Happy New Year!!! Let us work together to make this a better year for the bottom half of society which many are rapidly falling into....making it more like the bottom three fourths of society. It all reminds me how my dad once told me...there is not a real middle class in america...most workers are a pencil eraser away from poverty. There is more and more eraser dust on the social scene!

It has been a month since I last wrote anything here. I have become a bit dispirited as I try to figure out the next stage in my life. This morning I came across a tweet from @cpohanka alerting me to an educamp-in-va taking place in Fredricksburg VA and so I went to the Wiki for the event. The best part about the event is that is seemed like an un-conference and it was free. My Edupunk juices started to flow and I decided to post something on the event wiki. It all stemmed for a Will Richardson list that follows. Here is what I wrote.

Will’s World/

• Create your own education.
• Find problems and solve them.
• Be unique.
• Make beautiful, useful stuff.
• Build a network of really smart people who you will never meet.
• Be indispensable.
• Do real work that changes the world.
• Have a brand.
• Share widely and safely.
• Collaborate.
• Add value.
• Be a voracious learner.
• Tread softly but boldly.
• Edit the world.

You should learn about what you want to learn about, or need to learn about. I believe that means that you should create your own learning or education. Now how do we help students to do that in school. It really is not that hard conceptually, it is just hard work. It is a teachers responsibility to find out what their students are interested in before they even begin to develop objectives for what a course it about. A great teacher discovers what their students are interested in and somehow connects those interests to the subject. Making the connection is what teaching is. It is helping the fish to understand the water. You should never teach Algebra I or American History for instance the same way. Everything should be different every year because THE STUDENTS are different every year. Experience is a collection of learning and dealing with a changing environment. As to the how to fly a plane example, imagine if the student doesn’t want to be there, has no interest in flying planes, and is forced to be then until he/she is 16? -Norman Constantine

The only thing we really need to do in “schools” is teaching human beings to understand the code of communication and memory...be that the alphabet or or movie making or whatever. Teach children to read and discover what they want to know about, then turn them loose and be there to pick them up when they fall. READ READ READ. A human being connected to the Internet can discover the sum total of what human beings know and remember. They do not need “school”, they only need the ability to “break the code”.Norman Constantine

Please comment on these ideas. I am going to try and expand on them in future blog posts next week. Help me out.

Norm at Nite Goes Premium

NormAtNite is back in prime time. I did my first premium show last nite and it was a lot fun. We discussed everything (Cult and me) from jobs to exactly what happened to John Corzine's company with their big bet on the European debt default.You can listen to the whole show down in the Blogtalk app on the right of the page or go to this link NormAtNite in Prime Time.

I walked two miles today and weighed in at 123,55 kg, I feel really good about that. I will keep it up!

I am taking NormAtNite premium for the November 1, 2011 show. I will expand to an hour and eventually to twice a week. By the way I weighed in at 124.85 kgs this morning so I continue to have a negative slope to the graph of my weight. Check out the ad for NormAtNite:

Tipped the scale at 126.85 kg this morning. Went up a bit. I will get back on the disciplined road today. Stay tuned for NormAtNite tonight at 11 PM. Open Mic today to end October.

I am very fat at this point and need to do something about it. I am going to try to lose weight and will report my total lbs every time I log in. I will try to make it as frequently as possible. Today I stepped off the scale at 280.1

Maybe The Apple Has a Worm

While we are lamenting the passing of Steve Jobs and the Occupy Wall Street Crowd is tweeting, texting, and using their Apple devices, maybe we should remember that Apple Computer (Steve Jobs) outsources 70% of its jobs and has no real record of corporate giving and discourages giving apps from the Apps Store. For all of the details, check out Why Occupy Wall Street Job Protesters Should Not Ignore Steve Jobs by Masuma Ahuja.