Apace of Change

by Damian Bariexca, Ed.D.

Archive for August, 2007

Eight Things You Hate About Me

I think Kim Moritz tagged me with the “Eight Random Facts” meme as a gentle hint that I should actually write something interesting, so here goes:

Rules:

1. Post these rules before you give your facts.
2. List 8 random facts about yourself.
3. At the end of your post, choose (tag) 8 people and list their names, linking to them.
4. Leave a comment on their blog, letting them know they’ve been tagged.

My 8 Random Things:

1. Though I’ve spent most of my life in New Jersey (and I still work there), I went to first grade in Switzerland at the International School of Basel. Goodnight, Ms. Cozens, wherever you are.

2. I have been an ardent fan of Newcastle United FC for the better part of a decade (at least no one can accuse me of being a front-runner!).

3. I first met my wife in a teacher work room at our high school (and you thought prep periods were for grading!).

4. Yeah, so we took our honeymoon in Disney World, so what? It’s not just for kids anymore manchildren like it too.

5. Geek cred – I’ve only been blogging for a week, but I’ve been online since 1992 – how many of you remember connecting at 1200 baud (and when the 14.4 line at your BBS felt lightning-fast!)?

6. My Twitter name is actually a mild malapropism for an album by The Stone Roses called “Garage Flower”.  I picked it because I like the contrasting imagery (and garages).

7. My first instrument? Alto sax in fifth grade; only lasted a year. Picked up bass guitar in eighth grade because it looked cool (and only had 4 strings, therefore easier to learn than guitar, right?). Learned guitar and started singing at 16, and have played out here and there ever since, both alone and with bands.

8. I’ve acted, too. Up until family life and grad school sank their claws into me started occupying more of my time, I acted with Shakespeare ’70 Repertory Company, based in Mercer County, NJ. Favorite role? Sir Walter Blunt in Henry IV, Part I. Not too many lines to memorize, and I got to go out in a blaze of glory after a broadsword battle with a man so bad he precedes his name with a definite article, The Douglas.

My Tags

Much like Christian Long and Chris Lehmann before me, I’m going to forgo leaving comments on people’s blogs, for all the reasons they state. I will, however, create a tag list here for folks to consider:

  1. David at Ed Tech Learning
  2. Dave at teaching.mrstacey.org.uk (good luck in the slide compo, by the way)
  3. Dave at The Principal and Interest
  4. Dave Jeffrey at On the other side of the world…
  5. Whoever’s in charge over at aBlog (my money’s on Dave)
  6. Dan at dy/dan
  7. Doug at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk
  8. Marcie at Looksee Fishy Fish, because I saw her slideshow on Dan’s blog (and because she’s in Philly – good luck to you, too)

Participate if you wish, folks, but by no means feel obligated.

Due to Technical Difficulties…

Looks like my slidecast debut will have to wait. I recorded narration for a slideshow I did a while ago on Thomas a Becket, but for some reason Slideshare can’t retrieve the MP3 from my hosting service. I’ve got an email in to Slideshare support; I’m hoping for a quick response, as I’d really like to get this up and posted.

I can offer the following reflection – the slide show I’ll be putting up usually takes me anywhere between 3o-40 minutes to go through in class. I know that sounds like a long time, but that includes taking questions, asking questions, elaborating, etc. Still probably on the long side, though, as I never script these things, and just run from either my head or a list of bulletpointed notes.

After the first 1500 or so takes of my narration, I got tired of stumbling, bumbling, saying “ummm”, and all those other wonderful aspects of public speaking (I’m fine in front of an audience, just don’t get me in front of a mic), and wrote a quick script. Nothing fancy, just basically what I wanted to get across, in an informal, conversational tone. The total running time of the MP3 (pre-Slideshare syncing)?

6:43.

Again, this is without stopping for questions, repeating myself for those who didn’t hear, or anything like that, but holy cow – the demands and restrictions put on me by the audio recording forced me to trim this down to at least a quarter of its normal presentation time. I was planning on turning some of my lectures this year into podcasts, but was still a bit hung up on recording a 25-40 minute lecture. I wonder how short I can get THOSE with a little tightening of the script?

In class, I try to deliver material as seemingly “off the cuff” as possible – I know my stuff, and I don’t need or want to read from a script. I think that engages my kids; however, what comes off as stiff in person actually sounds much smoother in recording, and if I do make the leap to podcasts this year, I’ll do so without the trepidation of overly lengthy downloads – with the right script, I’ll probably be able to cover an entire movement in 10-15 minutes. Think about how much class time that’ll free up.

Before I rack out for the night (it’s been a long weekend), I want to give a heartfelt thank you to the folks who’ve visited and left comments so far. As I said before, I really am excited about the communal, collaborative element of blogging, and I’m heartened to know that what I’m putting out there is being seen. Looking forward to continuing the dialogue with all of you, both here and at your places! I have some thoughts on Twitter I’ll be fleshing out here later this week, as well as getting my slidecast up (hopefully).

Slideshare + Podcast = Slidecast!

The good folks at Slideshare have a new mashup online called Slidecast, which allows you to upload an MP3 of music, narration, etc., and sync it to your slide presentation. I’ll try to give it a whirl tomorrow evening and post the results here Sunday or Monday (here’s a link to their blog post about it from July 24).

Also, this story from Gizmodo [via Sci Fi Tech] makes me cringe on so many levels I can’t even begin to describe. I know there are tragic stories every year about parents leaving their kids in cars unattended, so I guess there’s a market need for these things, but… words fail. Having been a tired, stressed out, sleep-deprived father of a newborn, I can proudly say that I’ve never needed a keychain alarm to remind me that I’ve left my infant son alone in the car. Have we become this reliant on technology?

Actually, the more I roll this around my mind, how different is this from something like a baby monitor? We really valued having a little B&W video baby cam/monitor setup when our son was younger, and it still comes in handy from time to time. I still don’t think they’re equivalent, but maybe I should tone down the snark a little bit (naah). With another little one on the way, I’m still mindful of the role technology plays in our parenting. To me, utilizing the technology without letting it become a crutch is key, and my wife and I are still trying to strike that balance. I think this is true in teaching as well – use the technology, don’t let the technology use you.

This was just meant to be a two-line post about Slidecast.  I’m off to check the baby monitor.

The Inaugural Post: Keeping Apace of Change

Thanks for stopping by. I’ll start this blog off with a brief introduction and statement of purpose:

FACT: The period between June 2007 and June 2008 will be one of major change in my personal and professional lives. In this year-long time frame, I will:

  1. Turn 30
  2. Become a father for the second time
  3. Finish my eighth year of teaching high school English
  4. Complete my graduate degree (Ed.S. in School Psychology)
  5. Likely end my career as a teacher and start anew in the field of school psychology

I’m sure this will turn out to be only a partial list, but it’s all I’m prepared for at the moment. I am starting this blog for a few reasons, not the least of which is to act as some kind of self-therapy. More directly, however, I want to engage with other educators – not just teachers, but administrators, psychologists, LDTCs, and others in the education field – as to uses for much of the technology that is available to us.

In the last year and a half, I’ve reviewed a lot of technological tools for potential use in my classroom. Some of it I felt could serve a strong purpose in my teaching; others, not so much. For better or for worse, though, that evaluation began and ended with me. I don’t feel as though I’ve had many people I could talk to at length about the applications of these tools, simply because I’m the only one in the immediate area who knew anything about them. That’s absolutely not a shot at my colleagues; I respect them highly. However, it doesn’t take a mind reader to know when people in the workroom are sick of you blabbing about wiki-this and podcast-that.

I’ve titled my blog “Apace of Change” because it so precisely sums up my life situation: trying to keep abreast of ever-changing technology while also dealing with significant changes in my personal and professional lives. This is going to be something of a transition year for me, and as I prepare to leave one career behind to start another, I’m hoping to use my awareness of the educational applications of technology like wikis, weblogs, podcasts, IM, etc., to bridge the gap between teaching and psychology.

That’s where you come in. I invite you to leave comments, pose questions, call me out, tell me what you do, anything. I’m really doing this for the collaborative aspect – I need to talk about these issues with people, and where else other than Edublogs am I likely to find such folks?

Besides, talk is cheap. Therapy’s expensive.