data gathering. 

5. I get my news from vetted sources. Professional journalists have training, standards, and a code of ethics. Nut jobs on Facebook don’t. While no news source is 100% free of bias, those run by professionals (newspapers, national/local TV and radio news, magazines) are still the most accurate.

6. I wait to click the “Buy Now” button. This one is tough for me. Amazon just loves showing me gadgets they know I’ll find intriguing in my Facebook feed. So if something really interests me (that decorative paper towel holder for my kitchen), I’ll add it to my wishlist and think about it for a few days. Most of the time, I just delete the item when I revisit the list.

7. I limit my time. I only log into Facebook twice a day - once in the early morning and once in the evening - and then only spend a short time scrolling through posts. I admire those folks who say they only access the site every few days. Perhaps a goal worth pursuing.

There are, of course, people who seem to need conflict and anger and use Facebook to satisfy those needs. Set your own guidelines. Work toward making your world a happier place.

The outside consultant

 

 A consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time, and then keeps the watch.  Carl Ally

My friend Scott McLeod on his blog Dangerously Irrelevant has been writing about good practices for school districts using "outside helpers." If you are an educational leader, his posts are a must read.

Scott's advice made me reflect a bit on my days when I'd be asked to "consult" - mainly in the form of doing technology or library program evaluations for school districts. I did it often enough - and with what I felt was mixed success - to think about how schools could get their best value from me. While not as comprehensive or thoughtful as Scott's posts, this is what I wrote in my handbook,What Gets Measured, Gets Done (2019), about "helpers"...

The outside consultant

Should a district hire a consultant from outside the district to help evaluate its library media program? Since I have often served as a consultant myself, you need to know that my advice may be somewhat self-serving. But here it is anyway…

There are a number of very good reasons not to hire a consultant to help in the evaluation process:

• Good consultants are expensive. (An alternative to a hired gun is to have a reciprocal agreement with another district to trade external evaluators. Accreditation associations often use volunteer evaluators from member schools. These folks know they in turn will get volunteers when they are evaluated.)

• Consultants may not understand the culture, philosophy, and goals of the district.

• Consultants may come to the evaluation with a set of prejudices not in keeping with district philosophy or professional best practices.

• Consultants may not come from recent practice in the field.

• Consultants can only discover a limited amount of information during a site visit. One or two conversations or experiences may play too important a factor in the consultant’s final recommendations.

 Other than that, we are charming and lovable people and can add value to the evaluation process:

• Consultants can bring a sense of objectivity to the evaluation.

• Consultants can bring expertise in building good programs to the district.

• Consultants can lend credibility and validity to the work done by the district evaluation team if the administrative team and school board regard them as impartial and expert.

• Consultants can bring knowledge of current best practices and future trends in the field, and may have knowledge of what other schools are doing that is innovative and effective.

If you want to get the most bang for your buck from a consultant:

• Spell out exactly what result you expect from his/her involvement. (Site visit, written report, follow-up, etc.)

• Have good information for the consultant to use. Inventories, survey results etc, should be done prior to his/her involvement. (Although a good consultant should be able to provide sources for good evaluative tools.) The consultant should only be analyzing the data and making recommendations, not gathering it.

• Get recommendations from others who have used the consultant. Ask about their communication skills, timeliness, reliability, and the usability of the consultant’s product.

• Hire someone with credibility and recent experience in the library media field.

When I visit a district as a program evaluator, my main objective is to help the head of the library media/technology department get across whatever message he or she needs to have the administration and board hear. Most people for whom I have worked have a very realistic picture of the strengths and weaknesses of their programs. 

I also attempt to answer genuine questions these folks might have: Why are more classes not using technology for research purposes? To what extent do our physical facilities help or hinder our library media programs? How can we better use the computers we have in our elementary schools? Do our print collections meet the needs of our students and staff? How can we better allocate our media and technology dollars? Should our budgets support more e-resources? How can I make our makerspace more effective? Does the library program support the learning management system and personalized learning efforts?

The main point here is that the better the district knows what it wants from an outside consultant evaluator, the better off that person is able to provide it. And this leaves everyone satisfied and the district with useful information that can be used to improve.