StigmergicWeb

From CBC news - Clinton cautions Canada against moving to privatize health care

Its great to hear leaders from other countries praise our health care system in Canada. As a nation, it should be one of the things that we hold up as an example of the best we have achieved. During our most recent pregnancy, my wife and I were fortunate to have timely access to skilled medical professionals when we had need of their services. It works because we think of health care as a public good, and not as an opportunity for profit. Bill Clinton said:

The last thing anyone in Canada should do is let the “health-care finance tail wag the health-care dog,”

I think we need to keep in mind that we could and should say the same thing about education at all levels, from pre-school to post-secondary.

I suppose we don’t need to elect Bill Clinton, since we already have this guy.

Thomas Hawk, writer of the uber-great FlickrNation blog, puts it all in a nutshell - You’ve Got to Fight, For Your Right… to Take Photos of Your Own Kid at a Public Ice Skating Rink?

The sheer irony of a public skating rink disallowing photography in a public place while the push is on by governments of every level to cram cameras into every public place makes my bones ache. We are being asked to give up our rights to interact in public places based on a perceived threat that is undoubtedly far less than it is represented in the media. What’s next - we’ll need government approval to look and listen as we walk on a sidewalk?

OK - enough ranting. I’ll return back to my regular edu-geeking. Or maybe I’ll keep ranting. Yesterday, Stephen (announcing his official return from hiatus) said:

…we do not need great leaders. There will be no revolution, no rennaissance, until we change ourselves, until we ourselves become the embodiment of the caring and compassionate society we want to create. How hard that is! I return from my time away more aware than ever of how fallible, how ordinary, how human I am. Oh my yes, I have my apologies to give and my amends to make. Still, no matter how hard it is, we need to believe in ourselves, to believe we can make a difference, to believe we matter, to believe we can live freely. This, above all, must be our legacy.

Maybe what we need is a little more ranting, a little more critical dialogue, and a little less willingness to pass off the stuff we don’t like as someone else’s problem.

He was born March 14, 2006 at 5:54 a.m. CST at RUH in Saskatoon. He was 8 lbs and 4 oz at birth, and 21 inches long. Mom and the rest of the family are all doing great.

Poor guy - not even a day old, and he’s already part of the google-sphere. ;^)

Well, not quite yet since there is a PD workshop tomorrow for me, but the presentation/workshop co-presented with Donna entitled How to Drink Water from a Fire Hose is now done. My brain is too tired for a full autopsy right now, but my general impression is positive. Many teachers are ready to start looking at some new (and I think better and easier) online ways of communicating and collaborating with each other and with students. Of course, I had the iRiver on record mode during the presentation and if the audio is reasonable, I’ll have that up as a podcast sometime soon (or maybe I should say sooner or later).

Sometime soon, I need to spend some serious blogging time to write down some stuff about projects I’ve been working on at the school, reactions to other people’s blogs and my almost virtual attendance at the Social Software Salon hosted by Brian, D’Arcy and Alan as a warmup to the Northern Voice conference (and it almost worked except I kept gacking Jason’s computer with my Skype connection - sorry about that, Jason). For now, though, I get to take off the ed-tech guy hat for a while, and spend a bit more time wearing the husband-and-dad hat for a few days of being with the family. It won’t be too much of a rest since the house is in midst of rearrangement in preparation for the newbie we are expecting sometime around the middle of March. Watch this space for details.

Like many others in the edtechblogosphere (we really do need a better word - suggestions?), I am signing off the blog for a few days of rest. If I get any amazing ideas in the meantime, I’ll write them down on some loose bits of paper then try to reassemble them afterwards. Have a great [name of your winter faith based holiday], and I look forward to some more blog reading and writing in a few days.

Its sure getting tough to despise Bill Gates. According to this article on Slashdot, Bill is donating $258 Million to Fight Malaria. The media focuses on short-lived crises such as the desctruction of New Orleans, but malaria causes about 1.3 million deaths annually, and 85% of these deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa (according to Wikipedia). That’s about the same as the entire population of the greater New Orleans area, and malaria takes that many lives every year, without attention from western media.

After my birthday post about Bill, you might think this is turning into a pro-Microsoft blog. Absolutely not - we might not be able to despise Bill anymore, but at least we still have Steve Ballmer! ;^)

Taking a quick glance at the blog, I am shocked to see how absent I have been on this site. I can only offer the following shoddy excuses for my absence:

• Busy working on EdTech Posse, which you really should check out if you haven’t already!
• Thinking of ideas for a thesis. Actually, thinking of ideas is not the problem - settling on just one idea is the problem. Many of you will be able to relate to this, I am sure

And I have one more excuse for ignoring this site, just for this summer at least.

She’ll be starting Kindergarten and I’ll be starting a thesis in the fall, so I thought we should really take advantage of the time we have over the summer!

Way to go, Rick! That’s a grand-slam homer!!

Rick’s Café Canadien: Free cappucinos in the café

2005 3M Teaching Fellows announced

I’m heading off to AMTEC 2005 in Calgary next week, so some of my current projects (like the Generic High School) will be on hold for a little while. This weekend, I’ll be spending a bit of time putting together my presentation - Weblog Communities: Emerging Environments for On-line Learning. Here’s the description:

This presentation will demonstrate how personal publishing tools such as weblogs and RSS aggregators provide opportunities for novel learning models beyond the traditional course-based model of online learning. It will demonstrate how weblogs can become loosely affiliated to form ad hoc virtual communities. A variety of learning opportunities presented by these affiliations will be discussed, as well as the importance of open file formats, such as XML, as a means of forming connections between individually created weblogs.

If you are going to be at AMTEC, it would be great to meet up with you - leave a comment here, or drop me a line at robwall AT gmail DOT com.

I will try to blog the proceedings while I am there - I’m not sure if the facilities will have wireless access, so I might just need to take notes and dump them en masse once I get back. There are going to be a lot of great sessions, and three amazing keynote speakers - John Seely Brown, Brent Wilson and Rick Schwier. It should be great!