One of my favorite movies is Cool Hand Luke. My favorite part? When Cool Hand Luke keeps fighting even though he's obviously whipped and earns the friendship of the big guy in prison. Who do you identify with--Luke, Dragline (character beating up on Luke), the onlookers, the warden, the guards, the public who benefits from having an out of sight, out of mind prison?

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n0mgkaEGQc

Since I watched this movie when I was young, I never quite "got" all the pieces. I simply admired someone who could keep coming even when he was whipped. It seems an awful dumb thing to admire in retrospect. Perhaps, as a child, when others have power, it's nice to see someone who is powerless endure. "Stay down," call the onlookers as they flinch at the violence. "Stay down, you're beat." The refusal to be beaten, to give up, earns admiration. But we all have our breaking point, don't we? Life conspires to find it in random fashion, and takes our true measure--how we are when our spirit is crushed. Those circumstances form the crucible.

One of the comments (04/21/2008) made helps me to better understand why I like Cool Hand Luke:

I used to love this movie and I still do. Why? Not sure I can put it properly into words either, but I'll try. It's a superb character study of the ultimate rebel - and one who does it by not asking anyone else but himself to take on the risks of such a rebellion. Luke is alone, unbowed and cool to the very end - like an uncut diamond refusing to let itself be brought into shape. His rebellion is useless, stupid, futile, but for one thing: it asks the necessary questions. Why is he there? Why does there have to be something like that place at all? Does a system - right or wrong - mark men, or do they mark the system?

Though I wouldn't compare classroom teachers to a prisoner in a Florida prison camp who refuses to submit to the system, schools are crucibles for many of our teachers. Rebellion against the education system appears useless and futile.

That last question in the comment, "Does a system--right or wrong--mark men, or do they mark the system?" helps me ask another question. As an edublogger and administrator, do I make a difference in the system I'm in or not? It's an important question. Patrick Lencioni wrote a book on the three signs of a miserable job.

The book comes to mind, not only because top administrators in my work place are reading it, but because Vicki Davis says (cited below) that many of her friends--but not her because of her placement at "a private school, at that"--suffer heartache about their work as educators.

(BTW, I take exception at Vicki's words...why should Vicki's situation be any different than public schools? Why does she lessen her experience at a private school? The conditions at private schools are often the same as public schools...it depends on the leadership, the relationships, and the agendas and whether those are transparent and out in the open or hidden to protect interests of the ruling hierarchy...the rich, those who donate the most to the school, who control the school board, the lack of funding for some activities, etc.).

Teachers, like the prisoners in the Florida prison, are often anonymous, irrelevant, and suffering from immeasurement. The last is at first glance, hard to believe. Don't we measure the effect of teachers every day with high stakes tests? But how do we assess success ourselves rather than be dependent on someone else, especially fickle legislators?

At Cool Cat Teacher's Blog, Vicki writes:

In the states - this is an election year. Change in education is in the wind - again - and think tanks, experts, and politicians are all again looking for the things that need to be "done to" education. I have so many friends who email and talk to me on a weekly basis about their heartaches and things that are driving them from teaching like a whip.

I think that teachers should offer up their thoughts to politicians and others about what we think needs to happen. Oh, sure, there are organizations that are supposed to do that. But what about teachers around the world, across practice, across grade level just talking about the things they would like to see happen in education.

As an administrator, a person cast in the role of bringing about systemic change, it is clear to me that I need to do at least 3 things:

1. Use Read/Write Web technologies to enable teachers, not only to communicate and collaborate with each other in alignment with ISTE NETS-S,to help them find their voice but more importantly, to foster reflection on their work and practice. In one act, teachers who are oppressed by the system will find a way to embrace the freedom they need to embrace.
2. Celebrate the work of staff so that others may see how their work impacts the lives of others. Accomplish this by creating videos and photo slideshows that highlight success in the work that is done. Share those videos in places like Edublogs.tv.
3. In designing a new project in collaboration with others, find ways to help others come to assess the integrity of their own work rather than be dependent on my definition of success. In other words, set clear parameters for tasks that enable learning...find a way to transform the reality without using an existing model that doesn't work.

As I re-read those, the first two are easy but the last is a bit more difficult to accomplish. I am tempted by top-down, authoritarian leadership models, so I have to work harder, be more explicit about having conversations with others about what constitutes success for all rather than allowing it to be grounded in either their perception or mine. It is like the child who asks, "How many lines do I have to write?" when contemplating a writing assignment. The teacher's response, "As many as it takes to get the job done, and not one more."

"What can tangible good can I do where I affirm a teacher's need to be free to learn and teach in various ways?"

I'm not going to use TwitterSplit, but the video is funny to watch!!

via DigiDave's blog entry, Citizen Journalist Deported from Beijing, China

Since this is hosted on YouTube, you can see the address to the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3AlaXbbxmo

You can drop it into Zamzar.com or Edublogs.tv if you can't access it via YouTube.

Amazing that citizen-journalists were kicked out and that the Chinese government tracked citizen-journalists to have them expelled...some quotes from the video:

"No Transparency"

"Absolute corruption"

"Little device--cell phone--to broadcast narration or group of individuals...it just took me back. Stirs up emotions and to know that this phone can radically change a political argument speaks to itself."

Hmm...Citizen Journalism...what if we started using it in our schools to practice what Patrick Finn (author of Literacy with an Attitude) calls "dangerous" literacy?

In the strictly controlled media world of communist China, "citizen journalism" is beating a way through censorship, breaking taboos and offering a pressure valve for social tensions. In one striking example this month, the Internet was largely responsible for breaking open a slave scandal in two Chinese provinces that some local authorities had been complicit in. A letter posted on the Internet by 400 parents of children working as slaves in brickyards was the trigger for the national press to finally report on the scandal that some rights groups say had been going on for years. The parents' Internet posting was part of a growing phenomenon for marginalised people in China who can not otherwise have their complaints addressed by the traditional, government-controlled press. "The phenomenon of 'citizen journalism' suddenly arrived several years ago," said Beijing-based dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests. "Since the appearance of blogs in particular, every blog is a new platform for the spread of information."
Source: 'Citizen journalism' battles the Chinese censors

But blogging and writing is still outside what we normally do in schools, isn't it? Consider this quote from the final chapter in Literacy with an Attitude:

My goal is to help my kids become active, involved members of their community. I try to teach this by having them be active, involved members of our classrom and school and neighborhood. But what I'm being told now is that what we are really to do is just get kids ready to take tests...So I'm told to drill and sort and measure; and whether or not my kids can think, cooperate, be creative, or work for a common goal is irrelevant.
Quote as cited in LWA is a kindergarten teacher

Is it silly to compare human rights abuses with testing children in the U.S.? I don't think so. If people who protest, who are citizen journalists in places where human rights abuses are severe, don't I have every responsibility to make a change where I am in the United States, land of the free?

Some time ago, I interviewed Sandra Hines about her upcoming article in TechEdge regarding Jott.

The article is finally out and you can find a nice summary by CC Long here.

Listen to Sandra Hines

Press release received via email...

Montpellier, France - AUGUST 7th 2008: Aquafadas is delighted to announce a new version of PulpMotion Advanced now fully compatible with Tiger and featuring new themes. 'We first developed PulpMotion Advanced to make the most of the incredible features offered by Leopard' says Claudia Zimmer, Aquafadas' CEO, 'but in the same time we made sure that our existing PulpMotion customers on Tiger (especially the whole education world) could also enjoy the new story telling functions introduced by PulpMotion Advanced. We have worked hard to bring the whole PulpMotion Advanced experience to our Mac OS 10.4 users despite the extensive changes in the Mac OS X graphics foundations between Tiger and Leopard.' With this release we also bring new themes (SummerBreeze, Factory, Sliding Revolution,LadyBug), mainly rewritten from the original PulpMotion themes with tons of new features and customizations. A large number of presets are now available to explore these great themes. Of course, all these new themes support regions of interest.

Links

• Aquafadas Website
• PulpMotion Advanced 1.1
• Download PulpMotion Advanced

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