Are we fast enough yet?
Yesterday morning I participated in this intense school board review meeting, chaired by our intense (“talk softly but carry a zinger of a mind”) district superintendant. I found it interesting that “sustainability” was a key theme which recurred throughout the morning. At one point, the district super noted that technology doesn’t always help us into sustainable situations — remember, he’s talking to a technology-based distance education school, right? He observed (and I’m paraphrasing) that when it first became widely available, email was too often a portal for downright addictive behaviours, creating this sense that one was obliged to respond right away, and that communication had to be fast. Yet how sustainable is that, he asked, given that educators also need time to think, plan, mull things over? How sustainable is the larger project if one is constantly distracted by demands that technology delivers faster and faster?
Speaking of faster faster faster, I’m way behind in everything, it seems. Hey, I’m now a director on my neighbourhood association board — something else to distract me. Oh, and everyone in that group has email of course, which means my confusion is bound to multiply and mount even further…
There are a couple of things I’d like to get to this week: blog about William Leiss’s second seminar at PaCTaC (ctheory has put the Life in the Fast Lane chapter online — you’ll find a link to the video of both seminars there, too); and write a letter to the BC Minister of Education with cc to various other people in the immediate provincial educational system regarding the absence of teaching about the Shoah — it really is the case that it’s not taught until grade 12 History, which incidentally is an elective. Too many evenings get eaten up by meetings lately, which really cuts into the only time I have for blogging, though. My days are contually shot, that’s not new, alas.
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