Courtesy: The IT Crowd

Consider the grade 5 teacher who through a sweeping school improvement initiative has had her blackboard replaced with an Interactive Whiteboard, projector and laptop computer. She has undertaken the necessary professional development and made major changes to her work practices to incorporate ICT-based teaching in her repertoire. She has been successfully teaching with her new resources and has transposed most of her content to digital form because of the efficiency and student-engagement gains it offers. Suddenly, the IWB goes blank. Thirty sets of ten-year-old eyes gaze at her. It’s 10am and there are still many hours of the teaching day left and so many possible points of failure to check. How does traditional ICT Support resolve the extended repercussions of this incident for the teacher and her students?

Meanwhile, at Progressive Boys High School, the year 10 students have been asked to make sure they all bring in their school laptops in order to complete an on-line assessment task scheduled for a 10am start. In four separate classrooms, the 110 students must logon, visit a specific web page and complete a series of questions and activities in order to show competence in their course. It is quickly discovered that in total, eight of the laptops are not working for varying reasons, fifteen students are unable to logon due to username/password issues and one of the classroom wireless access points is not functioning. The four supervising teachers look on dumbfounded while the school’s only technology support officer scurries between laptops to try make connections. How can traditional ICT Support assist the flailing TSO to allow what should be a reasonable ICT-based assessment activity to operate?

And what about the 21^st Century back-office worker who has discovered and dwells in the real-world of consumerised information and communication technologies? He has implemented a brilliantly-effective solution for managing and tracking workflows with his entire team using a free and mobile cloud-based service because IT do not offer a service that fills this growing need for his team. Aside from the concerns of privacy and corporate data security, how does traditional ICT Support deal with the growing need to provide new, effective and integrated applications as well as access potentially viable online third-party solutions?

A revolution is taking place in the enterprise today that challenges the status quo of restrictive end-user standards, policies, support methods, and budgeting decisions in place. The approaches traditionally associated with the IT department are not optimal in this new era and the real business impacts of failures must be recognised. Boundaries between work and personal technologies are diminishing, and employees expect the technologies they rely on in their personal lives to be available to them in their business lives, and vice versa.  Corporate IT Services must enable, not hinder the obvious benefits of this progress in the workforce. How well is IT Support functioning for you in your workplace?

Nobody knew it at the time, but he’d suffered an Aortic Dissection – a condition that is mostly sudden and fatal. Arriving at the emergency department at St George Public Hospital in Sydney, he was taken straight in and monitored. He seemed to settle and it was decided he’d stay overnight for observation. At this stage, none of the doctors had diagnosed what had happened.

There are only four ways to identify aortic dissection, with three of them via imaging - a CT angiogram, an MRI or a transesophageal echocardiogram. None of these are routine procedures at this stage of diagnosis, which is one reason why people die as the dissection remains untreated. Then there’s the fourth way – when the aorta actually ruptures. That’s what happened to my Dad. We’d only just walked in the door at Mum’s around 11pm when the phone rang with the hospital telling us to come straight back. The doctors said that his abdomen had swelled up like a balloon and he was haemorrhaging and they needed to open him up immediately.

The Cardiothoracic surgeon was Dr Gary Fermanis and he was quick to tell us of the grave situation my father was facing. About six hours into the surgery, Dr Fermanis came out to say that his ascending aorta had been repaired via a dacron graft, but they had been unable to stop the bleeding. He assured us that he would not be giving up, although later we were told the others in the operating theatre were all telling him it was a lost cause. After 11 hours of open chest surgery, my father was finally wheeled out of the theatre and rushed to Intensive Care where he was kept in an induced coma for a week.

A build-up of fluid on the lungs forced doctors to again open him up and a battle with Golden Staph (MRSA) infection just added to the battle my father faced. Nevertheless, his strong will saw him leave the ICU after five weeks, when he was moved to the cardiac ward to begin his rehabilitation. I visited twice a day throughout his four weeks in the ward, continually focussing on rebuilding his wasting muscles by walking the corridors with him. A week or so after the Y2K hysteria was shown to be a fizzle, my dad was able to go home, widely acknowledged as a “miracle man” and is still with us to this very day, twelve years later -  confounding all doctors and specialists who come to learn of his extraordinary case.

In 2003 at the age 54, John Ritter, the U.S. actor and comedian suddenly became the famous face of this uncommon, but silent killer known as aortic dissection. In an attempt to highlight this deadly condition to the world, his family developed  the Ritter Rules – a set of life-saving reminders to recognize, treat and prevent thoracic aortic dissection. And recently due to A.D., the world also lost Richard Holbrooke, the American diplomat who brokered the peace deal in Bosnia and was most recently Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke was just 69 years old.

In part two, I’ll relive my own personal struggle with Aortic Dissection.

UPDATE: 13 September 2011 – Following complications with pneumonia, a leaky heart valve, myelodysplasia, kidney failure and arrhythmia, my father passed away peacefully this morning. I’d like to thank the doctors, nurses and medical support staff at St George Public Hospital for all of the care they’ve provided to my dad and for giving us many more wonderful years with him than we ever would have expected.

Enes Hasic – 4 June 1927 – 13 September 2011

I wrote extensively about that promise, the challenge, the delivery and the difference – but now I ask, what the Hell was the point? In the May 2011 Federal budget, the Government’s idealogical and aspirational education revolution was all but given the heave-ho! It seems that the actual promise was to provide computers to all students from years 9 through 12, one year cohort per annum, until all four years had them. And then….? Nothing.

In New South Wales public schools, the state authority with the most-cohesive and effective implementation plan, the DIFFERENCE was most obvious. High school teachers were adopting and adapting the laptops into their classrooms. Their lessons were changing. They started to focus on Digital Citizenship, they were provided teaching resources specifically incorporating the laptops  and they started to document their journey in video form. They even got real, on-site technical support for the first time ever. For public schools in NSW, the Revolution was truly gathering steam. At this point, New South Wales is three-quarters of the way through. All students in the current years 9, 10 and 11 have their own laptop and although there have been problems, these have been within the allowed tolerances. At the end of 2011, the incoming year 9 students will receive their laptops, completing the Federal Government’s commitment. The announcement that no more funding is available for laptops for students beyond the 2012 cohort means that 1:1 laptops will be in high schools until next year’s year 9 students complete year 12, but in ever-decreasing numbers until they disappear totally.

And what else will disappear with them? All the great progress in teaching and learning that1:1 laptops provided. Without the laptops, without the ubiquitous connections and access, there will be little choice for teachers but to revert to the “old-ways” of “chalk-and-talk”, “drill-and-practise” and “rote learning”. Can the NSW State Government afford to take up the slack to see 1:1 laptops continue? Can they pay for the laptops and the ongoing support themselves? I truly hope they can, but I ask, why should they have to? When Kevin Rudd made that statement and that promise, surely he and his Education Minister and government knew that this had to be a commitment for the long-term. Otherwise, what was the point? Federally, with the budget announcement, it’s been more than a waste of money. It’s been one big education-tease.  That’s why regrettably, I’m now calling  it the Digital Education Real Illusion.

As inspired by the Church Sign War.

Agreement 1
Be impeccable with your word – Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Agreement 2
Don’t take anything personally – Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

Agreement 3
Don’t make assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

Agreement 4
Always do your best - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.

And another person who appears to live his life according to the same or similar philosophy is Tim Minchin. Today I discovered his newly animated beat-poem called Storm. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Of course, NSW DET has provided corporate email accounts for all staff for many years and one enormous address book allows one staff member to quickly find others - as long as you know the name of the person you are looking for! A massive set of corporate websites provides access for all staff to wonderful resources to help them with their jobs - as long as you know what you’re looking for and where to start looking! Otherwise, most staff are forced to resort to the telephone, calling the Service Desk and waiting in the queue. It’s not unlike other large organisations where the one-way Internet still rules.

But NSW DET understands the difficulties of its business and has looked into how social networking may simplify some of the complexities. While popular tools like Facebook and Twitter connect people worldwide and have amazing educational benefits, it is their openness that makes them totally unsuitable for the workplace. That’s where Yammer fits in beautifully. As a corporate social network, the only people that can view your organisation’s feed are your staff. This brings numerous advantages and NSW DET is starting to realise them. By commencing a formal 12-month trial of Yammer, this employer has simply made the service available to its staff and taken the wait-and-watch approach. If social networking is to work in the organisation, it has to work naturally, by word of mouth and not as a directive from above. Social networking is the essence of a bottom-up approach.

Yammer started off slowly, but quickly began to gather steam. By the time the formal trial was announced in June 2010, about 1,000 staff had already discovered the service, but just six months later, it had swelled to a membership of over 8,500. Still, this represents only a small percentage of the overall staff employed by NSW DET. As of right now, over 66,000 messages have been posted and the almost 9,000 members have created and broken off into more than 320 special interest groups. The knowledge and resources being shared by this disparate and spread-out subset of DET staff is not only clearly evident, it’s eminently searchable and retrievable through the extensive use of hashtags and keywords. Yammer is working.

The next step for NSW DET in this trial is to break through two important barriers:

1. Getting “lurking” members to join in more in the discussions
2. Helping “disconnected” staff to discover Yammer and its benefits.

Like many educational authorities, NSW DET has a (likely) majority of its staff that see information and communications technologies (ICTs) as a challenge that they’d prefer to avoid. Word-of-mouth has gotten the Yammer membership this far, but the time has come where “selling” Yammer to staff is needed for the corporate social network to continue to grow. To that end, I’ve come up with a sales script.  It can be used as the basis for a Powerpoint presentation, a Prezi, a poster or a video – anything that will grab attention and convince staff to investigate further. There are too many business benefits to ignore.

Feel free to take this script and mash it into a great sales tool to promote Yammer to your staff. Edit it, add to it and re-share it. And let me know what you think of Yammer in the comments below.

What is Yammer?

It’s social networking for organisations.

A bit like Twitter, a bit like Facebook.

Connecting masses of people.

Hosting multiple discussions.

But social networking is blocked!

Sure, but Yammer is different.

Yammer consists only of NSW DET staff.

Staff from schools, regional and state offices and TAFE.

Thousands of them.

And they are discussing YOUR job.

YOUR interests.

YOUR questions.

They are ANSWERING.

They are SUPPORTING.

They are DISCOVERING.

And they are SHARING.

But overall, EVERYONE is LEARNING.

It’s an instant Professional Learning Network.

The collective knowledge & skills of thousands of DET staff…

…all in one place.

Breaking down boundaries.

Flattening hierarchies.

Providing Just-in-time learning.

It’s all happening at Yammer right now.

But where are you?

http://yammer.com/

Quick-Start Guide:

http://tinyurl.com/yammer-guide

[UPDATE] Yammer have posted the results of a survey of 10,000 of its users. Click on the chart for the full article.

Before the mainstream media and television stations caught on that something was going down in Canberra last night, the Twittersphere was already abuzz with speculation that Kevin Rudd may not last the evening. As Parliament House insiders began tweeting that Julia Gillard, the current Deputy PM and John Faulkner, the Defence Minister and Labor “elder-statesman” had gone into Rudd’s office for a closed-door meeting. Soon other Ministers had joined in the impromptu meeting and speculation was rife.

Once twits had settled on the hashtag #spill, it was on for one and all. Seconds had passed and fifty updates had gone through. Keeping up with the challenge was a challenge.  Twitter had already played a major role in the U.S. election, but this was Australia’s first real go at the population actively discussing our future leadership online in real-time. But unlike the dry, emotional and serious commentary that surrounded the U.S. election, Australia’s effort was far more jovial, keeping people glued to the #spill stream for many hours.

From nowhere appeared a new Twitter account, @KevinRuddExPM - a play on Kevin07′s official @KevinRuddPM account. This Kevin was more outwardly bitter than the real Kevin and provided a refreshing array of tweets that you’d think might actually reflect the (ex)PM’s persona – including this one that tied in the week’s other big story from the World Cup:

“Calling Tim Cahill and Harry Kewell to ask them for some advice on handling a send off…”

Of course, I got my boot in via Twitter as well:

“Hey Ban Ki-moon! You’d better watch your back. Kevin’s available early.”

Julia Gillard’s first press conference as PM: “Look at mooee, look at mooee, look at mooee.”

What were you doing when Rudd was booted? Oh yeah. Tweeting.

Well done Julia Gillard – Australia’s first female Prime Minister.

Feel free to share some of your favourite #spill tweets in the comments.

Image courtesy of philderksen

So what is it that compels me consider placing the iPad into such a revered category of invention?  Prior to its release, Steve Jobs called this thing “magical” and “revolutionary”. Obviously, I’m very skeptical about the “magical” tag, but it’s very hard to quibble with the second descriptor attached to the device.

But why?  We have had LCD screens and internet browsers and email apps for ages. How can something that does what we’ve been doing with computers for years be called a “game changer“? The thing is, it’s not WHAT the iPad does that makes it special. It’s HOW the USER interfaces with it that is the difference - and it’s a massive difference.

For all my adult life, I’ve been using computers on a daily basis. I know what they do and I can do amazing things with them. My children grew up in a world and home life where computers and access to the world via the Internet was the norm. We were totally connected. On the flipside, my wife knew what computers could do, but she just wasn’t interested in using them. If she had a question that needed to be looked up on-line, she knew either our kids or I could do it for her. She had different hobbies and workloads that filled her day and the computers in our house were not part of her routine. There was clearly a barrier there for her that she decided she didn’t need or want to cross. Computers just never excited her - and for her needs, I can truly say there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But I always felt she was missing out.

And I can’t help but imagine how many others are also in the same boat? The World Internet Usage Statistics suggest that penetration in Australia is just over 60%. How do they work that out? Because so many households have an internet connection and there’s an average of so many people in each household?  Multiply the two figures together and divide it into the overall population and there’s your percentage?  Well my personal experience shows that in my household, there would be an error-margin of 25% in that calculation. My own experience with people in general tells me that the actual internet penetration across the population is less than half.  I believe most western countries would be the same.

When it comes to Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs), we can split the world up into three distinct groups:

• The ICT Rich – Individuals with easy access who choose to be connected regularly
• The ICT Avoiders – Individuals who could be connected, but for whatever reason, choose not to
• The ICT Poor - Individuals who through their situation have little or no access to ICTs.

I classified my wife in the second category years ago and despite my efforts to change that, the barriers were too great for her. Then I heard about the Apple iPad and instantly I could see it as a catalyst for ICT Avoiders to become connected. I decided I was going to buy her one on the May 28 release date. I configured it for her with her rarely used email address and a few bookmarks in Safari as well as some of the more popular free iPad apps from the AppStore and then I gave it to her to try out. Instantly, she wanted to touch it, to test it, to see what it does and what she could do with it. She asked me to put some of her favourite photos and music onto it. My children sent her emails with links to some sites she’d be interested in. I showed her how to turn on and off the wireless connection at home.

On the first day, my wife had been going with the iPad for about 4 hours and I can officially advise that she has finally joined the rest of the family in 21C. I can confirm that it is a game-changer, but is it a stepping stone to traditional computing? I’m not sure that Apple’s walled-garden will allow for that. Still, her excitement was palpable, and computers have never done that for her in the past.

Here are my top-ten reasons why I think iPad is “revolutionary” for ICT Avoiders:

1. Extremely portable – light and not oversized
2. Cold start in 23 seconds
3. Very intuitive. The iPhone user interface “makes sense” to just about everyone. iPad is the same with bigger screen real estate (very important)
4. No complexities added of a permanently visible keyboard and mouse as you have with a traditional computer - for newbies, these are hurdles to overcome – not human interface devices.
5. Simplicity. One app at a time. 
6. > 10 hour battery life 
7. People don’t seem to have any fear that they’ll break something with it 
8. Some of the apps are very practical from a newbie’s POV.  For example, “Epicurious” puts hundreds of thousands of recipes at your fingertips. Tap what ingredients you have and bang, there’s a stack of recipes to try, including feedback from people who have tried them. Very powerful. And that’s just one example. The App Store is a shopping mall for newbies – as is iTunes Store and iBook Store. 
9. Internet browsing without the complications. No plugins to install, things either work, or they don’t (flash). You just accept it as it is. 
10. (so far) It’s reliable. Turn it on and it just works.

iPad will not replace your computer if you are already a computer user. But it’s a handy, convenient option for doing some things, and it does them very elegantly. If you always avoided ICTs, iPad is YOUR gateway to the connected world.

Sorry, I sound like an iPad salesman, but that’s my impression after witnessing the impact it’s had in my own home since Friday – and apart from setting it up and having an initial play with it myself, I’ve been hands-off.  Is it for everyone? No. You can live without it. But if I wanted a way to get “ICT-Avoiders” to start using ICTs, I would give them an iPad.

Revolutionary? I think so. It’s clear that the iPod revolutionised the music industry, and now there is talk that the iPad will revolutionise the newspaper and magazine industry. We’ve had Windows-based tablet computing for almost a decade. If the iPad wasn’t revolutionary, we wouldn’t have so many tech companies rushing to develop a competing product with a similar user interface.

But I’m not going to go as far as 4,000 Britons who were recently surveyed on the “Greatest Inventions of All Time” where the iPhone was voted into 8th place – one in front of the Flushing Toilet. Although I’m sure there’ll be plenty of people using their iPad on the 9th-rated greatest invention of all time.

Do you think the iPad is revolutionary?

Before anyone can work out the point of life for themselves, they must work out their own ground rules. Most choose to simply accept someone else’s ground rules by blindly following the indoctrination of their parents and their religious community and believe in an illogical, invisible and impossible entity which demands of its followers, kooky rituals that confusingly vary widely between multiple different religions that seemingly follow that very same entity – all in the same selfish goal of securing passage after bodily death into an unknown paradise forever more, instead of being sucked into an equally unknown eternal paradisean-antithesis that they morbidly fear. Blind Faith demands obedience.

Now when you put it that way, it makes you think more seriously about the real point of life. Firstly, I share two beliefs with the majority of the inhabitants of Planet Earth. We are born, and we die.  Everything else is debatable.

When you unravel and expose religion, I simply cannot accept that GREED and FEAR would be the two key motivators of Mankind.

Why was I born and get to live in a country where the average lifespan is about 74 years while other humans are born in and must live in countries that have average lifespans of a mere 30 years?

Why do I and my children have easy access to health care, education, fresh food and clean water, while there are children and babies suffering unimaginable pain from the day they enter this world until they succumb to childhood mortality?

A God that loves us all would not allow this, but blind faith makes you dismiss any questionable event or situation as part of “God’s Plan”, which is conveniently beyond our comprehension.

Within the timeline of the universe and the existence of this world, the reign of mankind is almost an unregisterable blip. But human history has shown evidence of massive progress by the Earth’s most dominant species, all in the name of humanity.

As one of six billion humans, living on an insignificant rock careering around one star out of an almost infinite number, who was fortunate enough to have been born in a developed country at the junction of the Industrial  and Technological Eras, I have my chance to make a tiny difference before I disappear forever.

What kind of difference? Who knows. Improving the living conditions for one less-privileged human; working to benefit your local community;  inventing a breakthrough solution to a known or unknown problem; generating a larger than required income which is then shared with the poor or less-fortunate; educating the masses either directly or indirectly. In other words, making YOUR mark in human history – leaving a legacy for the species and for our current home, Earth.

An ant is born and dies. A cat is born and dies. A shark is born and dies. What is their Point of Life? A human is born and dies. The difference is, many of us have an ability to make a difference, but we individually choose not to. Imagine how it could be if they all did make a difference.

That’s my Point of Life. What’s yours?

 
image courtesy of Financial Services Technology

But often it’s not an email that hooked the poor user. Drive-by websites that drop trojans with keyloggers onto the novice user’s insecure computer are a gold mine for phishers. A steady stream of keystrokes featuring website URLs, usernames and passwords is captured, neatly packaged and emailed off or uploaded directly into a secure database on the other side of the planet. According to Internet Security Vendor McAfee, “there has been a 50% increase in the number of detected so-called “zombie” computers since 2008“. In the four months between January and May 2009, McAfee alone detected 12 million computers that had been hijacked by cyber thieves. Even experienced Internet users have been caught out by logging on via compromised Internet Cafes or using the ”free” unprotected wireless at Starbucks.

Clearly, the solution of educating Internet users to be cautious when using the Internet is a solution that is not working. The problem is getting away from us as a society and in 2007 in the U.S. alone, the cost of phishing was calculated to be $3.2 BILLION - that was up from just $2.3 billion the previous year. What it is today, we can only guess, but everybody seems to know somebody who has been a victim.

And it’s not just banks and credit cards that the criminals are phishing for. It’s account details for PayPal, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and virtually every email service on the web. Social Networking sites are particularly vulnerable and users are even more unsuspecting when it comes to “sharing” their account information. Their goal? Identity fraud. And since many of the fraudsters are actually located in a foreign country, bringing them to justice is almost impossible.

So if making users more tech-savvy is not the answer, what is?

The vast majority of humans live their entire lives within a reasonably close distance to the place they were born – certainly they stay in the same country more often than not. If they migrate, they choose to stay in the country that becomes their new home. With this fact in mind, it is logical that if an Internet user signed up for a web service of some type in one country, they are unlikely (except in circumstances of overseas trips) to be signing on to that web service from another country. Many of us will NEVER do it.

• How hard would it be for EVERY web service provider to identify and record the country where an account was created (or configured after the event), and then match up the country of each new sign-on request with that original country?
• How hard would it be for the web service to reject logons if those countries don’t match up?
• How hard would it be for the web service provider to alert the user that an attempt to logon to their account was made from another country?
• How hard would it be for an extra question to be added to each user’s profile that says “ONLY Allow logon from the following country: [country list]“
• How hard would it be for the web service provider to include an option for the user to turn this setting off if the user is travelling?

 What are the benefits of this simple solution?

If the cyber criminal is in another country as is often the case, there’ll be an extra hurdle for them to get into your account – even if they do have your username and password. If they happen to be in the same country as you and if they eventually do get caught, then your country’s laws will come into play and real convictions will actually be possible.

Of course, nothing on the Internet is foolproof, but this simple approach can protect those hapless Internet users that are so prevalent (and costly).

Google – Yahoo – Microsoft – Facebook – On-line Banks – eBay - Please take note: You have a responsibility to protect your users from themselves. This is one simple step you can all take so others DO NO EVIL using YOUR services.

What do you think? How can we get web service providers to do this?

photo courtesy of purplemattfish

But it begs the question? “How many light bulbs does it take to change teaching?“

Can our students afford to wait for each of their individual teachers to wake up to the realization that it’s well and truly the 21st century? How long will our governments continue to invest in 21st century ICTs if they don’t see any tangible return on that investment – especially since individual teachers in large proportions continue to, at best avoid and at worst, shun ICTs?

Massive investments such as the Digital Education Revolution in Australia, and particularly in New South Wales are taking the sledgehammer approach to a problem that really should never have been allowed to permeate the teaching profession for so many decades.  In a (wal)nutshell, the sledgehammer approach is:

1. Give computers to every student.
2. Build the expectation in the community that they will be used in school.
3. Shame teachers into action/change.

This is in stark contrast to the ICT investment of the past dozen or more years where the intention was rolling out computers and software to schools in order to lower the computer-to-student ratio. There was never any clearly expressed outcome that all teachers would increase their ICT-skills as a result of these rollouts – their use has always been an option, and as I’ve said before, if you give teachers an option, most will opt-out. Twelve years of rolling out over 600,000 computers to schools in New South Wales has proven this loud and clear.

But now, during the second half of 2009, an urgency was born. Here are some questions that you may like to respond to in the comments below:

How can Australia as a society commit to and spend billions of dollars on computers for students without educational outcomes attached?

How can schools absorb so many computers in such a short period of time and make them effective – or rather, essential tools for learning?

How can teachers reinvent themselves to be relevant in a world where their students have information on tap giving them the power to contradict the “infallible” knowledge of the teacher at the front of their classroom?

What is the teacher’s role in this new 21st Century classroom?

What curriculum, assessments and measurements do we need to implement to complement the ICT resources our students now have ubiquitous access to? 

How big is this problem? Consider your own school. What percentage of teachers at your school fall into the ICT-avoider description?

Although it’s expensive, the sledgehammer approach is hopefully going to be the lightbulb moment that teachers need to shake them into action. I believe the reckoning point will be at the end of 2010. Coinciding with Australia’s next (scheduled) Federal Election and only half-way into this four year “revolution”, there will be the evidence needed to either justify or pull the plug on this ambitious and much needed change in school education. We don’t have three more years to make this work, we have just one.

The days of teachers expecting their professional development being handed to them on a silver platter are gone. The individualized and self-regulated, professional learning network is far more efficient, effective and relevant to teachers today.  But before teachers can turn on their professional learning network, they have to have their own lightbulb moment.

Sadly, here we are at the start of 2010 and only around 10% of the light bulbs are actually illuminated.

The comment was quietly added to “Which is Stronger, Manfluence or Godfluence?“, one of my popular earlier articles. Comment #62 suddenly appeared, and it was close to two years after the last comment was submitted. At 6:30 in the morning I was alerted to its arrival and as I started to read, I was taken on a wondrous journey of intrigue and awe-inspiring writing. Perhaps I was only half-awake, but this comment with its generous use of ellipses made me pause, reflect on and react to each and every carefully crafted statement. Who is this person? Was this really typed in one session as a reader’s comment on a blog article? There is not a single typographical error! Surely this is a cut & paste job? No, the almighty Google says it’s completely original, written just for my article.

Anyway, I’ve since had a lengthy email discussion on various subjects with “Mr Barry H. Browning“, which is still continuing, but I thought his original comment deserved a wider-audience, so I’ve decided to centre a new article around it, posing his unspoken question, What if God Was an Alien?  Here is Mr Browning’s comment posted in full and unedited. Please check his comment in the context of the original article at the link above, as well as the discussion that followed.

4th November 2009, and last night I stumbled upon this your blog…how cool is that? Just finished e-mailing an old friend that “checking out the Hubble pictures is one h-ll of a way to worship, and a lot more effective than the spiritual gatekeepers and spiritual-tax-collector-franchise-owning ‘Sunday morning country club directors’ can ever be.” Then I run into your blog…. Go figure.

It’s one thing….to “play” with what first seem like abstractions like “parallel universes” and “black holes” and “changes in the space-time continuum”….and it’s quite another thing…for those of us under I.Q. 160, to be able to “image”, without a little photographic help….what all that might look like….and the Hubble has done that, for me anyway….while looking at “deep space”, for example, I can just hear Carl Sagan’s voice from PBS broadcasts: “Mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….and-mill-yuns….” (only he needs to juice the figures up a little, as in “bill-yuns…and-bill-yuns….and-bill-yuns…) If realizing that each of those at-first-glance “stars”, is actually a galaxy, itself containing-billions-of-stars, doesn’t give us a “Za-Zen” into a limitless….if not “primitive humanoid-bound”…sense of the Infinite…I don’t know what will…. Wow! It takes a good university to hear about Martin Buber’s “Ich-Du versus Ich-Sie”, and Rudy Otto’s “Mysterium Tremendum Et Fascinans”, much less Aquinus’s “That-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought”….(I think what the Hubble stimulates in us humans even-goes-beyond-thinking….but I digress)…

…and after four years of bathing in this in academic splendor, so many years ago, of “decent and scholastically-grounded” Comparitive Religious Studies(Religionswissenschaft), and Philosophy and Psychology, (yes, this included Jung), both in the U.S., and abroad, I have yet to hear anything but a paucity of this from any so-called “Christian” pulpit in the U.S. Well….the Inquisition forced Galileo to “recant”….d’ye suppose some “fundamentalist”idiots will declare Hubble itself “a work of the Dark Side”? I can just hear-it-in-my “mind’s-ear”….”Don’t-confuse-us-with-the-facts, Barry”….

….Now…..and again, this from looking at pictures from the Hubble….how can we….doubt the possibility, given the permutations of billions of billions of stars, and the infinite number of planets that presupposes…..the Europeans of late have done a good job of “proving” from Hubble and other sources, the existence of a specific number of observed faraway planets, which is growing….

….How can we doubt the possibility of other beings?

…And if we don’t doubt this, why, why, WHY…..do we insist, that if-they-exist, they-must-be…..anthropomorphic, bifurcated….humanoids? This is one of the “bastard children” of bad theology….we aren’t aware enough of what goes on inside ourselves psychologically, to recognize a spiritual projection of ourselves on any outside phenomenon when we experience it…..300 hours of good psychological training BEFORE candidates get to go to seminary would fix this….fat chance of that…..

…We are in the process of….”having-the-doors-blown-off”….of what we experience as “real”, and this has not substantially happened in the West, give-or-take-a-few-exceptions, since the Greeks-Presocratics….(but perhaps in the East has been available conceptually ever since the Brahman-Atman Union was described in Sanskrit)….

…and in the midst of this experience…of these discoveries…..

…How are we going to handle the discovery of “intelligent life in the Universe, other-than-our-own”, when on our own Earth, we can neither collectively fathom nor accept the universality of our own encounter with the Infinite in its various and long-established permutations of the world religions, at least one of which is, as this blog’s author has informed us, is more populous in believers than Christianity, and several of which pre-date Christianity by any number of years? How can we HOPE to handle….”intelligent life”, which in all probability, WILL NOT be anthropomorphic, (but may well have the intelligence to appear to us in anthropomorphic form, to save us all from an initial heart attack), when, on earth, and in as “progressive” a country as the U.S.A., we cannot even UNDERSTAND, much less TOLERATE….other world religions…..and when within the revelatory religion of Christianity…..we have a multiplicity of sects, if not of rules, (in direct proportion, apparently, to the lack both of direct experience, and/or paucity of I.Q.)….and where we….can’t….even…..on Sunday mornings….deal with someone next to us with a slight difference in SKIN PIGMENTATION?

…I, for one, suspect that Science has taken us FAR BEYOND the hypocrisies of U.S. religious “fundamentalism”, and that we-have-been-necessarily-lied-to, about what Science and our government actually knows, from EXPERIENCE, about the Universe…..

….but for now am willing to live with Sir William of Occum’s famous Razor…..until-the-little-green-men-come-knocking-at-my-door….I don’t need to modify my life style just yet….

…..and I think this began in the late ’30s, when my mom was leaving Brown University for the weekend, and got caught up in a four hour traffic jam while traveling to East Providence, as the Mercury Theater’s War of the Worlds was being broadcast…

…I’m suspecting that it was decided then, that “we could not handle the truth”, and I must admit, having read the mass psychology studies arising out of that U.S. broadcast event….and its subsequent application in such subsequent world events as Hitler’s Blitzkreig….that they were, and perhaps still are, right…..

….but….a few fun details since then….such as…..rumors of “reverse engineering”….and….perhaps an ulterior motive behind Regan’s “Star Wars” weaponry….and certain observations made by our own and other countrys’ astronauts….and, of late, a suggested other reason for the Hubble’s soon-to-be-engaged, if-not-already-engaged, competitor….the Keppler…..

…Occum’s Razor notwithstanding…..if any of this takes us in the direction which I think it is taking us…..

….then how can the way many, if not most of us, practice Man’s Religions, handle what we next discover, (if we have not already discovered it and are-sitting-on-it)?

…I think……that Man’s Religions….are due for some massive revisions…..

….I think…..that it is well past the time when we….perhaps need a “Religions Race”, to catch up with the results of the “Space Race”….

….I think…..we need a “Weltanschuuang”(World-view)…which admits not only of the existence of other of Man’s world religions, but of their discoveries and unique contributions, collectively, to-what-we-can-claim-to-know-about-ourselves…..

….and I think….it is well past the time for us to accept, much less give lip service to, one unique theology to the exclusion of all others….

…..when there is enough evidence over the centuries, that the Infinite can be experienced by humans, in a multiplicity of ways….and when….for those not “intellectually challenged”, the much overtouted and supposed “differences” between man’s religions, are more a sign of the limited outlook of some individuals….of limited vision….

….and I think…..that if we are to survive spiritually and psychologically in the universe to come, with its implied expansion of intelligent life forms and life-connections…..we need to

…..know ourselves inside more profoundly than we already do…or already accept, is more like it, because the tools to self-discovery have been around for years, and-or are available to us through a variety of introspections and processes…..

….and we need to……expand…..and this greatly…..our SOCIAL model of “what is existentially real”, so that we can HANDLE what we are about to discover, or what we have ALREADY discovered….

….and “not go mad”, as the Greek Tragedies would have instructed us…..

…..”You cannot see G-d and live”……

….We are about to test that statement……can we handle it?

….I suspect….that if what I’ve been suggesting is out there, and is currently happening for us…..

….that we flip ourselves into the category of “meta-cognition”…..(that is, “thinking-about-thinking”), and…..

….ask ourselves, what with the bill-yuns-upon-bill-yuns… of stars-and-planets….”out there”…..

….whether…..any…..

…..culture of primitive intelligence which is trying to expand, such as ours…..

….has ever….encountered….or ever will…..

….intelligence(s) of greater knowing……

….and has survived the experience…..and this, perhaps, under the guidance of the superior intelligences…..(let us, at least, hope so…)

More than any of you may have wanted to deal with on a Wednesday in 2009?

Wow.  Well the odds are, that there ARE powers greater than our own out there in the glorious magnitude of the universe. And while they may not actually be listening to our wall-of-sound prayers, they may well be planning a visit.

Thank you Mr Browning.

 
Photo by NSW Maritime

Man often thinks he can do anything. Clearing jungles, re-routing rivers, building cities. But it’s nothing to crow about as we are cautioned that with just a shudder, Mother Earth is always in control. 

Imagine the power. With merely a breath, the planet can pick up five million tonnes of dust and dirt whip it into a front 800 kilometres long and drive it more than 1,100 kilometres from Central Australia to the east coast and out to the Pacific Ocean – all in less than a day. Coating anything and everything in its way, the dust storm caused havoc, stopping industry and transport and costing millions in lost productivity.

This planetary nudge was a reminder that from Dust we came and to Dust we will return. Man’s miniscule reign is just an itch in Earth’s four-billion year grandeur. All we are is Dust in the Wind.

Relive the IWBnet Conference via Visible Tweets

Through wireless connections using notebooks, netbooks, iPhones and iPod Touches, educators retold quotes, shared links to resources and commented on what they were seeing and hearing – in real-time.  And these contributions are captured forever, through the consistent use of hash-tags (#iwbnet09) on each of their posts. The above Visible Tweets link will let you relive some of the  conference experience as well as gather numerous pearls delivered to you via links. This Twitter “back-channeling” virtually places you in a seat beside the other attendees. By tapping into a back-channel, you even have a voice. You can join into the discussion by using the same hash-tag; asking questions, commenting and responding.

How is this all done? Surely these conference attendees and those participating in the back-channels are our teaching-elite? No ordinary teacher could do this stuff. Why would you want to anyway? As Marc Prensky said in his keynote today, which was paraphrased and tweeted by Chris Betcher then turned into a pair of cartoons by my son:

We have a massive gulf in the mindsets of today’s educator and learner. As teachers, we have a challenge of monumental proportions facing us. The “teacher” MUST become the “expert learner”. Or else, the situation tweeted by Matthew Wells will become reality, where the students will be saying, “stop interrupting my learning with your teaching!”.

When a young Robert Zimmerman wrote about “mothers and fathers” way back in 1964, little did he know he was perfectly describing early-21st Century Teachers:

Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

Lately, we keep hearing the term “tipping point“, but it always seems to be about oil and climate change. We never seem to equate it to education. I believe we are getting very close to a tipping-point in teaching and learning as major political programs like the Digital Education Revolution start to take root. As information and communications technologies continue to become prevalent in our schools, our students will expect them to be used.

It really isn’t as hard as many teachers think to change direction, but individuals must make that step themselves. Don’t focus on the complexity of technology, focus on change. Learn how to learn. If you’re waiting for training, you’re already a lost cause.

With time quickly running out, it will be up to each and every teacher to make an important decision. Do you want to be relics, or relevant?

The original $2.3B promise quickly blew out as states realised that supplying a laptop alone is not going to be enough to deliver the Digital Education Revolution promised.  The state of New South Wales  was steadfast in its push for more funding for its share, to deliver its ambitious interpretation of Kevin Rudd’s revolution - to provide a well-configured  and quality software-laden wireless netbook to each and every year 9 to 12 student in all public high schools. This was a solution unmatched by other states, and with the New South Wales Department of Education and Training (NSWDET) being the single largest educational authority in the southern hemisphere, it was always going to be a massive undertaking.

This represents almost 200,000 students plus all their teachers spread across almost 500 high schools in an area as big as France and Great Britain combined. With each high school ranging in size from less than 50 students to close to 2,000, from large cities and regional centres to outback rural communities where Internet access is scrappy at best – the intent was to provide the same user experience regardless of the situation. Technically, it was a minefield that few would even consider, let alone attempt – but the impetus was still there from the highest office in the land. This was not a time for a half-hearted commitment, there is too much public money at stake.

The planning started well and truly in early 2008 with consultation of all key stakeholders. The first things that became obvious were the numerous and varying-height hurdles that stood in the way – technical, social, cultural, ethical, security, usability, accessibility and all those 19th and 20th Century schooling paradigms that are so steadfastly refusing to allow teaching and learning to change. To address them all, a coordinated approach within the NSWDET was vital – this is not an IT project, it is not a Curriculum project and it is not a Professional Development project. This is revolutionary. It needs clear leadership, direction, focus and commitment - department-wide.

Before this solution can work educationally, it MUST work technically. If it doesn’t work technically, it won’t work at all. It must be fast, reliable and effective. If it can’t do that, teachers will abandon it for their comfortable old shoes in an instant. 1:1 laptop programs are nothing new. Schools and school systems around the world have taken them up since  the late 90s. Few succeed. Fewer are sustainable in the long term. This had to be different or it too would suffer the same fate. It would end up being less a revolution and more an unnecessary, expensive detour.

The Netbook – 2008 was the year of the Netbook. This reasonably-powered sub-notebook brought two important educational aspects to the table – it was small enough for students to carry around and it was affordable. In the end, Lenovo were contracted to supply over 250,000 of their souped-up s10e Ideapads to the NSWDET over four years.

The Operating System – When the plan was first mooted, everyone assumed one of the many flavours of Linux would be the chosen OS, probably Ubuntu – but everyone was surprised when NSWDET opted for Microsoft’s newest and at the time incomplete Windows 7 RC for the first netbook rollout to teachers in June 2009. Microsoft was clearly crowing when the decision was made, especially since NSWDET chose to totally bypass its ailing Vista platform, sticking with XP. So happy were Microsoft, they gave every support NSWDET needed to ensure the fledgling OS was ready and capable to take on the Revolution and  provided the final release of Windows 7 to NSWDET more than two months before its worldwide release. In addition to Windows 7, NSW DET has also contracted Microsoft to supply the Office 2007 suite and Student software, while Adobe is supplying its Web Standard package with Dreamweaver, Flash, Captivate, Acrobat, Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. A slew of other educational freeware apps is also included.

The Wireless – Untethered links are essential to allow students to freely roam around the school, but stay connected. 802.11G simply did not cut it. 54MBit/s (theoretical) per access point was nowhere near the bandwidth needed to cater for class sizes up to 30. Though still not ratified as a standard, 802.11N was selected because of its bandwidth and range. But NSWDET did not skimp on access points – they would install one in every single classroom and learning space throughout each school. Theoretically providing 300Mbit/s each, the intention is to ensure that each netbook in a class is guaranteed a minimum 2MBit/s link to the school’s network. In practise, with 30 students in a class, that limit should be closer to 5.  Of course, these are no ordinary Wireless Access Points – this is a managed wireless solution using an Aruba controller to provide load-balancing, free-roaming, WPA2+PSK security and monitoring of the air. The IBM-supplied Aruba solution offers a central management point that is critical for providing effective and reliable wireless connections to, in many cases, several hundred netbooks simultaneously. Furthermore, this solution is totally scalable – well beyond the needs of any school in NSW.

The ceiling-mounted Aruba 802.11N WAP with Power over Ethernet

The Aruba Wireless Controller and HP Layer 3 Head-end Switch

The Parallel Network – With close to 500 high schools and no previous concrete standard for local area network cabling, NSWDET quickly discovered that existing school networks ranged from simple teacher-strung cables around rooms to high-tech, gigabit-standard structured cabling solutions with all possible permutations in between. Installing a brand new well-designed wireless solution and bolting it onto these existing school networks was never going to be workable nor supportable. The radical decision to leave the existing school network in situ and build the wireless on a parallel network using fibre backbones meant duplicating cabinets in each building, but also meant that the wireless network was predictable, supportable and provided no impact on the school’s existing local area network.

The wireless campus distributor on left, the school’s campus distributor on right. Two separate networks with a single gateway out of the school, all managed by the HP head-end switch on the left.

The Distributed Infrastructure Platform Server – The “DIP” server installed in each high school provides read-only Active-Directory authentication for students and staff as well as DHCP services and local mirrored data storage for each user. NSWDET’s directory contains some 1.5 million user accounts covering school and TAFE students, teachers and State and Regional Office staff. All users have authenticated internet access with varying levels of filters based on grade for students and user level for staff. The 45 terabytes of Internet traffic (as at July 2009) that comes into NSWDET every month and is distributed to close to 3,000 sites across the state, demands reliable network infrastructure. The selected wireless solution complements the existing NSWDET Wide Area Network nicely.

The IBM DIP Server and UPS

Resource Management Utility – How do you manage 250,000 laptops, their serial numbers, who they are allocated to, what happens to them when they are damaged or fail, or when they are stolen or lost? RMU is an amazing product which links the NSWDET active directory with a powerful asset management database and Absolute Software’s Computrace laptop security solution. As soon as a brand new Lenovo is received in a school, RMU knows about it. When it is turned on and configured, RMU automatically updates its status. When a student authenticates for the first time, that laptop becomes theirs – no-one else can authenticate to it and use it and RMU allocates it to them. If the student reports it stolen, the laptop’s status in RMU is changed to lost/stolen and as soon as anyone tries to use it and connect to the internet, Computrace will kick into action, killing it. And Computrace’s self-healing ability will ensure it continues to lock-out the laptop, even if the hard drive is reimaged or even replaced.

Technically, the New South Wales Department of Education and Training’s interpretation of Kevin Rudd’s bold plan is cutting edge. As of this writing, Year 9 students at the first four high schools have received their laptops, along with 30% of all high school teachers in the state. Technically, this solution will work, providing a robust and manageable 1:1 digital learning platform for 200,000 high school students in one single education system. It begs the question – Is this technically the best 1:1 rollout anywhere in the world?  New South Wales Public Education – Take a bow.

Teachers and Students – the ball’s in your court. Let’s take this excellent Digital base and mount the best Education Revolution we can!

Now I don’t run a school and I’m not even a teacher, but here’s what I’d do with the laptops and how I’d decide which teachers get them.

1. Allocate ALL but two or three to specific teachers (i.e. exclusive individual use, NOT shared).  The two or three are the only ones shared. If you allocate most of your laptops to be shared then you are wasting a major opportunity because part-time or infrequent access is not the way to develop skills in any of your staff.
2. At least one laptop per faculty, but depends on how many you get and staffing numbers. All departments in your school must understand they have a part to play from day one.
3. As principal, I would email all my staff (I wouldn’t tell them I was emailing though), requesting expressions of interest for exclusive use of a laptop:
           – How would you use it?
           – What would you hope to achieve?
           – How will you commit to sharing what you’ve learned?
4. I would judge each application on merit as well as how long it took to get back via email/follow-up.  I would want keen existing-ICT users only to apply. There is little point giving a T1 laptop to a beginner.  Sure, they might slowly develop their own skills, but they’ll offer little to the rest of their colleagues.  We need educational-technologists to blaze the trail for everyone else to follow.

By doing it this way instead of just randomly handing them out, I would avoid complaints of favouritism, seniority or any other non-merit based process.  All teachers would have the same opportunity to apply for a laptop, and getting one in the T1 round is clearly seen is a privilege that comes with expectations that:

1. You would commit to developing your own skills with the laptop
2. You would develop educational programs to use with the laptops in class
3. You would share what you’ve discovered.

If you can’t guarantee these three things from the teachers you hand them out to, then you shouldn’t be handing a T1 Laptop out to them.

What do you think? How is your school handling T1? Will it work?

Image by Tragicomedio

So what is “Lifelong Learning” anyway? According to some, it’s:

“the idea that learning can and does occur beyond the formal structure of an educational institution and occurs throughout one’s lifetime.”

OK, that’s a pretty broad statement and is interpreted by some teachers as “life experience” or “work experience“.  Experience is what counts according to many teachers. Even promotions within the teaching faculty are based more often than not on experience or “seniority”.

Unfortunately in the 21st Century, “experience” alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. Knowledge learned over many years or even decades of practise is great for perpetuating past practises, but does nothing for promoting change. And it does little to assist with the implementation of new technologies in an ever-changing world.

I prefer the definition of Lifelong Learning as:

“The concept of continuous personal development through personal (self-actualized) learning.”

Lifelong Learning is a personal thing.  It’s individuals taking responsibility for their own learning and development beyond the formal education of their youth. Lifelong Learning is not the responsibility of employers. The world is changing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

In a world that more and more operates on efficiency through understaffing, our daily grind leaves little room for individuals to indulge in their own continuing education.  Clearly, Lifelong Learning is NOT a 9 to 5 job.

[this article was written on Sunday at 5:07pm]

image by Jeff Weston

That felt sooo good. Someone had to tell him and I’m glad it was me. He just stood there gobsmacked as I walked away. He thinks he’s so smart, but I showed him. My friends thought it was hilarious when I told them. “You can’t stop now!”, they said. “That bastard deserves it!”. “I’ve got his phone number from that time he sent me a text about his stupid homework assignment.”

It was only three little words. They weren’t even particularly well-chosen. Everyone was coming up with ideas for the next message. And the next. And the next. All sent from different phones. It was sweet. We could clearly see his face squirm everytime his phone beeped.

“What can we do next?”
“Let’s call him from the payphone.”
“We can take his picture. Make a Facebook for him.”
“Why don’t we do an I.M.-bombardment?”
“Does anyone know his MSN password?”
“Yeah, it’s ‘creedfan’.“
“What the?? He’s going down!”

I remember he didn’t come to school again for a few days. It was so peaceful. But then “Little Miss Try-Hard” decided to get in my way. I love my phone. I love I.M. I love my friends.

 - Of course, there are two-sides to every story. The U.K. Department of Children, Schools and Families tells the other side in this excellent video:

Cyberbullying: Laugh at it and you’re part of it.  Let’s all fight it together.

“My students tell me I’m their most-favourite teacher!”

Well that’s a good start. You incorporate the gadgets. You let the students use fun stuff that the other teachers seem to avoid. Of course you’d be popular.

“I have to spend a lot of my own time learning how to do this, but it’s really worth it!”

Technology changes very rapidly. When we started our ICT Info Days, it was all about installing applications and transferring files. Now it’s blogs, wikis and personal learning networks.

“Why is it my responsibility to show other teachers how to do this when I had to do it myself?”

I stopped to think about this. It’s a good point. But in the end, I decided it was a selfish point of view. Is school teaching a case of “every man or woman for themselves“? I certainly hope not. Especially not in high school where each student has multiple teachers. ICT-innovators are trailblazers. They need to forge the path for other teachers to follow. They need their fellow teachers to follow them. But not everyone can be Marco Polo. Consider yourself your school’s own Marco Polo. An adventurer discovering new worlds for the benefit of future travellers.

“It’s plainly obvious that when using technology my students are engaged and performing.”

There is definitely an attraction by students to information and communications technologies. 

“Continuity is the biggest problem I see for the students that leave my class at the end of the year.”

It almost begs the question, “why do this extra work at all?“. If you’re operating as an island when the most of the rest of the school is a technology desert, are you really helping? If your year 5 class is buzzing with effective interactive ICT activities, how will your students feel when they go to year 6 where the only time the computer gets turned on is when a student finishes their cloze passages stencil early so they can “play“?

“If I leave the school, it will probably be the case that the ICT programs I run will cease.”

This is one of the biggest tragedies that come out of working alone. While the teacher will probably leave (often with a promotion) to continue her ICT program elsewhere, the school they left goes right back to square one. We need a way to identify, package, promote, share and develop effective ICT teaching practices – not to keep them as one teacher’s secret weapon.

So, what do you think?

So these rashers were starting to really bother me, and I decided I’d better go to the chemist to get some oinkment. When the chemist asked me how I got the rashers, I told him, but he said my tale was a curly one and that I was telling porkies. But I persisted and it quickly became obvious that I was starting to boar him, so I left. It was then I realised that the flu hadn’t affected my urges because the policewoman that I passed as I left the shop was a Babe!

On my way home, I swore I could smell truffles, so I investigated a little in a mud hole. Fortunately this flu is not making me sweat. After some digging around I started to feel a little gilt, especially when the Rabbi walked past and totally avoided me. It was clearly time to sacrifice my goal to find the truffles as I didn’t want anyone to think I was being greedy. I mean it’s not fair to hog them all for myself. On the way back home, on the ground I found a pen and had a sudden feeling that I was already at home, when I wasn’t. Well, not really.

Back at home, I thought I’d better research this a bit. Jumped on the internet to find my email inbox full of messages. Unfortunately, it was all spam. Then I found an advice website by Mia Farrow. What an unfortunate name with this nasty virus going around. Anyway, fortunately I discovered the answer to all my problems. An oinkment made from salt, honey and maple syrup coated all over me and left on for a few weeks and I’ll be cured!