I’ve been working out various ways of printing a paragraph of Anaïs Nin’s diary and finally settled on a tiny 4-page book. Which means that I needed to again get my head around the geography of imposition. Transforming physical spaces in my mind is not a strong suit for me, so this took a lot of experimenting, but I finally figured it out:

This is set up for “work and turn” printing, meaning that I’ve set all four pages to be printed at once, set up so that pages 1 and 4 for one copy of the book, and pages 2 and 3 for another copy are printed, and then the paper is turned over and printing on the other side, completing each copy of the book with the other set of pages.

I’ve still got some work to do fixing everything in place for printing so that everything ends up where it should, but I made good progress today, and might be ready for printing this afternoon.

I’ve been driving around a Nokia Lumia 800 phone for the last year. Given that everyone else I know carries either an iPhone (80%) or an Android phone (15%) or no phone at all (5%), you might think this marks me as a contrarian. And it does. But it’s actually more about being cheap: Nokia sent me the phone because, through a series of happenstances, I am nominally a “Nokia developer,” and they were actively seeding devices to developers last year, presumably in an effort to encourage Windows Phone app development.

So, despite the many little frustrations of the phone (sub-par camera, jangly scrolling, etc.), I’ve held onto it because it’s just good enough to get by with. That, and I have a soft spot in my heart for it’s typographic user interface, which I admire for its moxie and, of course, for its typographicness.

Given all this, I was excited to read this morning that a bold new update to the phone, Windows Phone 7.8. The word came via the Nokia Conversations blog, with its expected snazzy video, a video that proudly proclaimed Your Update is Waiting For You / Get it and Enjoy!

Great. Except that my update wasn’t waiting for me when I checked. And, reading the fine print at the bottom of that blog post, I found why:

Delivery of the update is operator dependent, meaning you will receive a notification in the coming weeks if you have an unlocked phone or if your operator has approved the update. If you don’t receive the update notification within the next three weeks, please contact your operator for more information.

I reconciled myself to waiting. And then I remembered that the last time an update for Windows Phone was released, there was a hack, dubbed “the cable trick” that was reported to allow the anxious to update their phones sooner than later by fooling the Zune software into thinking their Lumia’s time had come. I decided to give it a try, which required the following comedically bizarre series of steps:

1. Start Windows XP in Parallels on my MacBook Air.
2. Try to install the Zune software.
3. Find out I can’t install the Zune software until I update Windows XP to Service Pack 3.
4. Try to update to Windows XP Service Pack 3, but am told I don’t have enough disk space.
5. Shut down Windows XP, increase the size of the virtual hard drive by a few GB and start up again.
6. Insatll Windows XP Service Pack 3.
7. Install the Zune software.
8. Check Zune for an update for my Lumia – nothing found.
9. Try the cable trick: start checking for an update in Zune software, then, after a few seconds, turn off the wifi on my MacBook Air. No luck: no update found.
10. Try again. And again. And again. Each time waiting a few seconds more or less.
11. Success! Zune tells me an update is found.
12. Install the update: wait for it to download, install, and for the phone to restart.
13. Find, despite the update, my phone is still Windows Phone 7.5.
14. Repeated the entire process; Zune reported another update. Installed it. Still at Windows Phone 7.5.
15. Repeated the entire process; Zune reported another update. Installed it. Presto! Now I have a Windows Phone 7.8 Lumia.

Eileen Higginbotham, Resource Teacher at Prince Street Elementary, has been doing very interesting work at the school with dogs and children, and she’s started to write about this “Prince Street Puppy Project” on a new blog. Eileen’s dogs are very much a part of Oliver’s school day, and have been for several years; it’s fascinating to watch how these animals have become an important part of the school. Here’s a sample:

A few weeks back, I was with a couple of the older girls who train and I wanted KaBoom to do the leg weaving that Kannon does.  It was easy to figure out how to get her to run through the legs but having her come around to start back through the legs was just not something I could get.  The girls watched me try and watched me fail a couple of times.  Then I stopped and asked them for ideas.  We knew what we wanted the behavior to look like but we just weren’t being clear enough for KaBoom to get it.  One of the girls stepped forward, saying she had an idea.  We watched her work and, just by changing some body movements, she got the weave!!  JACKPOT!!  Then, she taught the moves to us. Soon after that, we all had a reliable weave.  Now, we have to start stringing them together!!

I’ve been thinking a lot about technology in education over the past several years prompted, in part, by [Oliver]’s experiences as a public school student, and, in part, by my work on behalf of the PEI Home and School Federation on the technology file. I have become convinced that, despite having smart, imaginative people throughout the system, we are missing tremendous opportunities to leverage education technology, not only in the practical application of hardware and software tools, but as an overarching educational philosophy that sees Prince Edward Island as a member of a global community.

I was fortunate to encounter JP Rangaswami at reboot several years ago, and since then his thinking on privacy, technology and education has been a great influence on me. A recent post of his, Singin’ In The Rain, struck a chord with me, and summed up my own feelings about what he calls the “digital revolution” more succinctly than I could myself:

The ability to observe. The ability to imitate. The ability to try it out for yourself. The ability to get quick feedback. Four critical requirements for learning.

We’re in the midst of a digital revolution. Everything that happens can be observed by more people than has ever been possible before. The internet is a copy machine, the ability to share and to imitate has never been cheaper. Tools continue to be invented to make it possible for all of us to be able to try more things for ourselves than we could ever do before.

This digital revolution is a learning revolution. As long as we don’t waste it. Waste happens when we constrain the ability to observe, to imitate, to try out, to get feedback. Particularly when we have the opportunity to make it all affordable, ubiquitous.

Education drives the solution to so many of our perceived problems. Education is so incredibly accelerated, assisted, augmented by digital infrastructure. If we let it.

We who are here on earth today can make a difference to that earth by ensuring that we don’t waste this incredible opportunity, of using digital infrastructure to enfranchise everyone, to provide the opportunity for all to learn.

Since becoming a digital citizen — and I’ve been one for more of my life than almost anyone — I’ve been as much a skeptic and contrarian about the societal ramifications of digital technology, but when I think about the trajectory of my own life, and what digital technology has allowed me to be, to do, to express, to participate, to engage, I can’t help but agreeing with JP.

I’ve come to believe that the challenges standing in the way of this transformation are not money nor resources, for, with motiviation and creativity, these are easily obtained or obviated: what’s standing in our way is fear and ignorance.

Those with the power to unleash the digital revolution, to take the chains off and allow us to truly explore its potential and its boundaries, are not themselves digital citizens, and so they tend to regard education technology, at worst, as an extension of typing class, and, at best, as a non-essential supplement to the outdated core education metaphors.

I go to meetings of bureaucrats and educators, well-meaning, smart people all, and come away flummoxed by how discussions get consumed with bureaucratic minutiae, with trying to keep the Internet genie in the bottle, and with a benign resignation toward lack of funding and license on a political level.

I truly believe, in my heart of hearts, that marginal jurisdictions like Prince Edward Island have the chance to most leverage the positive potential a digital revolution can beget. We have the raw materials — people, technologies, connections to networks. What we lack is determination, leadership, and the imagination and courage to look beyond our own fears of change and power rebalancing to the positive outcome that lies ahead.

Like JP says, If we let it.

I borrowed the third volume of Anaïs Nin’s diaries, on interlibrary loan, from the public library; it covers the period 1939 to 1944 in New York City, a period where, in part, she and Gonzalo Moré ran a print shop. Early in the book is this passage about confronting social life in New York City after years in Paris; it seemed only appropriate to give a go and print the passage on my letterpress.

Here’s an early draft pulled from the roughly-set type; still pondering the best way to justify this before printing.

The paragraph continues:

The faces reveal no interest, no responsiveness.

Unfortunately, in the 24 pt. Futura I’ve set this in, I needed 23 lower-case letter o and I only had 22. So I had to stop short. Perhaps I’ll set that sentence later, in an uninteresting nonresponsive colour.