Aortic Dissection and Me – part one 13 September, 2011
Posted by paralleldivergence in aorta, dissection, education, health, Life, My Thoughts, surgery.5 comments
IT WAS November 1999. My then 72 year old father suffered from what he thought was heatstroke after a long day in the sun with friends at a picnic. He collapsed for a short while and complained that he couldn’t see, but after a short rest he felt well enough to drive home. Upon arrival, he told my mother he wasn’t feeling well and wanted to lie down. My mother took one look at him and told him he had to go to the doctor and called my sister over. My mother and sister saved his life with their actions.
School Sign War 19 April, 2011
Posted by paralleldivergence in funny photos, Life, My Thoughts.Tags: funny, school
2 comments
Competition begins even at the earliest stages of life.
As inspired by the Church Sign War.
Thank God for Tim Minchin. 9 April, 2011
Posted by paralleldivergence in God, Humor, Life, My Thoughts, psychics, Religion, Resolutions.Tags: don miguel ruiz, Life, philosophy, tim minchin
8 comments
…and Don Miguel Ruiz. I’ve now been living my life for many years by following Ruiz’s Four Agreements. First published in 1997, this book helped me to reinforce the logic and way of thinking I’d been developing through my own maturity and put it into four simple concepts that I could follow for life.
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.
Well May We Say “Advance Australia Fair” 24 June, 2010
Posted by paralleldivergence in elections, Internet, My Thoughts, Politics, voting.Tags: Australia, gillard, labor party, leadership, rudd, spill
10 comments
…because NOTHING will advance Julia Gillard. As the Australian Labor Party prepares to vote in the country’s first ever female prime minister, I’m waiting for Kevin Rudd to come out with a quotation for the history books, but I doubt he’ll be echoing Gough Whitlam’s infamous and nonsensical quote from his dismissal in 1975.
Stop Phishing: Websites and Users Working Together 5 February, 2010
Posted by paralleldivergence in Internet, Life, My Thoughts, passwords, security.Tags: cyber-crime, identity fraud, phishing
7 comments
PHISHING is a worldwide problem. Unscrupulous cyber-criminals, unsuspecting Internet users and apathetic web-service providers: It’s a volatile mix that will always benefit the crook. Hell, if the user is stupid enough to click on a link in an email message and gladly provide their user account details, they deserve what they get!
image courtesy of Financial Services Technology
How many light bulbs does it take to change teaching? 3 January, 2010
Posted by paralleldivergence in education, ICT in Education, Internet, My Thoughts, technology.Tags: DER, Digital Education Revolution, edtech, ICT in Education
54 comments
Everyday my email inbox alerts me to at least one teacher who has become a new follower on Twitter. Now while I’m definitely not the best ed-tech guy in Twitterland to follow, I like to think that for each of those emails, a light bulb has switched on somewhere and a teacher is working to change, or at least keep up with the change that’s continually going on all around them.
photo courtesy of purplemattfish
If God Was an Alien… 7 November, 2009
Posted by paralleldivergence in astronomy, Earth, God, Hubble, My Thoughts, Religion.Tags: atheism, Religion, space
19 comments
The Parallel Divergence blog has been around for over three years now with sporadic articles being posted covering a wide range of topics, all carefully crafted with the intention of making the reader think, question and respond. I’ve enjoyed the large number of comments that most of my articles attract and I’ve learned from people who both share and completely oppose my various points of view. But recently, a reader comment was posted that grabbed me totally.
All We Are is Dust in the Wind 25 September, 2009
Posted by paralleldivergence in Earth, Geology, God, Life, My Thoughts, NSW, shock.Tags: dust, storm, sydney, video, weather
6 comments
SEPTEMBER 23, 2009: The Australian Outback visits Sydney – the nation’s largest city. It was Nature reminding Man that it cannot be taken for granted and will not be ignored.
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.
You Better Start Swimmin’ or You’ll Sink Like a Stone 4 September, 2009
Posted by paralleldivergence in education, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts, Politics, technology.Tags: Digital Education Revolution, education, edutech, ICT in Education, iwbnet09, learning
21 comments
Today I “attended” an educational technologies conference. Well sort of. I wasn’t there, but then again, I was. IWBnet’s “Leading a Digital School” conference was on at the Gold Coast in sunny Queensland and while I was unable to be a delegate at the venue, I had the next best thing. Many of the delegates who were there, were happy to instantly share their experience with the rest of the world via Twitter.
Relive the IWBnet Conference via Visible Tweets
Is this Technically the Best 1:1 Rollout in the World? 20 August, 2009
Posted by paralleldivergence in education, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts, NSW, technology, windows.Tags: 1:1, Digital Education Revolution, education, laptops, Lenovo, NSWDET, students
15 comments
October 20, 2007 – Australian Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd is on the election campaign trail making a promise that made state governments, educational authorities and teachers shudder in their boots. While holding up a laptop which he referred to as “the toolbox of the 21st Century“, he promised to provide a computer to every high school student from grades 9 through 12. Then he became Prime Minister and the pressure was really on, because while he would provide the funding, the Federal Government does not control school education and would not be responsible for implementation – the individuals states would.
I, Cyberbully. 29 May, 2009
Posted by paralleldivergence in education, hell, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts, pranks.Tags: cyberbullying, Life, school, social networking, students
5 comments
I’m not sure I quite remember when and how it started. He was just another boy in my class. But it seemed that everything he did just grated on me. No, I don’t want to listen to your music. Hell, that’s a stupid haircut. Put your hand down and shutup for god’s sake. I’m gonna say something to him.
image by Jeff Weston
What ICT Teachers Think… 20 May, 2009
Posted by paralleldivergence in education, ICT in Education, Internet, My Thoughts.Tags: computers, education revolution, ICT in Education, teaching
10 comments
EVERY School Term for the past ten years, in conjunction with my team, I have been running Information Days for school ICT Coordinators. Over 250 teachers representing over 200 public schools consistently come to find out the latest information relating to ICT in school education in our little part of the world. Now while I’m usually the one passing the latest news onto them, I often like to ask them what their point of view is – that is, being a school educator that uses ICT in the classroom, or in other words, being a minority within the teaching faculty. Here’s what some of them have told me.
Australia’s Digital Education Revolution? 1 June, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in Brad & Phil, children, education, ICT in Education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts.Tags: Australia, Digital Education Revolution, ICT in Education
17 comments
NOT LONG after Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party was whisked into power in Australia after 12 years of conservative government, there were immediate and obvious differences that appeared. Rudd took no traditional “honeymoon” period, instead preferring to get straight to work on delivering his pre-election promises. One of these being the $1.2 billion “Digital Education Revolution“.
Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging 12 April, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in blogging, Brad & Phil, children, education, Internet, Life, My Thoughts.Tags: blogs, education, Life, students, teachers, Web 2.0
19 comments
MANY of our students leave school in the afternoon and go straight on-line as soon as they get home. They immediately start chatting with their friends on MSN, often holding down multiple conversations at the same time, seamlessly changing subjects and maintaining discussion threads as they swap from one chat window to the next. Their typing speed continually improves and in just one on-line session, they might type more text than they handwrite during their lessons at school in a whole day.
Heath Ledger: Dead at 28 23 January, 2008
Posted by paralleldivergence in heath ledger, Life, Movies, My Thoughts, shock.10 comments
January 22 2008: What a shocking, tragic waste. An all too stunning but brief spectacle – like a meteorite that flashes across the midnight sky. At only 28 years of age, a young man in the prime of his emerging career is dead. What can you say? What can anyone say?
Parallel Divergence 