I Have Moved!

Folks, back on November 25th, I mentioned that I was "switching horses." Here's where you can find my current stuff, and all the previous posts that are on this blog.

Thanks for visiting this site. I'll look forward to seeing you at the WordPress location.

Hugh O'Donnell aka Repairman

Switching Horses

Blogger has been good to me. I would freely recommend the platform to anyone who asks about starting a blog. But...I've also experimented with WordPress, and at this point I believe that WP better suits my needs.

If you want to keep up with the adventures of Repairman, aka Hugh O'Donnell, I'll be over here:

RepairKit

See you on the flip side. (I will leave this beacon in place for a while.)

Postscript: I think I finally reached the point where WP wouldn't take any more imports! The last three posts over there were copied rather than imported! Now or never.

Oh Yes, I Have Been Working!

I have a favor to ask of my gentle readers...

I've been distracted from my usual free-roaming education discourse here on RepairKit because we have a lot going locally, in Hillsboro School District 1J.

So, as some of you may have noticed, I began a local community blog that I hope will become a nexus of school patron communication. Already one elementary school parent blogger has linked up with me, and I hope for many more.

I also hope that the blog can refer district patrons and others interested in public education to sources where they can soak up some information about the inner workings of our school district, including administration, board work, and curriculum and instruction.

My links on Straight Talk are to blogs and web sites that address national education issues, so don't be offended if you don't see your blog linked there. (RepairKit's not there either.)

Back to the favor...I'd appreciate comments here on how to improve this effort as well as indications that I'm heading in the right direction.

Straight Talk from a Hillsboro School District 1J Board Member

Thanks very much!

Photo: Century High School, Hillsboro, Oregon (3rd of four high schools, opened 1999)

Technorati Recency Widget Useless

Preface: Blogger is having some problems. I just published the first iteration of this post and it went into the ether -- gone. The photo uploader isn't working at all.

Photo Uploading Unavailable

Blogger photo uploading is currently down. Our engineers are working on the situation.

I have to wonder if I'm being punished for 86ing the Technorati widget that supposedly keeps track of the "freshness" of your favorite blogs. It doesn't work. At this moment, at least three blogs I read regularly are listed as "stale." Or not fresh. Whatever. Those three blogs have posted in the last 24 hours and therefore the widget is useless. I'll leave is on board until tomorrow so you can see what I'm talking about. (Scroll way down.)

In fact, keeping Technorati "fresh" is a bother too. If you're currently on my blogroll, consider yourself a "favorite," please. I'm no longer bothering with Technorati, unless I encounter a plea to "Fave This Blog" when I visit (then I'll punch that button for good luck). When technology demands more time than it saves or returns in benefits, I say, "adios!"

PS: I think photo uploader just got back. I'll post a pic.

"Can We Keep 'er Dad?"

I began this blog as an experiment, knowing nothing of the edusphere or the amazing opportunities for collaboration that can occur on your own time. Although I used a pseudonym, a local person who knows a little about me could have (an some apparently did) follow the bread crumbs to my secret identity.

Why secret? Well, if I somehow managed to create a mess, I thought I could just vanish the blog and forget about it. But of course, the internet never forgets. So I kept it simple, sane, suitable for general audiences, and responsibly critical.

Since I'm retired (and elected), nobody can fire me, and I don't have to put up with any bozos who might try to restrict my first amendment rights. So I asked myself, shall we keep the blog? The answer is yes. The connections, collaborations, and insights shared have been great, so Repairman becomes yours truly, Hugh O'Donnell.

For those of your with Blogger platforms, my "comments" nom de plume will automatically change. For you WordPress folks, I'll sign in all over again.

Funny, I do feel the freedom!

Learning How to Show Appreciation

Oh man, I’m feeling guilt and peer pressure all at the same time.

Eric Turner, who writes Secondhand Thoughts, has begun a unique tradition as a highlighter of promising nascent education blogs from the point of view of a seasoned, highly trained soldier who is on his way to becoming a great history teacher.

Because I’m an inherently modest guy, I put Eric's “badge” down near the bottom of my sidebar, just above my profile.

Now that I’ve read Matthew Tabor's appreciation post and how Eric's criteria parallel Matthew's blog blueprint, I feel that I have done Eric a disservice, and I am forthwith moving my Wednesday Website Award to the top of my sidebar where it belongs, to show my appreciation for him and his work.

I owe the same kind of apology and thanks to Scott McLeod who writes Dangerously Irrelevant, and who appreciates reading coherent comments on blog posts and found a way to give an "attaboy" or "attagirl" to the blogger who holds up his or her end of a conversation.

Again, thank you Eric and Scott!

BTW, Eric, Matthew, and Scott can be found daily on my blogroll.

Weekend Diversion

For your viewing pleasure, here's a video (just learned how to post these today!) that non-verbally sets the stage for the mission of a not-for-profit organization I helped found to combat the growing exclusion of recreationists from their rights to be on our state waters. Note the fences across the waters near the end.

While you're watching the video and learning the variety of waters in my state, I'll be organizing my study, straightening the house, doing the dishes, and every thing else I need to do to properly welcome my wife home from the east coast tomorrow!

The live action shots and white water stills are from the River Canyon. I love it there. Beauty and adventure, with peace of mind to boot.

The young man rowing the drift boat and wearing an orange PFD (a little past midway in the video) is the author of my featured fly fishing reports and the man behind the camera for many of the photos on the blog. Most of you have probably also figured out that he's my son. ;-)

Here goes...

Blogger Stalkers?

Let me say first that although this blog appears anonymous, it is not. Scattered throughout it are many clues to the identity of Repairman. Outing me would not take a work of genius, nor would I mind, although the time could be better used, I'm sure.

My blogging goals are focused on the improvement of public education, and any criticisms I have made have been in the spirit of helping another pilgrim avoid a screw up under my scrutiny. I have never tried to strengthen an argument by reducing other people (ad hominem). Generally, folks who make jackasses out of themselves don't need my help to accomplish the task.

A short while ago, one of my posts drew a boorish comment from a local person who is apparently angry about the perceived inequities between boys baseball and girls softball in our district. Following good advice from a more experience blogger, I ignored the comment, although I did save a copy.

I then reflected on the purpose of the blog, which includes highlighting various education issues and engaging in discussions about them. I decided I did not want to be a lighting rod or a forum for local issues, and I would concentrate on discussing examples of positive leadership, so I removed the posts that referenced those local issues and two others that referenced leadership flubs elsewhere.

Since that time, I have been mindful of two things:

First, the local person (actually persons, because there's more than one local IP Address showing on sitemeter) persisted in looking only at, then looking for (after removal) my posts on the local issue, "Tossing the Baby," and "Tossing the Baby 2." And today, in one of several exploratory sessions, he/she/they spent 28 minutes and 57 seconds on my site, finally exiting to the Google page that caches my entire blog. This person(s) has/have been at this since "Tossing the Baby" first appeared on RepairKit.

Second, I will continue to speak about all issues that are important to me whether they be local, regional, national, or world-wide. I will continue the practice of making only those observations that I would be willing to make in person, but I don't guarantee smiles.

My local readers, if they want to talk more, can find me in the phone book. (The district won't give out my phone number.) I'm listed and have been for 44 years.

I have reprised the deleted posts, with the most recent directly below this one. In "Tossing the Baby" I have also included, as forensic history only, the negative comment that plainly indicates that the writer, in his or her anger, chose to ignore most of what I said in the post. (I publish disagreements, not ad hominem rants. Also, I no longer accept anonymous comments. If anyone has something worth saying, they can register with Blogger or one of the other blogging services. It's all free.)

For those of you in the edusphere who have yet to add sitemeter or some similar tracking device to your blog, I recommend that you do not wait. I have a complete record of my local visitors' comings and goings and what they were curious about. They only live two miles away.

You'd think they could pick up the phone.

Getting to Know You

Assistant Superintendent Kimberly Moritz, who writes G-Town Talks (upstate NY), a very cool and personal edublog, tagged me for the "8 Random Facts About Me" meme. From what I have picked up in blogging context during my short tenure in the edusphere, these exercises are meant to help the blogger connect and network, and maybe even have a little fun.

So, between wiki planning, outlining a back-to-school post on hitting the ground running with standards-based grading, and wondering what polar bears are up to while we stew about global warming, I thought it would be fun to play along.

If you get tagged and you've just been through this, please forgive me. I'm looking to tag folks who have yet to play some version of this both to get to know them better and avoid bugging recent players.

First, the 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.

Here we go...

1. I don't watch TV. I realize programming has improved since the 50s, but commercial interruptions are annoying to the max, and I can't stand to be on someone else's schedule unless they're paying me.
   
2. I haven't gotten a speeding ticket since 1982 mainly because my wife was sitting next to me when I got that one.
3. I'm book poor. Aren't you? There ought to be a Twelve Step program for bibliophiles.
4. I love to (have to) read every day. A little fiction, a little non-fiction. Actually a lot of both.
5. My favorite thing to do is spend time on the river with my family.
6. I drive an old Ford pickup. After it's fourth warrantied transmission and second warrantied engine, it ran well.
7. I long for a new Tundra four-door (long bed comes out next year).
8. My driving passion is improving instruction and classroom assessment for student achievement, and one of the last frontiers in classroom assessment -- grading for learning, aka grading linked to standards, aka standards-based grading.
9. For Vivek: The origin of Repairman...
   

I'm taking a break to research who hasn't played recently...

Tagged so far: Vivek, ms_teacher, California Teacher Guy.

Research over! If you played recently, maybe put up a link to your meme post? The Science Goddess, Exhausted Intern, Miss Profe, Midwest Teacher, Miss A., Eric.

Adios, SnapShots

After having read Joel's thoughts about tightening up a blog on So You Want to Teach, I decided, as Joel did, that I could do without SnapShots, the link preview software. To be honest, the instant preview windows were beginning to annoy me even before I read what Joel had to say. It's hard to read with concentration when little windows are going pop! pop! and covering up words the reader needs to make sense out of the thoughts generated by the writer.

Interestingly, SnapShots comes standard with a free WordPress.org blog site. I suppose you can disable the feature, like I did here, by clicking on the little window's upper right icons and choosing "disable."

I could go back to SnapShots, who knows. I love widgets if they really function well and serve my needs, but right now, my blog screen seems to be a calmer place. And after saying all this, they probably won't have me back!

Trimming the Blogroll

Once again I could be full of beans, but after an entire five weeks or so of blogging, the novelty off adding new and different blogs to the roll is wearing off.

So, I've trimmed the roll. I've eliminated blog directories (except for the Aussies -- haven't fully explored there), commercial blogs, and bloggers who don't converse. I'm sticking with the folks whose writing I admire and whose thoughts bring a smile or provoke my thinking. That way, it seems to me, the conversation flows more evenly and fruitfully.

See you out there!

This Is a Relief!

Edubloggers go every which way during the summer. A few posts ago, I declared I was easing back on posting while I tried to get a grip an all my edu-chores that lie in other domains, my wife's trackbacks on the household chore pings notwithstanding (I'm still faithful about doing the dishes and vacuuming). ;-)

But I've been climbing the digital literacy learning curve as quickly as I can, and have been unable not to share a few of the epiphanic insights that are coming about because of it. To keep the pings from my darling wife from turning to flames, I shared with her some new learning and she said that's relevant to what she has been doing in ed tech with at-risk kids in summer school. (Turns out we both agree that the students are ahead of the teachers, like Mr. Warlick says! See "Comments" on today's Science Goddess post for details, if you're curious. )

In addition to upgrading my digital literacy, I've been concerned about doing digital publishing right as well. I start a post in WORD, check it for grammar and spelling, then paste it into Notepad to strip out the formatting, and finally paste it into the WYSIWYG window on my Blogger dashboard. I press the "publish" button and off it goes. Then, for a couple of days afterward, I pick at it aiming for conciseness and better diction. I know that sounds a bit compulsive, but remember, I take the publishing aspect seriously.

Today, David Warlick posted an important piece on 2 Cents Worth about the importance of school librarians (aka media specialists) as purveyors of digital literacy. But that's not all that struck me. He also added a piece about blogging, specifically making errors in blogging. It was a great relief to read and I've printed this short section out and put it into my copy of Classroom Blogging as an addendum.

"This brings me to another point. Now this is my opinion, but I do not believe that blog postings are meant to be scholarly dissertations, perfectly considering every point, every example, every definition, every eventuality. They should be better considered than IM postings and better crafted than most e-mail messages, but they (mine) are typically written in one or two sittings and rarely with more than an hour of writing. I leave things out. I leave terms undefined. Sometimes I get it wrong, and I’m happy that I do. Because everything that is not included, that is important, gets added through comments from thoughtful readers and through continuing conversations. If it’s an important addition, such as including librarians in a conversation about video games in schools, I will usually elevate it to a new blog posting to make it available to more readers.

As I’ve said many times before, I write this blog to learn…

I only wish that I had the time to address every question and correction!"

Thanks, David. I needed that!

Cool Tools from Google

Sometime back, I signed up for the Google Educator program, just for good luck, and the education folks at Google emailed me today with some news about their efforts to aid educators in their quest to tame the web and make it a useful tool for student learning (lifelong learners can use this stuff, too). If you've been to the last NECC or know someone who has, this may not be news, but it was to me.

For my own writing, I use a digital notebook that's part of The Journal, but it's not designed to keep track of the tons of info on the web, although I could venture it with cut and paste. But there's a simpler way.

David Warlick, in his book Classroom Blogging talks about digital literacy, and part of that new literacy is learning to find, filter, validate, and organize info from the web. Google has a tool that will help us do that. Funny thing, they call it a Notebook. I started playing with it today. I've already got three notebooks going. I like it.

The other Google tool that caught my fancy will allow teachers to set up dedicated search engines for their students to use in pursuit of their learning. I can only imagine it would be like a grand treasure hunt, custom designed by the teacher.

Google has many more tools for educators, but you have to go there, register, and look for yourself. Best of all, everything's free! :-)

Great Book/New Way to Publish

Just a quick note on a laid-back Sunday…

Yesterday, in the mail, I received David Warlick's book Classroom Blogging: A Teacher's Guide to Blogs, Wikis, & Other Tools that are Shaping a New Information Landscape (2nd Edition).

Being a newbie in this arena, I skipped around the book, vacuuming up tidbits that seemed immediately relevant to my blogging needs, and some that confirmed that I am somewhat on track. I'm happy to say, there's still a lot more to read and absorb.

This isn't a book review, so much as an expression of excitement. Both to get the information from a well-regarded authority, and to get it in a form that is so "cutting edge"…a book.

But, mine is a copy of the book that didn't physically exist two weeks ago. Before that time, I imagine, it was just code stored in a server at Lulu, a partial roll of page paper, and a couple of linear feet of cover stock. This is a "print-on-demand" book. My first ever.

Ordering from Lulu.com was like ordering from Amazon, but with different titles. This is a self-publishing facilitator, as well as a web retailer. The book was $20.95, just a few cents more than the 1st edition currently being sold on Amazon. (Warlick says edition 2.0 will be available there soon, but why wait? It will be the same price, and Lulu doesn't charge as much for shipping.)

The book arrived just three business days after they emailed me that it was in transit. From the time I ordered to the reception of the email was not more that three or four days.

The book arrived in a standard cardboard book jacket that featured extra cardboard top and bottom, and it was carefully wrapped in a piece of foam sheeting that insured perfect condition upon arrival.

I was impressed, and you will be too if this is your first experience with Lulu.

Authors need to check Lulu out as well. What a deal! When I'm ready, they'll be my first choice of publishers.

(Image credit to David Warlick on 2 Cents Worth.)

Doing This Right

After taking some lessons from an experienced and, I have found, widely known edublogger, and while I'm awaiting delivery of David Warlick's book on blogging in and for education, I've been reflecting on my contribution to the edusphere.

Learning about the platform (Blogger), surfing domestic and international edublogs, and reading postings, publications, and news articles has taken an enormous bite out of my daily schedule. And I promised myself that I would post daily, like a serious blogger. A bigger bite yet.

I'm not sure what a serious blogger is. I know I'm serious about education, but to be realistic about the value of contributions I might make here, I have to think quality over quantity.

Having broken my streak (albeit, not a long one), my goal is to post at least a couple of times weekly on the aspects of education that are most compelling to me and may provide some value to other educators. I'm speaking of educational leadership from a board member's perspective, student achievement from a teacher's point of view, and all the issues that relate to these topics. (Grading for learning, also referred to as grading linked to standards, is a paramount concern of mine.)

I may get off topic now and then, but at least I won't be straining to fill the date on the top of the post with words that may easily be passed by.

Before I let go of these thoughts, let me say that a commitment to blogging forces me to clarify my thinking, gain practice in writing coherently, and practice communicating my thoughts and ideas to an audience, even if it is an audience of one (but it's public, after all). I enjoy it mightily, but don't want to mess up a good thing.

New Repairkit Feature

This isn't a typical Repairkit post. Most of the words are suggested by the Snap Shot people on their site. If you blog and want to install this tool yourself, just click on the icon at the bottom of my sidebar, or at the bottom of each little Snap Shot. I do not earn revenue from this widget. Besides, it's free.

Introducing Snap Shots from Snap.com

I just installed a tool on Repairkit called Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site, interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

Sometimes Snap Shots bring you the information you need, without your having to leave the site, while other times it lets you "look ahead," before deciding if you want to follow a link or not.

Should you decide this is not for you, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

Back in the Saddle

Had a great -- for so many reasons -- visit to the river canyon . I’m always reluctant to leave. On the drive home, I was already planning the next trip. Next weekend my son is taking my wife, my sister, and two other ladies whitewater rafting through some wild and scenic water that I rowed there back in the eighties. Two back-to-back days of sheer outdoor pleasure.

In a number of my maiden posts here, I’ve said, “I’m spoiled.” Maybe I should change the name of this blog to I'm Spoiled. I’m not kidding. Besides all the bedrock, basic stuff I have to be thankful for, I can look at the nightmares other board of ed members face and thank some higher power that we have our supe, not this one...

Which leads me to thoughts about fate, turning points, educable moments, flashes of insight, unexpected coincidence, and unanticipated satisfaction. Mainly, how did I come to start a blog – an edublog at that – when a year ago I didn’t know what a blog was?

Last month I was researching what appeared to be (and was) an absolute grading travesty for a sophomore biology student at Sissonville High School near Charleston, West Virginia. After appeals to the teacher, the principal, and all the way up the line, the student and her parents sued the teacher and the district. (This is a forthcoming topic for RepairKit.)

Google turned up a number of conversations about Sissonville, the most balanced of which were on a blog called What It’s Like On the Inside by The Science Goddess. I read her posts beyond the grading conversation, and just plain got hooked on the combination of education insight, experience, and good writing.

From that point I learned that Blogger is free and here I are.

Today SG posted a hugely valuable piece for blogging newbies (like yours truly) that confirmed some of my thinking and put forth some ideas that had never touched my mind. The many links provide more treasure. Thanks, SG.