I have confessions to make regarding the iPad, iBooks, and Daniel Pink’s Book Drive. I have owned all of them since April 8, 2010. Drive was the first and only book I purchased to test the iBook app on the iPad. I started to read it but never felt compelled to continue as there were so many other things to do each time I opened up the iPad. Goodreader and Instapaper get a lot of attention as does Angry Birds and Doodle Jump. I still prefer to listen to audiobooks as I have a 25 minute commute to work each day. That leaves me 50 minutes of listening time each day. Between audiobooks and podcasts, I can learn a lot each week on a variety of topics related to ed-tech and how advances or news about technology. I subscribe to MacBreak Weekly, This Week in Tech, iPad Today, This Week in Google which are all from the TWiT Network. The Ed Tech Talk Network keeps me plugged into what is happening in the Ed Tech world.
After reading the blog post by George Couros, I have picked up the book again and am reading it as well as annotating like crazy. I have been thinking about my sentence and have yet to focus in on what it is as it changes depending on what I am doing or thinking. A couple I have come up with are: He was willing to try new things with his students or He was willing to help his colleagues. These sentences both relate to my teaching and not the other parts of my life. Those areas would produce a different sentence. He loved his tractor and farm, or He loved to play with his grandchildren. Can a person really be one sentence? One big problem I have is that my sentence is in the past tense! Yikes, Am I already a past tense? I think this means I have not found my sentence but rather am still looking for it since I will know it when I hear or think it. Maybe my sentence is not one that I know but is defined by others? I will sit with this some to see what comes of it. I have created a project for my class to create a video of their sentence. Maybe 5th graders will not over think it like I am.
The second question that Pink asks is “Was I better today than yesterday?”. This is somewhat easier, as I try to be more present each day which, I believe, can lead to being better. I struggle with being better each day as I can often get on a tangent and become critical or arrogant with what I think is the correct answers to questions or issues. This can lead to mistakes in judgement and certainly days when I am not better then I was the day before. Of course we could also debate what “better” means I suppose. I do know that I want my actions with my students and colleagues to be based on helping us all be better tomorrow then we are today as it applies to educational technology. For that, is my sentence now.
Daniel Pink’s Two Questions
Daniel Pink’s What’s Your Sentence? A collection of people telling us their sentence.
Daniel Pink’s Speech from RSA Animate
Image: ‘from the driver’s seat‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/44124472651@N01/523653908
