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I've never had a case for my Raspberry Pi because...well...I just haven't.

One of our schools recently purchased all kinds of STEM stuff and I've been spending some time learning how to use the 3D printers, drones, along with a bunch of Spheros. I've used the Spheros a bunch and while I've 3D printed in the past, I've not gone through the whole process by myself. Today was the day.

We have Flashforge Finder printers which, compared to others, are a breeze to use. They're compact, easy to maintain, and print well (with one exception, but I think the extruder is a little blocked). I grabbed a Thingiverse model for the sake of time and got started.

My biggest problem was using the wrong software. I grabbed Slic3r to do the print rendering because it's what I'd used in the past. But, for some reason, I couldn't get the print bed size to set correctly, so the prints were going off the edge. Then, I realize that Flashforge has their own slicer, and once I installed that, it was all good.

The bottom print file was up and off, no problem. The upper half of the shell caused me some issues because the print file had it oriented as if it were fully rendered.

I flipped it upside down and added a bigger print footprint and it was finally able to start running (after realizing an extruder was bad and changing machines).

Three hours later, I had two halves of a nice little case for the nice little computer.

Photo CC0 Public Domain by me

Photo CC0 Public Domain by me

This week, I co-taught an AP Biology class with one of our high school teachers. She was looking for a way to have students wrestle with the molecular structure of DNA, so I suggested a card sort activity.

[David Knuffke](https://twitter.com/davidknuffke) suggested the [Central Dogma sort from HHMI](https://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/central-dogma-card-activity), but they weren't quite at the point of replication/transcription/translation. I ended up modeling its structure for our molecular sort. [Here's the Google Doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pv-iCEkZT09xGStWe6AL21tnYwT5wWJATrCqNTCQA0k/edit?usp=sharing).

This sort worked well for the students because they had already spent some time reviewing 3' --> 5' structure as well as the purine/pyrimidine relationship. Most of their work had been with simple block models at this point and I wanted to stretch them to think about the atomic interactions. We started by handing out just the pictures and giving pairs of students about three minutes to discuss and sort together. Here are three samples:

Each group was able to explain their rationale to one another and to the class. There are similarities between groups 1 and 2. I _really_ loved that group 3 was almost the exact opposite of the first two groups, mainly to illustrate to the class that the _process of thinking_ is the critical piece to the exercise, not necessarily the 'right order.'

After groups felt good about their initial order, I handed the terms out and asked them to label each step. Connecting the visual to the language of DNA structure and introducing the idea of replication left us in a good spot for the day.

No matter how often I do card sorts, I never cease to be amazed at how _deep_ conversations get as students are putting cards in order. I think that's the challenge - getting a good set of images or graphics in place which promote those conversations without leading to a 'right answer,' especially in the AP context.

[The Google Doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pv-iCEkZT09xGStWe6AL21tnYwT5wWJATrCqNTCQA0k/edit?usp=sharing) with the cards and terms is is public, so feel free to grab it for your class if you're interested.

I've been playing around with building websites and self-teaching myself (is that redundant?) web development languages. I feel like I've crossed some kind of line in the last 18 months where I can identify a problem, conceptualize a web-based solution, and then build it much more easily than I could in the past. I know that skill comes from experience, but it's nice to reflect back on my learning and see growth.

I built mostly for myself at the start. I run a simple [static homepage](https://ohheybrian.com) and a few small pages (see links in the right sidebar) for some small Google Apps Add Ons that haven't seen much love lately (shame on me). I've also kicked off a couple of projects for the district that have seen some daylight.

Most of this has been totally private. I would cruise [GitHub](https://github.com) from time to time for [interesting](https://github.com/bennettscience/tweetmineR) [projects](https://github.com/bennettscience/TimelineJS3) [to play with](https://github.com/bennettscience/gifify), but never really contributed to any of the projects.

Without getting too deep, Git tracks all changes made to files by anyone working on a project. It's terrifyingly complex, especially when you work yourself into an unsolvable tangle, but it does make seeing changes to code really, really handy. GitHub takes all of this information and puts it into one nice place for people from all over the world to see and work on together.

Contributing to a project on GitHub felt like walking into a room with a bunch of geniuses and asking what I could help with.


Recently, I came across a really cool project called [Lychee](https://lycheeorg.github.io/) which is a self-hosted photo sharing site. It runs on any web server and gives you a nice, clean tool to upload, organize, and share photos. [I downloaded and got it running](https://photos.ohheybrian.com) after a couple days of [poking around](https://blog.ohheybrian.com/2018/11/forget-the-mac-mini-bring-on-the-raspberry/). While I was using it, I noticed a small error: toggling a setting didn't work because of a wrong function name. I was able to look at the code, find, and fix the error on my own site within about 20 minutes.

Then came the scary part - submitting a fix to the problem.

I had done this only once, and it ended with the owner saying, "Thanks but no," which was a bummer and a little embarrassing. I was about to submit some code that would be used in a real, live app that people downloaded and installed on their machines. My name would be attached to this particular fix (git tracks who changes what). I was worried that my fix would magically not work as soon as I posted it.

All of this fear was built up in the _perception_ of what community-based projects require. Most of the anxiety I felt was because of the image of this world being closed off to people who could speak the language or do things perfectly (sidebar: this is true, especially in the [tech sector](https://www.recode.net/2018/2/5/16972096/emily-chang-brotopia-book-bloomberg-technology-culture-silicon-valley-kara-swisher-decode-podcast), and GitHub isn't immune. More on that later.). But, things break. Problems need to be solved. And I'd just solved one that could help someone else. And anyone can submit fixes to code, so I decided to [give it a try](https://github.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee/pull/112).

Nothing scary happened. The site manager sent me a quick thanks and implemented the code.

I just had a small bugfix pull request merged into a real-life open source project, so that's cool.

—Brian E. Bennett (@bennettscience) November 22, 2018

I started looking through some of the other issues on this particular project and noticed one that I felt like I could help with, even if it was just exploring possibilities. Someone wanted to be able to tag photos with Creative Commons licenses using a menu, not just throwing tags into the `tag` field.

Long story short, this was a much bigger problem. There were easily six to ten non-trivial changes necessary to make this update happen. Over the last four days, I've worked hard to learn about the app's structure, the languages used to make the whole thing tick, and how to implement this feature without breaking the entire site. Today, [that feature was added](https://github.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee-front/pull/18) after some back and forth on code structure with the main author.

I'm a hobbyist. I don't plan on going into development full time because I like teaching too much. But there are definite things I learned through this weekend's project:

Last night, I got [a self-hosted photo sharing site](https://photos.ohheybrian.com) up and running on my raspberry pi 3. You can see more about that process [here](https://blog.ohheybrian.com/2018/11/forget-the-mac-mini-bring-on-the-raspberry/).

Putting it on the real, live Internet is scary. Securing a server is no small task, so I took some steps based on [these tips](https://serverfault.com/questions/212269/tips-for-securing-a-lamp-server) to make sure I don't royally get myself into trouble.

(I have a stinking feeling that posting this exposes vulnerability even more, but c'est la vie.)

To start: new user password. Easy to do using `sudo raspi-config` and going through the menus. It's big, it's unique and no, I'm not giving any hints.

As for updating the OS, I have a cron job which runs as root to update and reboot every couple of days. Lychee is [active on GitHub](https://github.com/lycheeorg/lychee) and I've starred it so I'll get updates with releases, etc. I also took some steps to separate the Apache server from the OS.

Putting a self-hosted server online requires port forwarding. That involves opening specific ports to outside traffic. I only opened the public HTTP/HTTPS ports. Several sites say to open SSH ports, but I think that's where I feel very timid. I don't plan on running anything insanely heavy which would require in-the-moment updates from somewhere remote. (There's also the fact that my school network blocks SSH traffic entirely, so there's even less reason to enable it.)

Once the ports were open, I had to find my external IP address and update my DNS Zone records on [Reclaim Hosting](https://reclaimhosting.com). By default, Comcast assigns dynamic IP addresses so they can adjust network traffic. Most tutorials encourage users to request static IPs for home servers, but others say they've used a dynamic address for years without issue. I'll see if I can work myself up to calling.

Anyways, I logged into my cPanel and added an A record for a new subdomain: [photos.ohheybrian.com](https://photos.ohheybrian.com) that pointed to my public IP address. The router sees that traffic coming in and points it at the Raspberry Pi. I tested on my phone and, hey presto, it worked.

Opening HTTP/HTTPS ports came next. It's easy to get unencrypted traffic in and out. But, like the rest of my sites, I wanted to make sure they were all SSL by default. I could't assign a Let's Encrypt certificate through Reclaim because it wasn't hosted on their servers. [The Internet came through with another good tutorial](https://www.tecmint.com/install-free-lets-encrypt-ssl-certificate-for-apache-on-debian-and-ubuntu/) and I was off.

First, I had to enable the `ssl` package on the Apache server:

Once it can accept SSL traffic, it was time to install the Let's Encrypt package, which lives on GitHub:

I then had to install the Apache2 plugin:

From there, the entire process is automated. I moved into the install directory and then ran:

It works by verifying you own the domain and then sending the verification to the Let's Encrypt servers to generate the certificate. The default life is three months, but you can also cron-job the renewal if nothing about the site is changing.

After I was given the certification, I went to https://photos.ohheybrian.com and got a 'could not connect' error, which was curious. After more DuckDuckGoing, I realized that SSL uses a different port (duh). So, Back to the router to update port forwarding and it was finished.

There are several steps I want to take, like disaggregating accounts (one for Apache, one for MySQL, one for phpMyAdmin) so if one _happens_ to be compromised, the whole thing isn't borked.

---

_Featured image is They Call It Camel Rock flickr photo by carfull...in Wyoming shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license _

This weekend I decided to try and tackle [turning a Mac Mini into a server to host my own photos](https://blog.ohheybrian.com/2018/11/reviving-the-mac-mini/). Well, that turned into a real mess and I abandoned the idea after I had to disassemble the computer to retrieve a stuck recovery DVD. We went all kinds of places together, but this Mac couldn't go the distance with me this time.

So, I grabbed the semi-used Raspberry Pi 3 that was working as a wireless musicbox on our stereo (kind of) and gave it an overhaul. I removed the [PiMusicbox OS](http://www.pimusicbox.com/) and went back to a fresh Raspbian image. (Actually, I only grabbed the Lite distribution because I won't need to go to the desktop. Ever.)

I wanted a basic LAMP (Linux - Apache - MySQL - PHP) stack to run the website, specifically because the end goal was to have [Lychee](https://github.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee) installed and running on a public space. I relied on two _really good_ tutorials to help me through the process.

The first, written by a guy named Richie, is a [full-blown, step-by-step guide](https://pchelp.ricmedia.com/setup-lamp-server-raspberry-pi-3-complete-diy-guide/) on all the software setup. He even uses WordPress as his thing-to-install-at-the-end, so that's a bonus. It's written for non-technical people and isn't just a wall of command line code to type in. He had explanations (why does he always use the `-y` flag on his install commands?) and screenshots of what to expect. Really superb. If you're looking to try setting up a local server (available only on your wifi network) or have students who want to try, this is the place to start.

Once everything was going, I went to the GitHub project and used a quick command download the package into the Pi:

`wget https://github.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee/archive/master.zip`

and then unzipped the project:

`unzip master.zip`

This put all of the source files into the `/var/www` directory on the Pi, which becomes the public space. For updates, I can just use `git pull` in the directory and I'll get those updates automatically. A cron job could even take care of that, so double bonus.

I was able to go to my internal IP address and see the setup prompt. I signed into my MySQL admin and I was off.

[caption id="attachment_649" align="aligncenter" width="695"] CC0 by Brian Bennett[/caption]

Photos are organized by album and tags, so you can quickly search for items. I uploaded an old photo of my wife, just to see if it would accept files.

[caption id="attachment_650" align="aligncenter" width="1383"] CC0 by Brian Bennett[/caption]

There's another option I need to dig into that says "Upload from Link," but I'm not quite sure what that does yet. In the short term, I can start uploading photos here rather than Flickr.

The second article had some hints about how to get the server visible to the public. Your modem and router take a public IP address from your ISP and convert it into something you can use in the house. So, getting the Pi up with an IP address is easy to do and use, but only if you're at home. Making it publicly available requires two things:

RaspberryPiGuy, who apparently works for RedHat, has a guide on [taking your server public](https://opensource.com/article/17/3/building-personal-web-server-raspberry-pi-3). I added a couple more packages to help with security, like fail2ban, which blocks an IP address after too many login attempts. I'm also going to split my network one more time so my home computers are sequestered from this little public slice. I found my public IP address on [this site](https://www.iplocation.net/find-ip-address) and then edited my router to forward traffic to the **public** IP (my house) to the **Pi** (the internal network IP).

I was able to use my phone on 4G to go directly to the public IP address and see public photos in my library, so mission accomplished for tonight. The next steps are to do some DNS forwarding so you don't have to memorize an IP address to see pictures. Some other considerations are to get a static IP so those DNS records don't get messed up, but I have to work up to that call to Comcast.

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Featured image is Looking Through the Lens flickr photo by my friend, Alan Levine, shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) **

My wife bought a Mac Mini toward the end of college that has been sitting in our basement pretty much since we went to Korea in 2009. I've been wanting to do something with it for a while and with Flickr changing its accounts, now seemed like a good time.

I was looking for photo sharing alternatives to Flickr, mostly because I can't afford a pro membership and I'm already over the 1000 photo limit being imposed in January. I came across [Lychee](https://github.com/LycheeOrg/Lychee/), which is essentially single-user, self-hosted photo management. (Check out their [demo site](https://ld.electerious.com/) - it's pretty impressive). My home photo collection could also stand being backed up somewhere more consistently, so my goal is to convert the mini into a self-hosted photo sharing site so I can continue to post out on the web and have a backup at home.

*cracks knuckles*

I set up in the dining room and got started.

I have to say, it was pretty amazing plugging in this computer, which hasn't seen use in nearly a decade, and watching it boot up as if I had used it yesterday.

Tonight's fun is transferring old photos from a much-neglected Mac mini and then installing Linux. pic.twitter.com/U4bbG7ShFp

—Brian E. Bennett (@bennettscience) November 15, 2018

Macs have [long-had web hosting built right in](http://www.macinstruct.com/node/112). Apache and PHP are included by default and it's easy to install MySQL for databasing. I was hoping to go the easy route and just use the default tools. LOL.

Lychee requires PHP 5.5+. The mini (late 2006 model) has PHP 4.4 and Apache 1.3 installed. No good. I started searching for [ways to upgrade both](https://jeromejaglale.com/doc/mac/upgrade_php5_tiger), but the recommended site with ported versions for old copies doesn't exist anymore.

So, I grabbed another Mac for more efficient Googling. There was also beer.

The command center is fully operational. pic.twitter.com/3ScrhI76da

—Brian E. Bennett (@bennettscience) November 15, 2018

The best option, I think, is to boot into Linux rather than OSX 10.4. So, I started researching Debian distributions that would work on older hardware. My plan was to wipe the entire hard drive and dedicate it to server resources. When I landed on the Debian wiki, they had a page specifically for older, Intel-based Macs. This line caught my eye:

The oldest Mini (macmini1,1) is typically the most problematic, due to bugs in its firmware. When booting off CD/DVD, if there is more than one El Torito boot record on the disc then the firmware gets confused. It tried to offer a choice of the boot options, but it locks up instead.

That's not good. I have two choices: I can partition the drive to prevent losing the entire machine or I can go for it and hope that the OSX recover DVD I have in the basement still works. (I'll probably partition, just to be safe.)

Luckily, two lines later, the Debian wiki notes that specific builds are now available which only include _one_ boot record, which solves the problem. [A quick 300MB download of the Mac-specific distribution](https://cdimage.debian.org/pub/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/) later and I'm ready to burn then disk image to a USB drive with [Etcher](https://github.com/balena-io/etcher).

Next steps are to actually do the Debian install.

an element is anything that needs to be learned or processed and the interactivity relates to how reliant one element is on other elements for comprehension.

Source: Element Interactivity in the Classroom

I was first introduced to working memory by [Ramsey Musallam](https://twitter.com/ramusallam) and I've pulled it out every now and then in workshops with teachers. The idea is easy to grasp, but hard to put into specific practice when planning.

I'd never heard of "element interactivity" either, but this is - hands down - one of the _most_ approachable descriptions of how to adjust planning and instruction to account for cognitive limitations with novel or complex material.

---

_Featured image "Dandelion Seeds" flickr photo by thatSandygirl https://flickr.com/photos/thatsandygirl/34111155501 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license_

When taking the necessary in-depth look at Visible Learning with the eye of an expert, we find not a mighty castle but a fragile house of cards that quickly falls apart.

Source: HOW TO ENGAGE IN PSEUDOSCIENCE WITH REAL DATA: A CRITICISM OF JOHN HATTIE’S ARGUMENTS IN VISIBLE LEARNING FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A STATISTICIAN | Bergeron | McGill Journal of Education / Revue des sciences de l'éducation de McGill

Hattie's effect sizes are often thrown around as catch-all measurements of classroom methods. This reminds me of the learning styles discussions from several years ago. Both of these approaches have the same critical danger: reducing teaching and habits to single styles or single measures of effect is bad practice.

The idea of learning styles or effects on instruction are fine, but not when presented as scientific fact. A statistical breakdown of Hattie's effect sizes shows the clearly, as evidenced by this line:

Basically, Hattie computes averages that do not make any sense. A classic example of this type of average is: if my head is in the oven and my feet are in the freezer, on average, I’m comfortably warm.

Aggregating each category into a single effect size calculation disregards all of the other confounding variables present in a given population or individual. Learning styles has the same reductionist problem. In the mornings, reading works better for me. By the end of the day, I'm using YouTube tutorial videos for quick information. The style changes given the context and the idea of a single, best style ignores those context clues.

Use descriptors and measurements with care. Recognize the deficiencies and adjust for context as needed.

“We are helping them become more knowledgeable about what the digital landscape is like,” Mr. Hodgson said of his students, “so they can make choices about what they use and what they don’t use.”

Source: Google Is Teaching Children How to Act Online. Is It the Best Role Model? - The New York Times

The Times article on Google's "Be Internet Awesome" campaign does a great job of outlining why programs like this are needed, but not from companies who benefit from users within the program.

I tend to lean toward Kevin's (Mr. Hodgson) approach to teaching about the Internet: it's complex and you need to be aware of what you're using and why. The same is true for teachers. When I'm asked about apps or websites, I encourage them to read terms of service, privacy statements, and other conditions, especially if they want to use the thing with students.

Cutifying the practice of using the web wisely makes it exciting and easy to get into, but it's also easier to gloss over the deeper practices we should be teaching our students.

(Be sure to check out Kevin's blog for more of his writing.)

---

_[Conduits for Textbooks (and more!)](https://flickr.com/photos/wfryer/6997193539 "Conduits for Textbooks (and more!)") flickr photo by [Wesley Fryer](https://flickr.com/people/wfryer) shared under a [Creative Commons (BY) license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)_

Twitter made a UI change this week with it's card-styled link previews. It's subtle, but the changes have hurt accessibility and hurt the end user.

Twitter allows branded sites (anyone can do it, but brands use it the most) to create "cards" for links they post which include media previews, bold headlines, and a snippet of the article or post text. This gives the user a preview of what's in the link before they visit. The cards used to function like normal HTML `anchor` tags and included alternate text (the small popup when you hover your mouse) or showed the full URL of the link.

Since earlier this week, all of that is gone and it's led to some frustrating limitations.

First, headlines are cut off. And the alt text is gone from the mouse hover action.

[caption id="attachment_614" align="alignnone" width="312"]A shortage of what? Cold drinks?[/caption]

All browsers show URL paths in the bottom of the screen before you click on them. Twitter short links (t.co) would show first, but then resolve into the full path after a second or two. Not anymore.

[caption id="attachment_617" align="aligncenter" width="357"] Why is this less accessible?[/caption]

The top-level domain shows, but that's all. Does this link take me to the registration page? Or to the article? Or neither?

Really, Twitter is making it harder to know what you click on, asking you, the user, to trust them, the company, to show us what we need to know. This update does nothing to help the usability on a platform that has done little to increase transparency and improve the quality of the platform for users.

[video width="1440" height="900" mp4="https://blog.ohheybrian.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/twitupdate.mp4"][/video]

Aside from trying to be as productive as I can every day, listening - truly listening to people - has completely changed my coaching. Elena Agular talks about listening at length in The Art of Coaching (well worth the read, btw) and since I've made the conscious effort to listen first, I've seen fruits.

I stopped going in with preconceptions about progress or willingness to try new things. One unfortunate carryover from teaching is that I have expectations about specific teachers. So and so is hard to work with or this person will never change...I had shut down any possibility of working productively before I even walked in the room. Meeting people with the intent to listen rather than talk erased those expectations and allowed for positive conversations.

My ability to help people has increased. I don't limit this statement to technical help, which is certainly a component of my work these days. Asking questions and listening for context clues has allowed me to look beyond immediate problems and solve deeper issues, or at least identify issues to work toward solutions.

Summarizing the problem before offering solutions is critical. I stopped taking my computer to meetings with teachers because it leads to distractions. Or, if I do have it, I don't open it until we're working on a specific item. While we're talking, I have a notebook. I'm quietly making notes, looking for patterns and letting the teacher express their frustrations, ideas, or concerns without interrupting. I ask probing questions - "Why did you feel that way?" or, "What did [this thing] help you learn about your students' understandings?" - to draw out reflective thought. Before I start to talk, I take one minute to process my notes and state back, in my words, what they're experiencing. This catalyzes the rest of the conversation and helps us work together.

I can loop back to previous conversations and push toward growth. Since I have detailed notes (completely confidential notes) I can look back to previous meetings and probe next time we're together. Looping back to gently push toward growth on goals is easier because they're the teacher's own ideas. I'm there as a processing tool, not as the Owner Of Solutions.

In the end, I want to make sure I'm helping people in ways they want to be helped. I want to push them professionally by talking honestly about teaching - why we do what we do - to promote growth. If I can't understand what they're saying, it's a fool's errand.

Reflected Rocks flickr photo by Stanley Zimny (Thank You for 32 Million views) shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

Source: The role of the faculty in the post-LMS world (opinion)

I don't work at a university, but we're in the process of moving teachers into using Canvas in our district, so this resonates. I see two groups of people:

• those who already had material online and are struggling to work backwards (essentially) to fit items into Canvas.
• those who have nothing online and are struggling to make sense of what works well digitally and what doesn't.

The LMS is a weird stepping stone. I've had materials online for years, so I don't like the constriction an LMS brings to what I've done in the past, but I _do_ appreciate the streamlined data I can grab from the system (I need to write more on using Outcomes in Canvas later...)

For the second group, it's a great intermediate step and I'm already seeing people look for more online on their own. They want to push the system now that they understand it more. They're seeing the benefit if using the Internet as a whole and not limiting their courses to the flow in Canvas.

Striking the balance between structure and variety is difficult. I'm not sure the LMS will ever completely go away, but I can see the influence waning as skills develop and alternatives becoming more accessible to teachers.

Source: If We Don’t Allow A Redo, What Are We Teaching? – The Teacher And The Admins

Still in my standards-based grading vein, this is inevitably the biggest sticking point for teachers I work with.

"What do you mean they can retake the test for full credit?"

Mentally, we can agree with the argument that redoing work or retaking tests makes sense in the scheme of student learning. The hold up, I find, is more with the work involved in making those opportunities reliable and valid more than the mental exercise of finding value in the habit.

There are ways to allow students to reassess work that does _not_ include sitting an exam again, which opens more possibilities for authentic learning and demonstration of mastery.

Remember, though, that grades should not be used as rewards. Nor should they be used as affirmation, compensation, or validation. Grades should represent an honest report of evidence at this moment in time, nothing more. If we make them something more than that, we undermine the student’s maturation and any useful purpose for grading.

Source: Fair Isn't Always Equal: Three Grading Practices to Avoid

I'm working with several teachers on moving toward standards-based grading and we're starting to have conversations about grades themselves. I ask how they feel about zeroes, extra credit, completion, and makeup work. This article is a great primer and/or followup to those initial meetings.

Turning this around (also mentioned by [Will Dunn later in the thread](https://twitter.com/Willmdunn/status/1044592375526510593)), what would happen if we taught a lesson or went through an activity _without_ positing the objective and then have students state the learning as an exit ticket or closing discussion. What insight could we glean?

Intentions are important, but implementation is harder.

H/T to [Darren Burris](https://twitter.com/dgburris) and [Dan Meyer for showing up in my timeline](https://twitter.com/ddmeyer/status/1044426373425586176).

I've never heard of the Asch Experiment, but this video is worth watching.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qA-gbpt7Ts8[/embed]

[Kaplinsky's article](https://robertkaplinsky.com/psychology-classroom-discussions/) gives some good classroom ideas on how to avoid groupthink in student responses, even highlighting the Desmos teacher view to anonymize responses (which _also_ works [outside of math](https://blog.ohheybrian.com/2017/04/desmos-in-science/).

During student teaching, questioning was the first thing my training teacher worked on with me. I was prone to asking, "Who knows..." which left the door open to zero responses. Moving to direct questions, "What is...?" or "How does...?" removes escape. I also recall another great post (I can't find it now) about leaving uncomfortable silence after asking a question. Letting several hands go up in the air allows for discussion as you can call on more than the first student.

Mixing Kaplinsky's ideas with leaving room for responses is a great way to help students feel comfortable with replying, even if they disagree with others.

[Read the original article here](https://robertkaplinsky.com/psychology-classroom-discussions/).

It's appropriate to write a back to school post nearly a month into the school year.

I took Twitter off my phone back in July in an effort to put my phone down more often. It had become too easy to lazily open and scroll when my interest waned. That bled into time with my kids, and that wasn't cool. I suppose I could have just "worked on my self control," but I'm more of a "pluck your eye out if it causes you to sin" kind of person. Cold turkey it was.

July bled into August which has raced into September. My phone is still Twitterless and I'm feeling more connected to my teachers and schools _here_. The social-edu world had eroded my sense of here-ness...I felt beckoned by people I've never met face to face. My desire to help and engage with the digital friends overrode the drive to get to know people here, now.

By extension, because I was online less, the blog has also cobwebbed up a little bit. I can't write volumes like [Alan](https://twitter.com/cogdog) but I don't want to lose steam here entirely. Finding a balance has been hard. I need to write for me.

The evolving role of coach has pushed me to talk less and listen more. I think that's why I haven't really missed being online. Wanting to write, up until this point, feels like more of a drive to not waste the space than to share insight. Or maybe it's more that sharing insight shouldn't be the driving factor of having space on the Internet. Hubris kills just as quickly as stagnation.

Now that we're back, I'm planning on listening a lot. I'll probably do some processing here, in prose, just because it'll help me work through my own habits and thinking patterns. But I plan on listening more than talking.

Twitter still won't be on my phone.

I've decided to fire up a new, static website to reflect on books I read this year. In all honesty, much of this is bring prompted by my grad school reading, but my reading list is also expanding for once classes are done and putting longer pieces together in response have helped.

Anyways, I have two up right now:

All books will be listed on the homepage, [sum.ohheybrian.com](https://sum.ohheybrian.com).

I'm in some grad classes right now and in one, we were assigned to discuss, "Does building relationships with students _really_ matter?"

Prior to the discussion, we watched Rita Pierson's [TED talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/rita_pierson_every_kid_needs_a_champion) and read two articles: The _Post_ on differences between [white and black poverty](https://hyp.is/tOOsAGf1EeiQRJdH6VpqFw/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/12/black-poverty-differs-from-white-poverty/) and a piece from mic.com on [white poverty in America](https://hyp.is/k63hemf3EeiJ0etMp3WFlA/mic.com/articles/59829/what-white-poverty-really-looks-like-in-america). (Both links are to annotated copies of the articles.)

My unedited response to the discussion thread is below.

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I must admit, I've started and restarted this post several times this week.

Of course building relationships matters. If we neglect to build relationships, we are missing a fundamental aspect of teaching and learning. Regardless of culture, our species is reliant on relationships with other members. We are predisposed to bond with other people from birth through death. Teachers are in the unique position of spending more time with students than anyone besides their parents, which leads to relationships in some capacity.

Fostering positive relationships will help lead to emotional and mental stability that students, especially students of poverty, are often lacking. We get into dangerous territory when relationships become the only support mechanism for the poor instead of improved services and social programs. In the Post article, the plan to open affordable housing in wealthy neighborhoods is only hindered by the free market and social biases. There is nothing stopping housing developers from lowering rent other than their own bottom lines. Poverty can be combated with solid public education, but to really change the landscape of American poverty, we need larger social change.

The support offered by teachers is critical, but so is support from school counselors and social workers. Since those services are underfunded (or nonexistent in some schools) teachers are left to figure it out on their own. Recently, the 'grit' narrative has taken hold, which is can lead to less obvious, yet counterproductive, results. Jensen (2016) and Kidd (2013) note that most poor families work more than their wealthier counterparts, so teachers encouraging students to get through their issues with perseverance and a belief that they can do better with harder work perpetuate the misconception that the poor are lazy. Students already working hard will be reluctant to form genuine relationships because grit places the blame back on the student, not by recognizing root causes.

Building positive relationships takes more than goodwill and a focus on mindset. Seeing students as people with real needs and real challenges is critical. Recognizing that our life circumstances do not reflect many of our students' builds empathy and allows bonds to form.

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_Featured image is [December, 2009](https://flickr.com/photos/bennettscience/6851194168 "December, 2009") flickr photo by [bennettscience](https://flickr.com/people/bennettscience) shared under a [Creative Commons (BY-NC-SA) license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)_

Our septic system needed to be upgraded, so we took the hottest weekend of the year (so far) to do it. My wife's dad and brother spent the day with me on Saturday digging large trenches to bury leach chambers. We redid all the plumbing. We plowed a new, larger garden and cut down some nuisance trees.

I've also learned about navigating the permitting stages with the health department. Good news is that I'll never need to do this again.