O brave new world

Yesterday, Michele remarked that the Clarion Ledger was following her tweets, and that this creeped her out. I’m one of the other 364 people currently being followed by the Jackson paper — I’m also tailed by Mississippi Public Broadcasting, on twitter and flickr, and by nearly 20 people on twitter who don’t know me (dozens on flickr) and who I must assume were interested just because they see I’m in Jackson or that I am a teacher here. I responded to Michele to say that I’m not much bothered. Maybe it’s somewhat generational: I’m probably among the oldest people who don’t remember not having at least a family email address (growing up in a fairly tech-y family in a fairly tech-y region, I remember playing on Prodigy and The WELL before the Web was invented, and when I had fewer years than fingers). In any case, if I don’t specifically and explicitly elect for privacy, I don’t expect that I have any, and I’m not particularly concerned with what the lurkers are doing. I lurk too, sometimes.

This subject came up yesterday. This morning, in the middle of final exams, the fire alarm went off, I instructed my students to leave their tests on their desks, and we marched outside. From the field, at 9:36, I tweeted:

middle of the exam, fire alarm, fire trucks, chaos. Recess on the field. Kids fighting.

Some time later (after we returned to class and resumed testing — before my administration had communicated to faculty what had happened) I saw that Ben had tweeted a reference to the Clarion Ledger, which, at 10:05, had posted maybe 100 words, including a quotation from the fire investigator.

I don’t doubt that in the 30 or 35 minutes from fire alarm to Clarion Ledger posting, people at the newspaper received more word than just mine; but mine was available to them, and they were allegedly listening.

It occurs to me in light of this that school districts will inevitably attempt to forbid the use of cellphones by teachers, and other nervous or inept employers will do likewise, and it may ultimately be part of a first amendment decision.

May 20, 2008 · Moments, Teachering, Technology, Twitter · 2 comments

Today was a very bad day

Transcription from twitter:

– In a dark hallway with tons of kids and no power. Tor-nay-duhs on the loose. Been 30 minutes so far.

– If only we could harness all the power from all the cell phones students sneak past policy…

– …almost an hour now…

– Back in class, still no power, still no lunch, kids getting restless…

– Lunch was supposed to be two hours ago. Still holding same class, no power. Are they getting the buses? They seem to want us uninformed.

– It’s 3. Same class since 11:40. Nobody’s eaten. Weather’s cleared. WTF?

– It is almost impossible to imagine this would be tolerated in an affluent district.

– 3:21, 9 minutes to regular dismissal. I doubt any instruction has happened in hours. Thanks JPS.

I don’t have much to add to that, but that it made for possibly the least pleasant day I’ve had in two years with JPS. Most frustrating is the sense that we were being deliberately kept uninformed so that we would keep anticipating relief that wasn’t in fact to come, and would more likely keep our peace. When a tornado came and took the power from my old (tiny & rural) school district before I came to Jackson, they got the buses and sent everyone home early. There were some whispers of that happening today, but then the weather cleared, and whether for that reason or some other we were held captive and ignorant — literally in the dark, hallways and stairs becoming dangerous after even backup lighting failed — until the regular dismissal time. Apparently other schools in the district didn’t lose power, so they went back to business as usual, had lunch, maintained a bell schedule. I hope it was not the case that downtown saw the weather improve and then didn’t think about or give a shit what our circumstances were, that our local administration didn’t represent us to them. I hope there’s a better excuse than that.

 

Also, I wonder what the law has to say about holding kids (90+% of them on federal free or reduced lunch) from 8:20am to 3:30pm without feeding them.

April 4, 2008 · Teachering, Twitter · 2 comments