Twelve years ago today, I became an extremely lucky man. There are many ways one can become lucky. You can win the lottery, land your dream job, or meet a favorite celebrity. The way I became lucky was better than all of those combined (though we wouldn’t say no to a winning lottery ticket considering how fast the bills seem to be coming lately). I became the world’s luckiest man because the world’s most amazing woman married me.
This woman is smart, beautiful, kind, and the love of my life. She’s my best friend, someone I can have an intellectual conversation with, and someone whom I look forward to waking up next to every morning. She’s modest too so she’ll insist this isn’t true, but she’s also incredibly sexy. (Yes, you are B and this is my blog post so you can’t argue!)
At the time, I thought I could never love a woman the way I loved B, but I was wrong. As time passed, I found myself falling in love with her more and more. Just when I think this is the deepest anyone could ever love someone, she does something else that makes me love her more.
When she took up knitting and (more recently) crocheting, I fell in love with how quickly her prowess developed. When she recently decided to watch Doctor Who to share something that I enjoyed, I fell in love with her inner geek as she not only watched the shows, but sought out tons of Doctor Who related content online. (She now regularly texts me photos of funny Doctor Who images she finds on Facebook.)
But nothing made me fall in love with her more than parenthood. Suddenly, there were aspects of her that I had never seen before that each made me love her more. There was the tender loving mother who would care for our kids when they were sick or injured. There was the school-teacher-mother who would come up with fun, educational crafts or excursions to go on. And there was the fighter-mother who, when she saw our kids not getting help they needed, went to the mat and fought tooth and nail until they got it.
After twelve years, B can still surprise me in so many ways. I love her so much and am so happy that I’ve had the chance to spend this time with her. I can’t wait to see what the next twelve years will bring and what new aspects will make me fall in love with B even more.
We’ve gone to the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady a few times already. However, on Father’s Day, we headed back to see a new exhibit titled Notion of Motion. Whereas the previous exhibit, illustrated how people see and how our eyes can be fooled by optical illusions, the current one dealt with how things move.
There were fans blowing silk flags, pendulums rocking back and forth, and sand on conveyer belts. And, as with most exhibits in MiSci, there was plenty of opportunities for the boys to touch and experiment on their own.
Right when we walked in, there was a small machine with a circle of rope spinning around inside of it. Appropriately enough, it was called a Rope Squirter. The rope was sped up so much that it would go high in the air before coming back down and back into the machine. By touching the rope, you could see how its motion was affected by your hands.
Further in, there was a big spinning disc. You could place smaller discs, or balls on top to see how they moved.
There was also a gravity well. Kids (or us adults as well) could roll small white balls to see how they react to gravity.
Everywhere we went, the boys got to touch and play, but they also got to learn a lot about how the world works and how things move.
Next up from MiSci is an exhibit about dinosaurs. Given the previous two exhibits, I can’t wait to see this next one.
Have you ever gone to a museum where your kids were encouraged to touch the exhibits?
Two weeks ago, I posted about how I didn’t really see a use for Vine. I couldn’t see why one would need to post short videos when a photo or an animated GIF would do. Of course, on Sunday, we went to the Museum of Innovation and Science (MiSci) in Schenectady to see their new Notion of Motion exhibit. I quickly realized that photos wouldn’t do many of the exhibits justice. What I needed was a video. Not a long video, but just a short one. I found myself posting Vine after Vine.
This is where the blog post diverges from my intended course. I meant to share some of the Vines that I posted and write about how I now found the service very useful. Unfortunately, my first step in posting the Vines ran into a snag. Although I had set each Vine to post to Twitter, none of them did.
No problem, I thought. I’ll just go to the Vine videos and share them out either to Twitter or another service. That will give me a link. However, Vine videos apparently can’t be shared out except at the moment they are posted. No, you can’t find a great Vine video and tweet about it. Nor can you post a link to Facebook or another service. You can’t even e-mail someone to point them to the Vine.
Furthermore, since Vine doesn’t give you a public profile page (like this link to my Instagram profile page), I couldn’t go there to find all of my Vines. Without direct links to the Vines, I couldn’t embed them here or link to them at all. They remained locked on my cell phone screen.
(Note: I was able to get a link to my profile page, but it’s in a "vine://" format that only works within the Vine app. Useless for sharing with someone’s web browser.)
Perhaps you could find them if you searched for "TechyDad" on Vine. The only problem with this is that Vine doesn’t seem to have a search function. (At least not on the Android version. Someone on the iPhone version will have to let me know if Vine has a general search function there.) You can see "Editor’s Picks", "Popular Now", and some trending hashtags, but you can’t seek out content on your own. I can’t, for example, see who has posted Vines with a #DoctorWho hashtag. I might be interested in users posting this, but unless that hashtag trends, it’ll be hidden from me.
These are basic functions that are missing. Vine almost had me, but unless they get these quickly, I’ll be lost as a user again.
It’s worthwhile to note another service that almost lost me due to basic lack of usefulness: Instagram. Way back when, you needed a third party service to link to a Profile page for Instagram. Thankfully, Instagram saw the light and now has a web presence that I can refer people to. Vine should doubly pay attention because rumor has it that Instagram is working on a Vine-like video service. If I can post a video or a photo from the same service, one that gives me a web-accessible profile link, then I’d be likely to stick with that service.
Better get moving quick, Vine. You’ve made an interesting service, but there are glaring holes. If you don’t fill them, someone else will pass you by and you’ll be regulated to the dustbin of Internet history.
The One Voice Rally gathered a large crowd of students, teachers, and parents protesting the over-testing of our children, It also had some wonderful speakers and singers who eloquently expressed the problems we all had with the absurd testing regime masquerading as "education reform." You can watch the entire video here or click on each speaker’s name below to jump to their speech/song.
One thing to note: I can’t possibly cover all of the speakers here. If I skip a few, it’s not a reflection on their speech but on the length of a reasonable blog post. The entire video might be nearly three hours long, but it is well worth the time spent watching.
Dick Iannuzzi, president of NYSUT, spoke, among other things, about how State Education is trying to spin protests from parents and teachers over Pearson field tests. Field tests are tests given not to assess a student’s knowledge, but to test the questions themselves. Are they too confusing? Are they too easy? Can students answer them properly without taking too long to figure out the answer?
In any other circumstance, people taking field tests would be compensated for their time and effort. Our kids, however, are being REQUIRED to take these tests. In many instances, parents aren’t even being told that the tests their kids are getting are field tests. And the kids aren’t paid anything. They aren’t compensated at all. All they get is the added stress of more tests to take.
State Education Commissioner King tried to claim that the protest was the union trying to "create a more tense environment around testing." Now, I don’t know about you, but when my kids are given tons of difficult tests and then get MORE tests snuck in just to give the big business making the tests some free assistance in doing what they’re being paid to do, I feel tension and my kids feel tension. The union doesn’t NEED to create any tension. State Ed and Pearson created enough on their own.
Ricard Ognibene, from the Fairport Educators Association, spoke for the New York State Teachers of the Year. He related stories of students who have begun hating school thanks to the tests, teachers who found that the testing regime has taken up all of their testing time, and parents who were told that their kids wouldn’t get additional math instruction because they needed to spend more time on the computer getting ready for next year’s standardized tests.
Jeremy Dudley rocked us with his rap song "Stop This Madness." While this got the crowd chanting (and NHL screaming the title phrase), it also contained many very important points. For example:
out of touch and out of tune we under teach and over test, while cutting funding in the very places that we should invest, everyone including kids can’t help from feeling over stressed, So tell us how and why with kids in mind this system is what’s best,
In those four lines, Jeremy Dudley summarizes the entire problem. By focusing so much on testing and cutting funding for anything else, we keep teachers from doing their job and students (not to mention parents and teachers) wind up over stressed.
Perhaps his best point, though, was this:
And if we walk along the money trail, There’s profit to be made when we perceive that schools fail,
Pearson is being paid to create and administer these tests. What happens if students don’t do well, though? In that case, Pearson will get more money for textbooks, teacher education, additional testing, and much, much more. If students do well? Not as much money flows to them. In other words, it is in Pearson’s economic interests to have the students do poorly. And since the testing isn’t being done in a transparent manner, there’s no check to make sure they don’t abuse their position to generate more money for themselves.
Joyce Powell came from New Jersey. Even though this rally was for New York’s educational system, she reminded us that this isn’t just a problem in New York. New Jersey and many other states are facing this test abuse.
Nikhil Goyal, author of One Size Does Not Fit All, was different from most of the speakers. He was the youngest speaker, by far, having just recently graduated from high school. He decried the "drill, kill, bubble fill" culture. He pointed out that standardized tests aren’t effective. During a test, he left the Scantron blank and left the room in protest. He even was given a multiple choice test for gym class. (I’d like to see those questions. You have a jump rope, do you a) crawl under it, b) jump over it, c) throw it in a hoop, or d) pineapple.)
Nikhil reminded people that young people are always at the forefront of social change and, to that end, is organizing a student rally next year. He encouraged more students to either refuse the tests or walk out of them outright.
Tom Chapin, singer and songwriter, came onstage to first sing his song "Not On The Test" with Michael Mark. In this song, he consoled a third grader that he’ll do fine on the test if he just forgets anything that isn’t on the test. He told the student not to get stressed because that might make him do worse and then his teacher would suffer. He also pointed out that, thanks to a lack of funding, his school has removed art, music and anything that isn’t on the test.
Next, they sang an anthem that Tom wrote for the rally. "One Voice", spoke directly to State Ed about how parents, teachers, students and districts were united against over testing, under teaching, and unfunded mandates. They even included a humorous line about an acronym for parents/teachers/students/districts: "PTSD… Just like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – it’s what we’re all going to have if this keeps going on!"
There were so many more wonderful speakers that day. They all energized the crowd and helped us realized that we’re not alone in our disgust for this situation. The problem is far from solved, but the rally helped to focus everyone for the fight to come. And if State Education thinks that we’ll back down, they’re sadly mistaken. After all, our kids’ education is at stake.
