This is by far the best summary of the future of education that I’ve seen. I agree with nearly everything said here, and both as an academic and as a librarian, we need to listen and act quickly if we hope to have any relevance in 20 years.
IMG_7478.JPG, originally uploaded by griffey.
RSV, you are the bane of our existence.
Eliza’s RSV turned into a double ear infection plus sinus infection so bad that she has yellow gunk pouring out of her eyes. Yay! The fun continues.
Meanwhile, she is loving the piano Daddy got her. As much as she likes to wear sunglasses and anything she can put around her neck (like a boa), we call her our little Elton John.
My very good friend Meredith just won the LITA Library Hi Tech award for 2009! Woot! So very well deserved!
I considered putting really embarrassing pictures of her up with this post, but decided not to tarnish her win. 🙂 Congrats, Mer!!!
Eliza is now refusing to be carried, pushed around in a grocery cart, or anything of the sort. She can walk and so she wants to walk. Everywhere. All the time.
In the store, she started asking, “Mommy…out? Walk? Out? Walk?” So we let her lead me around, looking at all the fun things on the shelves. Her favorite is cat and dog food (with pictures of the animals on them) and bottles of shampoo and body wash that she carries around and then puts back when we ask her to do so. She LOVES leading me and Jason by the hand. If it’s too cold to go outside, we just go laps around the house, Eliza in the lead, yelling “walk! walk! walk! walk!” as we go.
Eliza’s sickness continues. With her, a sick day is one long rollercoaster. She feels ok, then plays, gets tired, gets grumpy, then wants to rest. You hold her for awhile, then she’s rested, and feels ok, and wants to play.
Rinse, repeat.
Since we’re not taking her out this weekend, the day became a “what can we play with” day. She’s bored out of her mind with her regular toys, so today we played with balloons. She seemed mildly interested.
Eliza was having a banner week at daycare, practicing for her transition (Monday) to the toddler room. She loves it over with the “big kids,” and seemed to be extremely happy with the idea of moving up.
Then, bam! Sick yet again. I think she had three healthy days? Maybe four. Now she’s got a horrible cough, runny nose, and is very contagious.
We are sooooo over this whole winter thing.
While I have been far too quiet here on PatRec, I have been writing bits and pieces elsewhere. I just had a post go up over on ALA TechSource on Netbooks. Go take a look!
I’m also trying to catch up from being behind on my upcoming book on Mobile Technology and Libraries. So if PatRec remains a little quiet for the next couple of months, well…that’s why. 🙂
Hobbies: pretending to feed people, pets, stuffed animals, dolls, even pictures of people in books; pretending to cook; playing on playgrounds; looking at books and magazines; pretending to write; putting stickers on paper; learning new words; looking at photos of people she knows; talking to Pop and Nana on the phone
Favorite toys: bowl/spoon combo; pens, pencils, crayons; shape sorter; Little People school bus; anything she’s not supposed to play with (like mommy’s underwear and the toilet scrubbing brush)
Favorite books: her newest one by Matthew Van Fleet (Cats); any book that has Elmo in it; any book with animals
Favorite foods: cheese of any kind; yogurt; bananas; chicken noodle soup; mandarin oranges
Favorite music: she is currently in an Elvis Costello phrase and demands to hear the song “Radio Radio” at least once a day; also enjoys anything by Laurie Berkner (from Jack’s Big Music Show on Noggin)
Just a quick note to follow up on my previous post about Pseudoscience and vaccines. While I’m certainly not going to suggest that we take our medical advice from our legal system, it looks like the latter at least got the former right this time.
Special court rejects autism-vaccine theory
The three federal judges who convincingly rejected the theory that vaccines cause autism delivered a devastating blow to crank science today. The battle will go on in the blogs and in the courts. But the most important arena has always been the space between the ears of parents who are deciding whether it’s safe to vaccinate their kids. This decision could do a heap of good by stemming the tide of vaccine-shunning that has led to outbreaks of preventable disease.
…“Petitioners’ theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive,” wrote Special Master Denise Vowell in the case of Colten Snyder v. HHS. “To conclude that Colten’s condition was the result of his MMR vaccine, an objective observer would have to emulate Lewis Carroll’s White Queen and be able to believe six impossible (or at least highly improbable) things before breakfast.”
While I don’t think for a moment that this will stop the crank beliefs revolving around autism and vaccinations (science is still not our friend in the US; witness that in a recent poll only 4 in 10 American’s say that they believe in the Theory of Evolution, a fact that makes me want to claw my own eyes out) it does make me happy that the legal system won’t be participating in further arguments around this (non-)controversy.
She learns to say new words almost every day. This week, she added “boots” and “apple” to her vocabulary, as well as another classmate’s name, Addy. She can also say “bite,” when she wants a bite of something, which I forgot to put in the list below. Yesterday, she repeated “hummus” when I asked her if she wanted it for dinner, and she also repeated every single syllable of the phrase “cracker with cheese.” No kidding. Her best “sentence” to date has been: “Cookie …más (more in Spanish)…peese (please)”? She said this on her own, with no prompting.
The amazing thing she did yesterday: we were looking at a book, she pointed to a picture of a man, and I told her “farmer.” She immediately started singing “e-i-e-i-oh” (from the song “Old McDonald”).
Yet another story: Indiana (our dog) was in Eliza’s way the other day and I said, “Indy, go lie down. Go to bed.” Eliza looked at Indy and said “Night night!”
This kid blows my mind. She is not quite 14 months old.
