Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “Relationships”
🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Sky High
By the time this movie came out in 2005, I was already deep into superhero media, and I love using recycled tropes to tell an interesting story. This does an excellent job, and it was a favorite for my whole family when it came out. (In fact, I hadn’t remembered until rewatching it that one of my family’s shared verbal tics comes from a running gag involving Ron Wilson, Bus Driver).
📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Handbook to Lazy Parenting, by Guy Delisle
I’m a big fan of Delisle’s comics, but in the past, I’ve skipped his series on parenting. This morning, though, a friend visiting Brussels offered to bring me back a copy of Delisle’s « Chroniques de Jeunesse », so when I went to the library later in the day, I couldn’t help but pick up something else he’s done. His art is great, and his stories are funny and sweet. My only complaint is that I couldn’t read the original French edition (though I should be glad Kentucky libraries carry the English translations!
🍿 movieblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for Strange World
I enjoyed this movie, so I kind of want to give it four hearts. The visuals were interesting, it tackled important themes, and I appreciated its board game love and its leaning in to pulp sci-fi weirdness and just not caring. The more I think about it, though, the more I remember its clunkiness, the way it often moved too quickly, and the lazy bits. I liked it, and I’m glad we watched it as a family, but I doubt it would hold up over time.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Lexington & KY reports more than high flu cases this season | Lexington Herald Leader'
Oh, so this is why my family’s gotten rocked by flu the past five days.
link to ‘Lexington & KY reports more than high flu cases this season | Lexington Herald Leader’
beating Super Mario Galaxy 2 with kiddo
About a month ago, I blogged about the approach we take to playing video games around here, which is to check out old games from a local library and play them on the Nintendo Wii we liberated from my parents’ basement a couple of years ago. Earlier this week, that approach bore some fruit: After repeated cycles of keeping the game out as long as we could, returning it for a couple of weeks, and then checking it back out, kiddo and I beat Super Mario Galaxy 2—a game several years older than she is for a console that’s been around for nearly as long as her parents have known each other.
old video games, libraries, and xkcd
There’s a great xkcd strip (see below) about someone who always plays video games on a five-year lag because you get to enjoy all the good games with less of a hassle:
I love this strip for a few different reasons. First of all, I’ve never been a hardcore videogamer, so if I do ever play a big title, it usually is about five years after the fact. Second, I think there’s something about it that gets funnier (or else makes me feel older) over time: It’s funny to think of someone only discovering Portal in early 2013, but now that “five years late” is almost “ten years ago,” there’s something kind of absurd about the strip.
putting my work where my whining is
Early in the school year, I signed up to be a parent representative on one of the Site-Based Decision Making (SBDM) committees for kiddo’s school. I had already started being a rabble-rouser about ClassDojo and some of my other edtech concerns, and I wanted to show that I could put in work where my whining was: That is, that I wasn’t just going to complain about things, but that I was going to show support for the school by helping out where I could.
data privacy and kiddo's school
In addition to all the irritating ClassDojo stuff going on at kiddo’s school, I’ve also spent some time banging my head against the wall made up of two forms: One to opt out of FERPA directory information sharing, and the other to opt out of kiddo’s information being shared with media outlets. I’m too tired tonight to get into all the details of what’s been going on, but the short version is that there’s no (clear, easy) way for spouse and I to request that kiddo’s name and image not be shared on school social media without also insisting that kiddo’s name and image not appear in innocuous things like… a school yearbook.
parent agency and edtech
I’ve been blogging about ClassDojo enough over the past few weeks that I think it’s time for a quick recap before sharing some of the latest developments. I heard about ClassDojo being used schoolwide back in late July and started wondering what approach I should take as both a student’s parent and an edtech researcher. On Monday of this week, I talked to kiddo’s teacher about it and wrote up some thoughts the next day about teachers’ diminished agency in the realm of edtech.
emailing principal about edtech concerns
I really will get back to blogging on other subjects sometime soon, but here’s an email I just sent to kiddo’s principal raising some concerns I have going into the school year. I’m not sure what will come of this—and I’m not at all sure this was the right email to write—but in the off-chance it’s helpful for someone, I thought I’d post about it here.
Dear Principal [so-and-so],
(re)introducing kiddo to Wallace and Gromit
When I was growing up, our family had a three-VHS set of the original Wallace and Gromit shorts, and while “Wallace and Gromit fan” was never at the forefront of my identity, I have always loved The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. Naturally, things that I loved as a kid are near the top of my list of things to introduce to kiddo. I showed them to her a couple of years ago—probably near the beginning of the pandemic—but she had no memory of them, so this weekend, I had the pleasure of reintroducing her to the series.
bike rides, TTRPGs, and other 2022 Father's Day weekend fun
The title of this post is a bit misleading. My wife and I aren’t really big on “Parent’s Day” celebrations: Years of Latter-day Saint “all women are mothers” (read: motherhood is the most important part of womanhood) Sunday services grated on us during our years of infertility, and even now that we are parents (and aren’t practicing Latter-day Saints—though my current denomination certainly isn’t immune from a cringeworthy celebration of parents either), it’s just not a thing we do.
camping and being present as a parent
Tomorrow morning, I’m leaving for 3ish days of camping with kiddo. This is the first time that I’ve gone camping for well over a decade, and I’m a bit nervous, even though I’ve got lots of (rusty) Scouting experience to draw on and even though we’re also going to be staying in a cabin at a semi-structured church camp. Probably not too much to worry about in terms of camping.
reflections on digital journaling of analog letters
One of the most interesting parts of teaching information communication technology classes despite not being formally trained in that field is picking up terms and concepts that I never learned as part of my degrees. One of the most interesting concepts I’ve picked up along the way is the formal distinction between digital and analog phenomena. I often use clocks or thermometers as examples of this in class: Analog phenomena can take on any number of values within certain bounds, whereas digital phenomena are limited to discrete values within those bounds.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Kids 5 to 11 get FDA OK for COVID-19 booster doses | Ars Technica'
Kid’s elementary school principal claims COVID is over, but pretty clear that’s not the case. Glad we can get her boosted now.
link to ‘Kids 5 to 11 get FDA OK for COVID-19 booster doses | Ars Technica’
🔗 linkblog: just read 'Lexington opens key pedestrian bridge over Man O’ War | Lexington Herald Leader'
This sounds like a great place for a family bike ride!
link to ‘Lexington opens key pedestrian bridge over Man O’ War | Lexington Herald Leader’
🔗 linkblog: just read 'Pfizer Says Vaccine Trials For Kids Show Its Shots Are Safe : Coronavirus Updates : NPR'
Crossing fingers!
link to ‘Pfizer Says Vaccine Trials For Kids Show Its Shots Are Safe : Coronavirus Updates : NPR’
🔗 linkblog: just read 'How Far Can You Go to Resist Being the Subject of a Viral Video? - The New York Times'
Compelling case for asking about the tech environment adults are creating instead of hand-wringing about what kids are doing in it.
link to ‘How Far Can You Go to Resist Being the Subject of a Viral Video? - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: just read '“Sharenting” Is a Threat to Children’s Health and Personal Development | by Michele DeMarco | Aug, 2021 | OneZero'
Datafying yourself is one thing, datafying your kids is another.
link to ‘“Sharenting” Is a Threat to Children’s Health and Personal Development | by Michele DeMarco | Aug, 2021 | OneZero’