Sydney Portier - One of the Greatest! I was happy to see Sidney Portier win a lifetime Oscar award. A human treasure. He was a hero to my father. My father admired Sydney so much. I did as well. I loved the way Sidney carried himself in his films. I remember the great humanity of his characters. At a time when there were no large Latino public figures, we adopted African-American figures. This is the stuff that one learns at the dinner table. Where do we start to learn to appreciate the "other" but in the home? Where does bigotry and racism start? .......At the dinner table.
10:04:03 PM  #  comment []

Spring is in the air........... Are not many school district and school internet sites, similar to the description of the monoculture intranet described by Userland's John Robb. I am guilty as well of building these static sites where I am the gatekeeper and the essential author. One has to start someplace. I had to make a "leap of faith" by transitioning slowly over to Manila. We have had it since January of 2000! Due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to take over a split grade classroom last school year. This delayed our deployment except for our school staff information Manila site and my Mac Educh Site. The reason I think and believe that Manila is good for educational institutions ( and non-profits) is that the content can stay fresh and interesting if a community is involved in the creation of its own story. Slowly but surely, some of our teachers are building up the essential skills to move into the digital era. Our teachers finally have essential tools like digital cameras, scanners, and digital camcorders to bring the visuals to Manila. As we work with the basics of digital picture taking and editing, scanning and shooting video, authentic organic projects are taking root. Spring is in the air........

From John Robb's Site http://jrobb.userland.com/2002/03/19.html#a1394

Unfortunately, unlike the Internet, a corporate Intranet is a static monoculture. Most Intranets are designed and built by a small group of individuals.  It doesn't change much.  It's usually a semi-passive resource for employees.  It doesn't have a diversity of published views that link to resources that are located on it.  As a result, Google's quality ranking doesn't have the material it needs to do its magic in corporate environments.

There is a solution.  K-Logs.  K-Logs create a body of Intranet webpages that a Google appliance can use to rank resources.  This provides users with better results.
8:01:47 PM  #  comment []

How about Working on Building True Community in Education! Had a very good conversation regarding education with a member of the National Writing Project's Project Outreach, a professor at Chico State University. I came away again with the idea that that there needs to be more collaboration among teachers at the school site level, from the elementary level up to the university level. There needs to be more community building. For Chico State University, in one department, veteran professors were teamed with new professors. This collaboration gave the new professors a sense of belonging and helped them grow into their new educational community. In this case, it was working until some beaurocrat decided to change the policy even though the rational and benefits was clearly explained by the professors. At the elementary school level, it may mean the Board of education need to hire more teachers to form collaborative teams at or across grade levels in the urban schools. It is within these small collaboratives that new teachers can work with veteran teachers. Otherwise, the schools will continue to lose talent and commitment by teachers to work in the urban schools due in part to the isolation. If the politicians and boards of education do not constructively start supporting teachers and their PRAXIS, by enabling the development of true education communities, there will be no true positive change. I have not even talked about the need for wider parent and community involvement. To be continued as usual...
2:39:53 PM  #  comment []