iPad, laptop, or paper? The decision is worse than choosing between carry-on only and baggage fee.

Do I do my pre-meeting prep based on the others who will be there, the weight and portability of my various devices, my profound paper hatred, the great Flash/iOS divide, the weather forecast, or what’s  digitally “in” ?

I am traveling 2500+ miles next week to meet some folks I have never spoken with face to face. I am accustomed to having everything at my electronic fingertips all the time: wifi connection, synched iPhone and iPad, and so many accounts “remembered” on my MacBook Pro that I would struggle to name the most important. (At least I have a consistent personal password policy so I can usually log in once I know I have an account on a given web tool.)  I will be traveling with two colleagues: a pure paper person and a willing, Blackberry-toting office person. I am a teacher turned teachertechiewritercreativeperson. We are a diverse trio.
In a dream world, I’d tote along nothing but the iPhone and iPad, and my shoulder would be happy for the lighter weight. If it rains, I can simply zip the bag. But I don’t know what I will encounter at our meetings or in the car/airport/hotel on the way. Will we need to connect to a projector? Will there be free wifi — or would 3G be better? Will I need to demo something that requires Flash? Will I need my Diigo links (OK, I know that PW and can get to it from anything). How quickly can I pull up whatever I might be asked to share…and how much does speed matter? Will I be judged by the way I store and retrieve? If I carry paper (yuck) to help out my one colleague, will it make me less credible in the eyes of the techies I am meeting for the first time?

How much does my digital tote bag matter in my professional credibility?

Is there digital oneupmanship in today’s business environment? I feel like a teenager preparing for a dance. I just have to guess what everyone else will be wearing.

I came across this wonderful Sunni Brown video today about the power of doodling in formulating and refining ideas. As a perennial doodler, I feel validated. As a teacher, I feel challenged. How do I usually react to a student who is doodling in class? (How do you?) Do I ever celebrate the doodle or even ask about it? I tend to use the old favorite “ignore it if it is not disturbing anyone” tactic when I see elaborate scribbles where student notes are supposed to be.  A less doodle-tolerant teacher might say that doodle laissez-faire will allow the student to discover the logical consequences of his/her inattention. As a more visual/artistic person, I secretly delight in seeing original cartoon figures and 3D graffiti in notebook or handout margins. But I honestly have never celebrated them as visual representations of thinking related to what we are discussing in class.

I wonder whether the student who draws would be willing/able to share about what he was thinking, perhaps on an illustrated blog post or Voicethread. I wonder what would happen if we posted the images on a class wiki, or collected many on Wallwisher or a bulletin board and asked others  for their reactions. I also wonder whether seemingly UNrelated doodles actually would help the artist retell or explain a concept that was in his/her auditory space while he/she was drawing.

Fast forward to a faculty meeting (or dreaded, day-long inservice). My agenda pages are always filled with doodles. When I pull them from the file folder months later, I look at the doodles and their relationship to the text, and I remember what I was thinking. This video says we each progress through various developmental steps as doodlers,  though at different rates. Surely the doodle-to-reenact-thinking  level is a one we would like our students to achieve. But first we must allow and respect the doodle, and make it clear that we expect doodlaccountability. Leave a little more white space. Ask about doodle meaning. Respect and share the doodle. Maybe even frame a few. Oh, and start paying attention to what you do(odle). We all might learn something.

I admit it; I was  “jock” in high school.  Actually, I went to an all girls school before Title IX (don’t start doing the math now…). It was OK to be athletic when there were no boys around. I was a good student, too– lots of academic accolades and all that– but my classmates remember me most for being captain of this or that and for getting out of the scary Algebra II teacher’s classes as many afternoons as possible to leave early for games. I did a lot of other activities, from glee club to yearbook, but 3 varsity sports a year really defined my reputation.  As a college freshman, I continued on to the first women’s field hockey and lacrosse teams at a formerly all-male college. I was not afraid to try anything, from sports to being a T.A. for a revered prof. Those who know me now would say that all of this “fits” with what they know of me today. My high school extracurriculars did help define who I became and how I approach adult life.

So I read with great interest on Education Next about the Academic Value of Non-Academics. Unlike many articles that correlate extracurriculars to student/life success, this analysis does a great job of critically analyzing whether either is a cause or effect. It probes into what makes a student decide to participate in an afterschool activity. What makes him/her stick with it? The research about the impact of extracurriculars intrigues me. As budgets shave away at students’ opportunities to participate, I worry. If I had been asked to pay for my activities, would I have chosen to try almost anything? Probably not. There was no extra money in my two-teacher family. My scholarship to the all-girls school was as a “professional courtesy,” and I attended school with many whose families had a hundred times more money. But I had confidence and an identity among them, in part because of being a “jock.” We played on the same team. We lost together (a lot).

EdNext’s article is on the right track in suggesting that the extra adult contact of extracurriculars could be a major factor in why participating students are more successful. But so is the extra contact and social parity of simply being in the same activity with other students you might not otherwise socialize with. We talk a lot now about how social learning really is. Employers want collaborators. Extracurriculars are often a much better suited environment to learn collaboration than a forced “group” project. Being a jock is not a frill. It is part of the same broadbased, personal, and ubiquitous learning that we advocate as “21st century.” I hope the kids who attend schools where “jocks” and bandmembers are being asked to pay up (or even lose the chance to have a team or band altogether) can find another way to play.

For most of my 27 years in the classroom, I taught gifted students. I was the “gifted program specialist” whom these children trusted to provide their weekly respite from ordinary school. It was a privilege to learn from them and later to see what became of them. They did not all become doctors or lawyers or college professors. Few became rich. Some have suffered and wandered and have not yet found a happy medium between functioning around other people and the intellectual play they so enjoy. There are few I do not remember in detail from my time knowing them as elementary and middle school students. Among the hundreds (maybe a couple thousand?), there were perhaps a score who brought me up short with their vision. I looked forward to the days when they would bound (or shuffle) through the door of my borrowed, “itinerant” classroom space.

As Steve Jobs passed away this week, I wondered where his teachers are. Surely there are some still alive who watched this adopted son of a working class couple through elementary and middle school. I wonder: how did he articulate his vision as a young man? I am guessing he had some tough times on the playground and in the cafeteria. I am guessing he irritated more than one  straight-arrow teacher who found his opinions inappropriate coming from a young mouth. I wonder whether he was the one who read and absorbed quietly, then tinkered in the garage, or whether he blurted out unthinkable mental connections to peers (and adults) who did not understand. Surely, Steve Jobs was what I call “severely and profoundly gifted.”

As a teacher, I love to mentally rewind adults into what I hypothesize they might have been like as a child.  I never really research or verify my musings. I do enjoy thinking about little people I have known and unrelated adults, playing a mental matching game with no correct answers. I just enjoy flipping over the two cards: one child, one adult, and questioning in my mind whether this could be the precursor to that.

I have no matching child card for Steve Jobs, though I think I have some partial matches in my Former Student deck. But somewhere there is an aged teacher or two who knew this man as a boy. I envy them.