apple juice

northern wisconsin provides excellent opportunities for unplugging from the internet, resting and relaxing. even though, the internet is only a few houses away. high speed internet is spreading it’s tentacles wide and far, so that even outside of minocqua, wisconsin, on a small lake, high speed is available.

i drove from my parent’s cabin to my grandparent’s cabin with my laptop open, just to see how many networks I would come across. eight. this may not seem like a lot, but nearly everywhere on the two-mile trip there was a wifi signal poking out.

but, at our cabin, no high speed. i set out the week with the goal of reading four books. (finishing two that I had already started and then two more new ones.) there have been discussions at school about the effect of the internet on reading, about how reading on the internet does not provoke deep thought and reflection the way that a book does, and even reading in a house where the internet is available provides enough of a distraction that books are read in a way that is shallower than before the advent of internet.

there is a strange allure to having the internet available when reading a book. what’s this word mean? what’s this place look like (look it up on google maps)? who was that person? (look it up on wikipedia)?

well, i’m sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle. it’s probably an issue of self-control, of learning to engage with your mind in a world that provides distractions everywhere you look.

the real challenge I think is convincing young people to let go of the distractions and singularily focus on something. at the NECC conference, I sat at a roundtable discussion about multitasking and it’s effect on learning. i got into a heated discussion with the woman seated to my right. she was on the side of “kids live in multitasking world, and we need to teach to that” whereas my argument was “we need to teach them to think, and that comes from focus”

needless to say, we didn’t convince each other of anything.

as the youngest person at that table by a few years, it was odd to be arguing against the technology-aided multitasking world that we seem to be heading towards.

who knows? but last week at the cabin in the woods on the lake, i finished those four books.

after a long and heated discussion about politics and the economy with my uncle and grandpa last night, which ended with my grandpa saying “we’re still buddies, right?” (“yes, of course we are!”, I replied), I’ve found something I agree with republicans on.

john culberson, republican representative of texas is waging a battle over the use of “new media” tools to communicate with his constituents. basically he uses twitter to update people on what he is working on.

Michael Campuano democrat of Pennsylvania proposed rules that would require approval before posting video to Youtube. I don’t really understand his reasons.

Actually, as it turns out, its not really a Democrat vs. Republican thing, it’s more of a generational fight.

How awesome would it be if all of our representatives and congresspeople were required to update their constituents on a blog. Discuss their reasoning on key votes. Post their reactions to news and current events.

Is that too much to ask?

I just finished reading “Three Cups of Tea” by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. I started reading the book earlier this year, but couldn’t find the time to finish it up during the second semester of the school year. As it turns out, it was one of the picks for our summer reading for school. I enjoy reading all of the picks that are made each year, so will also get a chance to read “Leaving Microsoft to Save the World”.

I throughoughly enjoyed the premise of the book. In the end, people are really after the same things: Security for the their family, education for their kids, the chance to give the next generation a better life than the one before it.

The link between terrorism and the lack of these things for so many who are living lives at the edge of poverty in places between Pakistan and Afghanistan is clear. The point is made over and over again that kids who are given an education go on to provide dividends to their communities in the years that follow.

It is such a simple message that is apparently lost on our government. Through the book Greg Mortenson meets with people across our government and military, only to find his pleas for not squandering the opportunity to provide for the Afghans living in poverty, displaced by our military actions.

The double-irony is that things like early childhood education, and education in general are often squeezed at the margins in the face of things deemed more “important” by the government. In one discussion with military leaders of our country, “Dr. Greg” points out for the cost of one cruise missile he could build 20 schools. Which do you think does more to combat terrorism? He asks.

And in our country, what could those types of funds, directed towards education do to lift people out of poverty, hopelessness and desperation?

In the end, the degradation of societies and communities comes from desperation and hopelessness. When there is no hope for a better future, everything comes unraveled.

I highly recommend the book. Check out the website of their foundtation, the Central Asia Institute, for more information.

Books I’m hoping to read this week:

• Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
• Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

we’re planning to make a bench out of old skis. preparations started this evening with the removal of the bindings:

we’ll see how things go this week.

minnesota monthly just named their top 18 burgers in the state.

i want to try them all.

it’s on my list of todos.

since they haven’t heard of the internet yet though, they haven’t posted the top 10 online. here’s a hint: they pick Matt’s  number 1.

have you been to Matt’s? waaaayyy too many hipsters. pretty decent burger though.

i’m trying to come up with a grand unified theory on social networking. i signed up for friendfeed on a whim the other day, after coming to the realization that using google reader was not designed to keep track of your friends on the 27 different services they use.

poking around on friendfeed, i started to run through the list of services they aggregate. let’s see, my blog. check. flickr, check. youtube, check, last.fm, amazon wishlists, netflix, twitter, it goes on and on. i tell myself that i sign up for these things in the name of research, to see what application they might have for education. but in reality i’m just curious. i’m on the fringes, really, in terms of being social. i don’t go to that many shows or events, i really just prefer hanging out with my close friends and family more than anything. i don’t really need to meet new people. i don’t need to network.

what’s all the frenzy about then? at necc, seeing people get all worked into a froth about how we need to be twittering with students is kind of funny. (actually, to be fair, i think that died down significantly this year). but certainly the movement exists amongst some in this tech-focused crowd that we all need to be hyper-connected with our students.

and amongst this larger group of people, all the people on friendfeed, brightkite, twitter, pownce, tumblr, etc, etc, there is the implicit acceptance that a large circle of people want or need to know your thoughts and whereabouts.

do they? i don’t know. i do know that i want to stop signing up for services. i think there are a number of problems with all of the current situations:

one set of friends reads my blog, another set looks at flickr, another set is on twitter, a pretty big group is on facebook, there are all of the people on my AIM, Yahoo, Google, and MSN buddy lists, and on and on.

it should be easy to integrate all of these things together and produce one site and one feed that puts it all together? is that desirable? or are the people who look at flickr a fundamentally different set of people than those who want to read my blog and post on my wall on facebook? besides, since I do utilize the privacy features on services such as facebook and flickr, the one unified feed would be pretty tough to pull off.

who cares where i am, what i’m thinking and what i take pictures of anyways?

sorry, i’m getting less clear. maybe if you have a thought about this, leave a comment. help me straighten this out in my head.