Category Archives: Personal

DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge: Helping kids at the cost of a little dignity.

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At Uncertain Principles, Chad is motivating his readers to donate to his DonorsChoose challenge by offering a big reward:

Last year, I famously got $6,000 in contributions by offering to dance like a monkey, but I’m not sure what would follow that. So,

What should I offer to do if I manage to reach the overall challenge goal of several thousand dollars in total contributions?

I’m obviously not going to do anything illegal or immoral, but I’m willing to sacrifice a little dignity for a good cause, as you can see at the link above. So, what can I offer to do that would get you to donate money to help school kids through DonorsChoose?

It looks like the discussion of Chad’s big reward is still ongoing. (I’m rooting for a recreation of a great dispute in physics with hand puppets.)
But Chad is not the only one with a DonorsChoose challenge to fund, nor is he the only one willing to put his dignity on the line to help public school students get the resources and experiences they need. So let’s talk about what you’d like me to do.

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DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge: Did I mention fabulous prizes?

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You already know that we’re working with DonorsChoose to raise some money for public school teachers who are trying to give their students the engaging educational experiences they deserve (and who, owing to dismal state and local budgets, need our help more than ever). You also know that our benevolent overlords at Seed will be randomly selecting some donors to receive nifty prizes (details about this to be posted as soon as I get them).
Of course, helping public school teachers deliver the education their students deserve is it’s own reward, but that doesn’t mean you might not want a little something to recognize your donation. So, as I did last year, I’m going sweeten the deal by offering some incentive to everyone who donates to my challenge.
Because money seems to be tight for almost everyone, I’ve knocked down the level of some of the donations needed to get particular thank-you swag, and I’ve added a “crafty” new incentive this time around. Here’s what you can get if you donate to my challenge:

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Dialogue, not debate.

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At the end of last week, I made a quick trip to UCLA to visit with some researchers who, despite having been targets of violence and intimidation, are looking for ways to engage with the public about research with animals. I was really struck by their seriousness about engaging folks on “the other side”, rather than just hunkering down to their research and hoping to be left alone.
The big thing we talked about was the need to shift the terms of engagement.

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A question for the infectious disease and public health folks.

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I ended up spending a significant portion of the last several days down with something flu-like. (It included a fever and the attendant aches, chills, and sweats, as well as the upper respiratory drowning-in-my-own-mucus symptoms.)
I did not drag my ailing butt out of bed to go to the doctor and have my flu-like thing characterized. (In part, this is because I knew it would pass in a few days. In part, it was because I managed to tweak a muscle in my right side by sneezing hard and thus was unable to straighten up or be as mobile as I normally am. Someday, I swear, I am going to figure out how to sneeze more ergonomically.)
As such, I don’t know if what I had was the cool new H1N1 flu that’s been going around locally or something else.
So, here’s the question for those more plugged into public health than I am: Should I still get the novel H1N1 vaccine? (Thanks to ERV for pointing out in the comments that the “novel” is important in distinguishing the H1N1 virus that causes seasonal flu from the H1N1 virus causing the *new* swine flu.)

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Great moments in parent-teacher relations: back to school edition.

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Dr. Free-Ride’s better half went to the Free-Ride offspring’s school for Back to School Night earlier this week. (I stayed at home with the sprogs to oversee dinner and baths.)
Dr. Free-Ride’s better half reported back that the younger Free-Ride offspring’s third grade teacher “doesn’t believe in too much homework”. (“She doesn’t believe it’s possible to assign too much homework?” I asked cautiously. “No, she doesn’t believe an excess of homework is a good thing,” my better half replied.)
And, she supported her stance with a page she distributed to parents summarizing recent educational research on the question of homework and student achievement.
I think we’re going to like this teacher.

To those who think it’s appropriate to post non-specific death threats in comments on Friday Sprog Blogs.

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First off, I moderate all my comments. Mostly it’s to eliminate comment spam, but it also means the rare death threat is not going to post without me approving it.
Second of all, why would you think you have the evidential basis to discern the religious convictions (or lack thereof) of either this blogger or her offspring? Even if you did, why would that be germane to a discussion of a classroom snake? And why, in any case, would it make you feel justified in asserting “you have forfeit your life”?
Obviously, you feel like you have an important message to convey to someone. I would like to suggest that I am not the right audience for that message (and that the readers of the Friday Sprog Blogging feature probably aren’t, either). And, I’m disinclined to let you hijack my soapbox to convey it.
You may have better luck getting your message out by way of a blog of your very own. You can get one for free from Blogger and WordPress.

Thoughts on university service.

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Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad ponders faculty “service” in higher education. For those outside the ivy-covered bubble of academe, “service” usually means “committee work” or something like it.
The usual concern is that, although committees are necessary to accomplish significant bits of the work of a college or university, no one likes serving on them and every faculty member has some task that would be a better use of his or her time than being on a committee. And, because “service” is frequently a piece of the faculty member’s job performance that is regularly evaluated (for retention, tenure, and promotion decisions, for example), faculty members are on the lookout for “easy” committees with which to pad the service section of their CVs.
Chad suggests that these easy service options — and maybe some of the hard ones, too — could be a consequence of superfluous committees:

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An open letter to the powers that control our classrooms.

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To whom it may concern,
I can deal with the third story classrooms, really I can. Running up and down stairs to get to and from class helps give me the exercise I wouldn’t get otherwise because I’m grading papers instead of hitting the gym.
And, I can live with the back-to-back class meetings in third story classrooms located in different buildings across campus from each other. That’s just more physical exercise, plus a chance to live by my resolution not to view other people primarily as obstacles. I appreciate the opportunity for personal growth.
I even understand the wisdom of filling every seat in the classroom, from a resource utilization point of view.
But, do you know what would be nice?

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