Lord help me.  I just had my ARD meeting with my daughter's school-they work doggone hard for her and I'm so grateful.  At the end of the meeting I shared my over the top frustration with the fact that RISD plays faux confusion when it comes to kids attention:  " what do you mean this free tool makes it hard for kids to pay attention??!!"  "There's gambling going on at Rick's???!!!"  They see the issue and they're tired of being told the cupboard is bare when new baseball fields are being built but the same crappy LMS' are being used or teachers have to pay out of their own pockets to remove ads.  They're not militant at all but they see the issue and they're not alone--they're a microcosm.  This happens everywhere and it's wrong.  All we can do is what we can do.  I haven't gone to the Board in person yet-they really make it hard for a parent but good grief it's gotta be done.  And once I go if they have stone ears I'll decide what to do next.

Elsewhere in this blog I've written about wasting time.  And how I feel a drum beat oftentimes about not doing it.  I had a chance to talk to a trusted advisor the other day who had a different and enlightening view that I thought I'd share.  He said to not think of it as 'wasting time' but as figuring out what doesn't work.  In a press conference Thomas Edison was asked how many light bulbs he had created to get the one in the press conference that worked and he said '1000'!!  The assembled press said 'oh, that must have been miserable' and he responded saying 'no, it was wonderful, I learned 999 ways not to make a light bulb!' and with that my own light bulb went off, ha ha! 

Sometimes-most times, maybe even all the time??  We have to wade through stuff that doesn't work long before we get to the stuff that does work.  And we have to maintain our awareness, our composure, and our delight at learning through what might crush others not correctly focused. That is, not focused on the process, not focused on the joy of learning what works.  Our society too easily tells us to focus on 'winning' or 'goals' or 'success' but the overwhelming majority of what we're really faced with this ambiguity and confusion and if we're unable or unwilling to tolerate this discomfort we'll too soon give up.  We'll never get to attempt 1000.  Maybe we'll get to attempt 445 and then we'll throw in the towel because it's too hard a problem to solve vs. saying to ourselves: 'Well, that way doesn't work either maybe I should try something completely different'.

So, maybe Edison felt like he was wasting his time around attempt 775 or maybe not.  Maybe he knew he was learning a little bit more about how to build a light bulb every step of the way.  There had to be dark times (ha!  See what I did there!!) but he found ways to focus on learning.  I'm going to choose to do the same thing.  

Big corporations are violating your kids privacy with Richardson Independent School District's permission and the district isn't telling you because they don't want to kill the golden goose and actually take responsibility.  They'd rather exploit your kids -it's much cheaper than paying for the 'free' software they use.
To get an idea of just how absurd the idea is that parents or children of RISD could actually make an informed choice to agree or not to the privacy policies of the 198 ad partners of the learning tool, Live Worksheet that's used in the classroom, that no one can opt of, here's a link to just one of those privacy policies of just one those ad partners that Live Worksheets uses.  

SALE OF INFORMATION. In order to accommodate changes in our business, we may sell, buy or otherwise transfer portions of our company or other companies or assets, including the information collected through this Site. In the event of a proposed or actual purchase, sale (including a liquidation, realization, foreclosure or repossession), lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, transfer, conveyance or financing of all or substantially all of the assets of Aarki, user information (including Personal Data) will be one of the assets transferred to the transferee. 

So, in a nutshell they sell user data-they collect data on our kids and sell it.  To whom?  for what?  Who knows, we don't have any control over that it's not our, or our kid's data any more it's Aarki's. 

Well, OK, that horse will get out of the barn-what do they collect?  

• PERSONAL INFORMATION. When you register for the Service, Aarki may ask you for Personal Data including but not limited to your name, business name, business address, phone number, e-mail address, contact preferences, and billing information. We use this Personal Data to remain in contact with you about your use of Aarki Services and for the purposes of billing. We may retain your Personal Data after you cease to use Aarki Services for our accounting and business records.

Alright, I guess if the kids register it's the whole enchilada.  Uhh, dammit.  But surely they won't register right?  Well, who knows because it's all a black box-we have no idea whether they register or not.  If in the best of circumstances they're only using Live Worksheets to take French or Geography etc what kind of data will they be giving up if they don't register:

1. Our servers automatically recognize information that your browser sends whenever you visit a website, which may include information such as the domain names and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of visitors to the Site, as well as the browser type and the date and time of the browser’s access to the Site. No Personal Data about you is revealed in this process and we generally treat information collected by such process as non-personal data. However, to the extent that Internet Protocol (IP) addresses or similar identifiers are considered Personal Data by applicable law, we treat these identifiers as Personal Data.
2. The Site may also gather anonymous "traffic data" that does not personally identify you, but that may be helpful for marketing purposes or for improving the services we offer.
3. Aarki uses services to capture session usage of some areas of the site to assist with Customer troubleshooting and learn about Customer usage of the Site to help us make decisions about product improvements. Session captures are limited to select areas of the Aarki site only and do not record any other browser or computer activity. As part of session information we collect account, IP, and browser and operating system data. We do not capture any password inputs.

So, they automatically know-what browser you're using and IP-so where you are, the date, the time, and domain name so RISD.ORG-so they would know it's a school.  In the US this information isn't treated as 'personal data' in Europe it is considered personal and protected.  
Aarki gathers 'traffic data' which sounds innocuous.  This is the network data generated when you go to a web site the IP packets necessary to transfer the data to and from the site.  The network traffic.  So it's the information about which sites the kids go to so the ads can be targeted appropriately.
Aarki analyzes network traffic within the site itself i.e., they note how how many page views the site has how many unique views a certain area has etc.  There are probably other areas captured here as well but the do not appear to focus on anything outside of the site.  They do know who is doing it though as they know it's the same IP throughout.  

I'm not an attorney but the following paragraph doesn't square with with the previous one and, frankly, I'd be inclined to believe that they would indeed sell the data and then if asked simply say-'we told we would'!

1. PERSONAL INFORMATION. We will not sell, distribute or rent your Personal Data with any third parties without your consent, except to our trusted business partners for the purpose of providing you with, and operating and maintaining, the Site and Service, to comply with applicable law or as otherwise specified herein. We may use your Personal Data and/or share it with certain third parties to activate and maintain your account, verify your identity, check your qualifications, or follow up or resolve with transactions or queries initiated on the Site, including, but not limited to, processing your credit card payment or other payment, if applicable. Please note that we have appropriate data privacy safeguards in place with our third party business partners with whom we share your Personal Data and who are providing services or functions on our behalf. We may also use your contact information to inform you of any changes to the Site or Service, respond to your questions, inquiries, comments and instructions, take good faith steps to enforce the terms of use with respect to the Site and Service, maintain the security and integrity of the Site and Service or our systems, or to send you additional information about Aarki.

This is 1 of 198 privacy policies of 198 ad partners of Live Worksheets.  It is absurd to consider that the parents of the kids in RISD would review and 'agree' to each of these.  Who on earth would agree to this with their kids???!!  My kids are 13, 13, and 17.  My bet is Live Worksheets are used with kids a lot younger and Richardson Independent School District is allowing their data to be sold and simply not alerting parents to this fact.  It's unconscionable yet might makes right doesn't it?  They are the biggest kid on the block so they'll do whatever they want with whatever kid is sent to them.  For as long as they can get away with it.  

For those of you that read my post regarding Quizlet and RISDs implementation of it this post will give you a wry smile-or not; you might get annoyed considering the stakes.  Considering I have several kids that are actively being damaged by RISDs continuing, active, deliberate, sneaky behavior I'm on the annoyed side.
​
Last I communicated with Robin Gunter, the Executive Director of Instruction with RISD and Henry Hall, the CIO of RISD I was told that Quizlet would no longer be used with my kid (they would continue selling drugs to the rest, I guess).  Ostensibly this was because of the ads that were displayed in the app, in particular the drug ads and the apps' noxious privacy policy.  You can review that post (Quisling Quizlet) on this blog.  
  
This was a couple of weeks ago and they obviously have learned from being ensconced in academia.  They have outsmarted me!  Obviously seeing me for the dullard I am they stopped using Quizlet, the app that served up ads to my daughter and now they use Live Worksheet a web page that serves up ads to my daughter.  And because they had me pegged as  such a rube I guess they thought I wouldn't know and wouldn't question their clever sleight of hand.  Gotta hand it to my betters.

So, today my wife logged on to my daughter's French class via Google Classroom and lo and behold-no Quizlet!  That's great but my daughter's watching an ad for a video game instead of paying attention to French-hmmm So, how's that?  

Live Worksheets is another 'Free' product that's not actually 'Free' it's only 'Free' if every student that uses it submits to the individual privacy policies of 198 advertising partners that place cookies on their ChromeBooks.    

What's on these 198 individual and separate privacy polices?  That's a great question--go here to learn for yourself if you dare.  First thing I can tell you is that I've been working in IT in schools for over 20 years and it is INFINITELY DIFFICULT to figure out EXACTLY what kind of data they are gathering, how long they are keeping it, when they are gathering it, when they stop gathering it, how you can stop them from gathering it etc.  INFINITELY DIFFICULT.  They will tell you 9 ways to Sunday what they do not gather before they tell you what they do gather.  And they won't tell you what they'll display to you or your kids either so on the whole the exercise will be somewhat dispiriting.  I mean, if they were proud of what they were doing they'd tell you directly and clearly, right?   

Who's the most straight forward?  The Europeans because their laws are much more detailed than ours and while data may flow from individuals here in the United States it doesn't belong to individuals in the United States-it belongs to corporations.  

There are performative opt out clauses here that do nothing but give cover to corporations because in this instance parents don't even KNOW about the use of the product.  Don't even KNOW their kid is being used to fund RISDs desire to save a buck and fake education.  When attention is attenuated with ads attention isn't being used on education.  RISD knows that.  They are using the students that parents unwarily send to them on a daily basis and degrading these student's ability to learn.  They are hurting these students.  These products aren't 'free' the cost is our student's attention and RISD doesn't seem to care. 

I get it-I have no clue what I'm talking about-these ads are no problem-kids are exposed to ads all the time why not during the school day as well.  Schools have tight budgets this is a way to provide more products to students. 
Look, all of these arguments simply overlook that chipping away at our kid's ability to pay attention is wrong.  It's wrong to on one hand ask a child to focus and then simultaneously make it more difficult.  It's diabolical.  And when they're in their 504s and all of the dewey eyed fake concern is trotted out with the wise chin stroking and somber suggestions of medication absolutely no one will mention 'free' software. 


      

As I've gotten older this maxim means more and more to me.  It's not just about getting more done or being more productive it's often about futility of life vs. the doable of life.  
I've heard the serenity prayer for ever.  In fact I've heard it so much I don't really hear it anymore.  By now when I hear it all I hear is "Don't waste time" 

If God is going to grant me the wisdom to accept the things I can't change; the courage  to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference I need to get to work.  

Don't waste time worrying about how others think about you.  Their definition of you is an external fragment of themselves; something over which you have no control: don't waste time worrying about that or attempting to change their opinion.  It won't work.  This is part of what lives in the futile category. 
By the same token don't allow that externalized fragment to define your internal world; the world over which you have complete control. 
You are the only person who has the opportunity and the duty to take full control of and full responsibility for you.  Never put this off and never give the job to anyone else.  

If I can do something about it I need to get to it.  Now.  I may be too old.  That doesn't matter.  I should have done it in my 20s.  That doesn't matter.  It might not work (probably won't) that doesn't matter.  Can I do something about it?  Yes.  Does it need doing?  Yes.  Do it.  Don't. Waste. Time.  There's something in process that is important-more important than outcome.  Outcome is in the future.  The future is speculative.  Don't trade speculative for now; don't waste time.  

The nature of life boils down to what you can control vs. what you can't.  Those items that are futile that have been ripping your insides out? Let those go.  Don't waste time.

I've worked in IT in schools for decades and the question about what schools are for rarely gets asked.  Probably because most folks who work in schools believe they already know the answer but fundamentally it's a good question because as I watch my 3 kids go through the system I see how flawed the process is and how few people ask themselves this question.  What's clear is that the majority of the folks in authority in primary and secondary schools don't know what schools are really for.  Or maybe they think they do-Maybe they believe the 'traditional' version: that schools are there to train kids to fit into the industrial model-round off those edges kid.  Fit in. Obey and give me repeatable results. 
I got into IT because I loved to solve problems and god knows IT has problems.  But I got into IT in schools b/c I had a passion for learning.  Learning was cool-learning is cool.  To see it dismissed or outsourced to apps pains me to no end.  Kids have a limited time to learn-and they depend on us to do our best for them.  They don't know any better so when we mail it in they get short changed.  They don't know it right away but they'll know it soon enough.

The video below is a quick one so I'd certainly endorse watching it but if you don't have the time skip to the very end.  In a nutshell: Grades are an illusion; passion and insight are reality and real teaching happens when kids are put into situations where they can fail.  Persistence in the face of a skeptical authority figure is priceless.  All of this happens around 15:20 BTW so you can cut to the chase if you choose!  Real teachers find ways to make this happen within the structure given to them, and, while I'm all for IT in education, you can see that not a whole lot of what Godin is talking about lives in an app. 

​Bitcoin matters because trust is gone.  It no longer exists in the traditional sense.  Our current era makes it clear that we’ve stepped beyond ‘truth’ in the sense that we’ve historically understood it.  Politician’s now lie directly to our collective faces and persist even in the face of overwhelming evidence. 
 
And then, inexplicably, supporters come out of the woodwork to support the clear lie.  It’s a chilling time. 
And then along comes bitcoin
There are 21 million bitcoins.  There will never be any more. 
The current miner’s reward for adding a block to the bitcoin block chain is 12.5 BTC.  When 210,000 blocks have been mined (blocks of transactions added to the blockchain) at the 12.5 level the reward will be 6.25 BTC, exactly half.  Transactions added to the ledger are held there forever.  They cannot be changed without tremendous effort and markers of tampering.
 
These rules are immutable. They cannot be changed.  BTC will continue to play out it’s rules-whether you invested at 1.30$ 130$ 1300$ or 1,300,000$
 
Feels pretty good doesn’t it?  That kind of certainty is pretty hard to find in our world where lies are told and told and told until we’re, at some point, supposed to succumb and believe them.
Fake news?  Trolls?  Russian Trolls?  Bots?  Russian Bots?  For goodness sake is anyone and anything what they say they are?
 
A trustless technology is needed for a trustless world.  One mustn’t trust anyone to trust in bitcoin.  No slicked back blow hard can make more bitcoin appear, be mined, or disappear.  The real breakthrough here, however, isn’t bitcoin it’s the distributed ledger technology (DLT) or the ‘blockchain’ that is the star of the show. 
 
Blockchain makes the promise of real deal identity management.  Identity management built so deep that one’s identity will never be stolen because some of the most sensitive data is never even shared.
 
With DLT implementations ownership can be clearly traced, information can be shared confidentially and trust can be established as information is subjected to rigorous and constant review and consolidation.
 
It’s a brave new world and DLT will be the sword used to vanquish the vagabonds and liars.  They have no clue but their epitaph has already been written.