March 2024 – Mike Paul

He chose the nails

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Easter Sunday, 2024.

I thought I’d share something from Max Lucado…

Want to know the coolest thing about the coming? Not that the One who played marbles with the stars gave it up to play marbles with marbles. Or that the One who hung the galaxies gave it up to hang doorjambs to the displeasure of a cranky client who wanted everything yesterday but couldn’t pay until tomorrow.

Not that he, in an instant, went from needing nothing to needing air, food, a tub of hot water and salts for his tired feet, and, more than anything, needing somebody – anybody – who was more concerned about where he would spend eternity rather than where he would spend Friday’s paycheck.

Or that he resisted the urge to fry the two-bit, self-appointed hall monitors of holiness who dared suggest that he was doing the work of the devil.
Not that he kept his cool while the dozen best friends he ever had felt the heat and got out of the kitchen. Or that he gave no command to the angels who begged, “Just give us the nod, Lord. One word and these demons will be deviled eggs.”

Not that he refused to defend himself when blamed for every sin of every slut and sailor since Adam. Or that he stood silent as a million guilty verdicts echoed in the tribunal of heaven and the giver of light was left in the chill of a sinner’s night.

Not even that after three days in a dark hole he stepped into the Easter sunrise with a smile and a swagger and a question for lowly Lucifer – “Is that your best punch?”

That was cool, incredibly cool.

But want to know the coolest thing about the One who gave up the crown of heaven for a crown of thorns?

He did it for you. Just for you.
Max Lucado, He Chose the Nails

Fight for your right to own media

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Until recently, I was wholly moving toward all streaming media. I had unloaded a bunch of DVDs onto someone at Goodwill, along with some HD DVDs (yes, I chose poorly in the mid-2000s format wars). In my brain, I knew it was far easier to access my favorite films and TV shows through streaming or owning a digital copy.

Then, something changed. The tech bros decided that just because you had paid to own a copy of something didn’t necessarily mean you owned it; you were paying for the privilege of watching it when they’d let you.

And they could change their minds about that privilege any time they wanted.

This stance comes from the fact that when you buy physical media, copyright law says you own it, but streaming media is governed by “terms of service,” which none of us bother to read and are subject to change at any time.

What it boils down to is that you’re not actually buying the media; you’re purchasing a license to view or listen to it.

For me, the moment of change came when I wanted to plop down and rewatch some of Ron Moore’s excellent 2004 reimagining of Battlestar Galactica. Sadly, it’s nowhere to be found on streaming services now.

Damn, and blast, that was the final straw.

While stores are reducing or eliminating physical media, some of us refuse to give up, searching through eBay postings, local pawn & thrift shops, and online directories like Decluttr and Blu-ray.com to find great deals.

Also, great distributors like Kino Lorber and Arrow Video are continuing to release excellent films on physical media. Both services tend to serve niche audiences with an extensive back catalog–where else might you find a double feature Dr. Phibes set–and have decent pricing.

And you can’t forget about the Criterion Collection films, many of which you can find through Barnes & Noble–the company that just won’t give up in a battle with Amazon–to add to your collection at a great price.

Why am I going on about this? Because I believe what Ursula Franklin said, decades ago…

"Many technological systems, when examined for context and overall design, are basically anti-people. People are seen as sources of problems while technology is seen as a source of solutions." (Ursula Franklin, The Real World of Technology)

Streaming media services have become definitively anti-people. They really don’t care what we want, just that we keep paying for their service. The viewing options across streaming keep getting worse and worse, both in quality and quantity, and more services are combining to provide even fewer options for us lowly common folk.

The bottom line: buy physical media. More importantly, if you’re a creator, release your stuff on physical media. Teach our students about the value of owning something and not just renting it from someone else. Remind them that we must evaluate every technology to see if we are using it or if it is using us.

The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!

Jukebox heroes and $20 fiddles

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Greetings Starfighters,

Faster than the fleetest hoof ever struck the pavement or a wheel ever turned upon an axle, the magnificence of Spring Break lies upon us in the Bluegrass State. There is, perhaps, no better time for a break than right now, as many of our schools haven’t had a long break since January 2, baseball makes its annual return from the doldrums of winter, and the sun shines ever brighter each day.

I digress…

Yes, I’m in a good mood, partially because I’m off work for a few days and have a chance to catch up on my doctoral work (which never seems to end), but also to spend a few days with my kiddo (my apologies to all spouses who don’t get a break when their teacher partners do), do some reading (I’m so far behind on my yearly challenge), do some housework, and overall get ready to wrap up another school year with gusto.

Also, my virtual learning academy students just finished recording season one of their podcast, which I’ll be sharing very soon. They did a great job, even if they were freaking out the entire time they recorded.

So now, dear travelers, I present you with 10 things I thought were worth sharing with you this week…

10 Things Worth Sharing

I see more reasons to keep arts programs in our schools every day. When we involve students in the arts, we give them a chance to tap into the creative realm and expand their imagination. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll get a $20 violin that will take them everywhere…
I read Ron Berger’s excellent An Ethic of Excellence this week after staring at it on my bookshelf since last summer. I should have read it sooner. Hat tip to good friend Scott McCleod for the recommendation. Here’s a video of Ron from PBLWorks a few years ago. He starts with his philosophy that “we vastly underestimate the capacity of kids to do beautiful work.”
When you have ideas, put them down on paper. Share them. Get them out in the open and let them breathe. Get feedback from others and then, get to work on those ideas. If you let them, ideas rot.
Admittedly, I’m a huge Carl Sagan fan. I mean, why shouldn’t I be? His Cosmos TV series was an instrumental part of my childhood-yes, I was raised on public television-and his ideas still grip my brain today. However, I’m not sure I could handle his undergrad reading list from the 50s. It’s pretty stacked.
I love movies. Always have, always will. However, I will admit that I have not always taken the time to view artistic and important films. Yes, friends, I have been a populist movie watcher and enjoyed every minute of it. But, I’m doing my best to expand my horizons and, as such, have apparently become part of the cult of Criterion.
I’ve heard of some school districts adding student members to their school boards but I’d love to see more of it. Students need someone to speak directly about their experiences in schools and stop relying solely on the opinions of us old folk to make decisions.
Can art help people? I hope so…
Radiohead’s Creep serves as an anthem for anyone who has ever felt self-conscious or suffered from imposter syndrome. Or maybe that’s just how the song makes me feel. Regardless, I shed a tear or two every time I hear Creep, and if I’m alone in my car, I’ll likely scream much of the lyrics as I weep. Maybe you do, too. I’m not sure, but perhaps there are a few folks in this crowd of 1,600 doing the same as they sing Creep together.
Oklahoma is adding more virtual charter schools for the coming school year, even as some in the state believe that virtual schools have reached a ‘saturation point.’ Working with and researching virtual schools, I’m interested anytime news like this shows up as I hope that we are able to maintain virtual learning as an option for many students who haven’t found success in the traditional classroom.
Finally, did you know that KOOP radio in Austin, TX, has a Sunday afternoon Joystick Jukebox show? And that they have an archive online? Yes, you, too, can enjoy an hour of video game music spanning over 50 years of the genre every Sunday. It’s wicked cool and, you know, for kids!

PS: Next week, I’ll talk about the importance of this book and my thoughts about the stories inside.

That $20 fiddle has taken me everywhere…

Much of my teen years and into my twenties revolved around music. I played trumpet from 6th grade onward–and wasn’t too shabby–I eventually learned a bit of piano–I can chord and keep a rhythm like nobody’s business–and a bit of signing.

My wife has a music degree and is an excellent flautist. And my kiddo is already falling into the world of musical theatre with all her heart.

While I’m no longer actively involved in the music scene, I’ll always be a musician and hooked on the power of music. I love it and always will, and love sharing great music I stumble upon through my yearly playlists.

Music can bring us all together and inspire us to be more than we believe. For some, it can take you outside of your circumstances into a new world filled with sights and sounds beyond imagination. A new world of hope and promise.

I’m a huge believer in keeping arts programs in our schools. My time in the band kept me sane in my middle and high school experiences. Without the connections I made and the love of music that gave me a place to go and hide when things got rough, which happened regularly as a chubby, geeky kid in the late 80s and early 90s, I’m not sure what I would have done, but it probably wouldn’t have been great.

Los Angeles Unified School District is one of the last school districts in the country to provide freely repaired instruments to its students. The Oscar-winning documentary The Last Repair Shop takes us behind the scenes of that work.

More importantly, we learn the stories of a few individuals and what music and this instrument repair program mean to them.

From a mother who works to support her family to a man who caught the fiddle itch so bad he just had to have a $20 violin from a yard sale, these stories will inspire and make you weep.

By the way, that $20 violin took Duane Michaels and his band, Bodie Mountain Express, all the way to opening for Elvis on his biggest night ever and around the world, and then took him to repair woodwinds for LAUSD students.

From the film-

In a nondescript warehouse in the heart of Los Angeles, a dwindling handful of devoted craftspeople maintain over 80,000 student musical instruments, the largest remaining workshop in America of its kind. Meet four unforgettable characters whose broken-and-repaired lives have been dedicated to bringing so much more than music to the schoolchildren of the recording capital of the world. Watch “The Last Repair Shop,” directed by Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers.

In less than 45 minutes, you’ll see these stories and some of the students touched by this program. Music has a unique power among the arts to unite so many, sometimes without words.

We must keep music in our schools, forever.

Oklahoma adds more virtual charter schools, nearing a ‘saturation point’

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Oklahoma, an early adopter in the virtual school space, is adding more virtual charter schools next year.

I’m interested to see how this move plays out since some officials in Oklahoma feel that virtual schooling may be reaching a ‘saturation point’ where everyone who wants to attend virtually is already doing so. The belief going forward is that students will shift between virtual programs based on who has a better marketing campaign–showing the dangers of schools competing as businesses in a marketplace rather than institutions of learning.

Around 5% of Oklahoma’s 700,000 students attend a virtual school, a significantly higher percentage than the national 1% average. Epic, the largest virtual charter school in Oklahoma, serves around 27,000 students across the state.

Virtual schools became wildly popular during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic but have seen steady declines in enrollment since then. How long they last, especially when the all-important test scores from these schools are lower than in traditional schools, remains to be seen.

As an advocate of virtual learning and as someone who works with a virtual academy, I hope that states continue to see the value of these programs to serve a particular student population and leave the test scores out of the equation.

Radiohead’s “Creep” Sung by a 1,600-person Choir in Australia

Well, this one made me cry a bit…

Everybody can sing—maybe not well—but should that stop you? That’s the philosophy of Pub Choir, based in Brisbane, Australia. At each Pub Choir event, a conductor “arranges a popular song and teaches it to the audience in three-part harmony.” Then, the evening culminates with a performance that gets filmed and shared on social media. Anyone (18+) is welcome to attend.

This time, they sang a favorite of mine, Radiohead’s “Creep”.

Yes, I still ask myself every day, “What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here…” – such is the life of anyone suffering from imposter syndrome. But this song always helps.

Enjoy.

An Ethic of Excellence

After letting it sit on my bookshelf for almost a year, I dove into this book from Ron Berger. I wish I had started sooner. So many thoughts and ideas about what school can be for our students showed up in this book, helping me feel like I’m not crazy.

Anyone interested in remaking schools into something more than a place where students are forced to learn things they don’t care about should read this book. The stories and ideas are well worth the quick read and can give you fuel to make a change in your own building.

Ideas rot

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Ideas rot if you don’t do something with them. I used to try to hoard them, but they rotted. Now I just blog them or tell people about them. Sometimes they still rot, but sometimes someone finds them useful in one way or another.
Edd Dumbill

Herein lies the essence of this site. It’s a public brain dump of my thoughts and cool things I find.

More of us should do this kind of “public scholarship” to enrich all lives, especially our own.

But the truth is that the new media ecosystem, combined with a rapidly evolving publishing industry and renegotiations of public spaces, has opened up myriad opportunities and ways to make scholarship more visible and useful for wide audiences outside of academe.
Christopher Schaberg

Find ways to share your thoughts and discoveries with the world, regardless of how minor you think they may be.

Someone is waiting.

Random Links 3-25-2024

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Everything I’m writing is s#*%

Greetings Starfighters,

Happy first (partial) week of spring here in the Northern Hemisphere—our southern neighbors rejoice as they head into my favorite time of year…

I’ve walked around most of this week not knowing what day it was or just being off a day. I’m quite certain this is all due to still recovering from the nonsense of daylight savings time (because we’re not saving anything). Yet, we move along into the vast unknown of tomorrow.

Also, has anyone else adjusted their reading goal for the year? I’m really behind and am not sure I can catch up with all that life brings my way. But, recognizing your limits is key and knowing that the only person I’m competing against is myself is also helpful when I feel defeated.

Anyway, here are 10 cool things I wanted to share this week:

10 Things Worth Sharing

Creativity is Humanity
As usual, I’ve gone down another musical rabbit hole that began with finding the amazing Hermanos Gutiérrez and has taken me into some very chill musical vibes. If you need a nice smooth start to your day, I have some great finds for you.
English learners stopped coming to class during the pandemic. One group is tackling the problem by helping their parents.
I’m always on the hunt for new creatives and curious to see their creative processes. This week, I found Jacob Collier by way of Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame. Collier joins Paul Davids in this video to discuss learning to play the guitar, tweaking the rules, and changing everything to suit your style.
In Star Wars news this week (you knew there was going to be a geeky moment soon), the trailer for the new “The Acolyte” series dropped this week, giving us a first glimpse at the time 100 years prior to anything Star Wars-related we’ve seen on any screen. There’s even a Wookiee Jedi.
How do US teachers teach? We don’t know, and it’s difficult to figure out.
While I’m a huge fan of exploration and creative work that sometimes takes us on grand adventures that aren’t so productive, sometimes there is no other option than to do the work of learning.
Ten books from MIT faculty to expand your knowledge of teaching, learning, and technology
Speaking of doing the work of learning and creativity, what if you made your classroom or workspace a living display of your creativity like Lynda Barry?
Lastly, when you feel like the work you do is complete and utter garbage—don’t we all get that way at times?—remember that you’re not alone. The novelist Percival Everett says, “I’m pretty sure everything I’m writing is shit…I’m just trying to make the best shit I can.”

That’s it for this week. The Spring Break edition will arrive in your inbox next week.

P.S. – I’m going through all my old comics lately and am amazed at some of the ads. Here’s this one with a cameo from Vincent Price to make your own shrunken head…

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