From our Vacation to Oahu, Hawaii last month. See more…
“Permission is a scarce commodity in this land of multiple freedoms.
As a teacher and as a mentor I give people permission to be who they want to be, and sometimes I think: How did I get stuck with this job? Isn’t that what our schools are supposed to be doing? The answer, I’ve found, is that most Americans look back on their education as a permission-denying experience–a long trail of don’ts and can’ts and shouldn’ts.” — William Zinsser
Police scanner + Ambient Music
Map Collage by Matt Cusick
Join SkullSpace on March 19th for their fourth hack-a-thon.
“SkullSpace is a whisper of a hackerspace in Winnipeg. SkullSpace is a place for hackers, builders, programmers, artists and anybody interested in how stuff works to gather in a common place and help focus their knowledge and creativity.”
Crosspost from Codeglutton.
TEDxManitoba Analogies
Last month I had the opportunity to attend TEDxManitoba, an independently organized TED event at the Park Theatre. It was a day of inspiration drawn from the various speakers and the conversations with fellow attendees.
During each of the seventeen talks I scribbled down my thoughts in a notepad. During the week that followed, I tried to distill each talk down to one compelling analogy. These seventeen analogies are presented below (in italics), along with links to each video (follow the arrows).
Some of the analogies are direct quotes, others are summaries of what I personally took away from a talk. Out of context these analogies may have little meaning, so watch the videos. I’ve marked my favourite talks with a star (★).
Len Brownlie
Helping the Swiftest Be Swifter ⇒
Luck as preparation plus opportunity.
Frank Plummer
Is There Natural Immunity to HIV? ⇒
Sleepy immune systems as HIV immunity.
Shaun Loney
Poverty, Crime & Greenhouse Gas Emissions ⇒ ★
Employment as transformative opportunity.
Phil Doucette
Between You, Me and Liberation ⇒
Forgiveness as freedom.
Rick Van Eck
How Video Games May Transform Education ⇒
Engagement as cognitive effort.
John Weigelt
Enabling Canada’s Economy Digitally ⇒
Prosperity gap as innovation gap.
Leslee Silverman and Columpa Bobb
The Moving Gallery @ the Edge of the Screen ⇒
Children as empathy glue.
Scott Stirton
Intelligent Buildings ⇒ ★
The Manitoba Hydro building as camel.
Hannah Taylor
A Cold Walk in Shoes Without a Home ⇒
Change as caring in action.
Terry MacLeod et al.
Finding Life Beyond the Gang ⇒ ★
Gang life as MPR (Money, Power and Respect).
Les Foltos
Peer Coaching: 21st Century Teacher Skills ⇒
Colleagues as co-learners.
Bernard McCoy
Social Entrepreneurism for the 21st Century ⇒
Love as seeking the good of others.
Terry Godwaldt
DeforestAction: Global Project Based Learning ⇒
Authentic tasks as education.
* * *
The following talks (the first four of the day) are not available due to an internet hiccup.
Robert Sawyer - Creating the Future ★
Consciousness as networked complexity.
Nicole Buckley - Canada Alive in Space
Space research as aging research.
Kerry Stevenson - How 3D Printing Will Change the Way You Think
3D printing as slow motion teleportation.
Karen Letourneau - A Breakthrough in Prenatal Ultrasound ★
Simplicity as the other side of complexity.
The Kirkbride plan for mental hospitals consists of sets of enormous, symmetrical, staggered wings, like a bat made out of lego. Men are on the left and women on the right in sections that radiate from the main entrance for increasingly violent or incurable patients.
Early mental institutions where patients had to pay for their own incarceration would also vary in class (rich to poor) on the y axis. The staggering of the wings ensured the flow of air through each, purging them of diseased vapors perhaps, such was the Victorian obsession with fresh air.
We tend to remember… via
Thermostat Wiring Protip
When upgrading an old 2-wire mercury-switch thermostat to a digital one, connect the existing wires running from your furnace to the W and RH wiring posts in the new thermostat.
For two wire systems, the thermostat is simply acting as a relay. This means you don’t need to worry about the polarity. However, convention states that you should connect the white/red wire to W and the black wire to RH.