This summer has been the summer of appliance failure.  First, our water heater died.  And unfortunately, we didn’t tell the plumber to get one that will get us the tax breaks and the rebate from the utility company, but it works really well.  Then, over the weekend, I was supposed to make something for a party.  It was supposed to bake for 30-40 minutes at 350.  When I opened the oven at 30 minutes, it wasn’t done, so I left it in for another 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes, I opened the oven and it felt practically cold, even though I’d cranked it up to 400 (to speed things up).  We probably could have replaced a part and been fine, but we have the world’s cheapest oven.  I looked it up: new it’s the cheapest one Sears sells.  The contractor who remodeled the house put in really cheap materials.  We replaced the dishwasher almost immediately because we couldn’t watch tv and run the dishwasher at the same time, or have a conversation, or do anything where you needed to be able to hear.  So yesterday, we trucked over to Sears after consulting Consumer Reports (who don’t really like any of the gas stoves anyone makes) and bought a new oven.  We got a mid-priced one that has a couple more features than the one we have–a warming drawer and convection, yay!

But damn, appliances are supposed to last 20 years, yes?  We’ve replaced two in less than 7 (and they were new 7 years ago).  One of these days, I want a dream kitchen with professional appliances, but until then, I don’t want to have to replace them.  And please don’t let the refrigerator fail; we like it.

For the last 3 days, I’ve been at MIT at a Creative Computing workshop.  I applied for this a while back in hopes of getting some ideas for using Scratch in my classes.  I got a lot more than that.  You know how you go to a workshop on using technology a, and you end up going through a step by step walk-through of how to do things?  And you spend the whole time with your face staring at a computer screen?  Well this wasn’t like that at all.  The focus of this workshop was clearly on pedagogy and learning, thinking about how kids/people learn and then how the technology fits into that paradigm. When I use technology in my teaching, that’s how I approach it.  And I’ve always tried to do that when I teach others how to use technology, to a greater or lesser level of success.

The first a-ha moment I had was during the introduction and Mitch Resnick showed a chart that illustrated the decline in computer science majors.  Industry and others have bemoaned this fact.  As he talked about this decline, he noted that while it was real, it probably wasn’t the whole story, that perhaps people who study other topics go on into careers related to computer science.  He then connected computing to writing, suggesting that when we teach a writing class, we don’t expect those students to go on an become professional writers, but we do expect them to use writing in their schoolwork and jobs, and to have a reasonable understanding of the principles of writing.  The same should be true of computing.  We should expect that while a few students may go on to become computer scientists, everyone should have developed skills in computational thinking through a computing class.

There’s always been a real tension between those who espouse a “hard core” approach to teaching computing, and focus on students learning a particular programming language and those who are more interested in having students grasp computational principles.  The former approach tends to turn people off to computing, especially those in underrepresented groups, while the latter is interested in spreading computational thinking concepts more broadly as well as potentially attracting different kinds of people to the field of computer science.

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A second a-ha moment came during a storytelling talk by Kevin Brooks.  As he talked about telling a story to audiences that spoke different languages, I started thinking about the way that technology and computing are a foreign language to many people.  So there’s sometimes a disconnect between what we are talking about and what our audience (kids or teachers) hear.  We have to use different tactics to make the connection.  And we also have to be sympathetic to the learning curve.  No one learns Japanese in a day.

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My final a-ha moment came when Eric Klopfer started talking about games.  As someone who is a gamer and reads the literature on gaming and education, I had heard a lot of the ideas he was talking about.  To most people in the room, though, it was all new.  These ideas have been around for a long time, but they’re just barely out there and they’re certainly not filtering very well into our education system.  It struck me that it takes a very long time for ideas that come from research to get put into practice.  And sometimes that lag is seriously detrimental.  The kids are mostly already there, but they’re only there outside of school.  If we can apply these ideas in school and sooner, we might be able to better meet the kids where they are.

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Notice that none of my a-ha moments had anything to do with figuring out some specific aspect of Scratch, though I did figure some of those out, too.  And I got some great ideas for how to use it in my classes.  But mostly, I learned that my thinking about education and learning applies to computing as well as it does to writing and that gives me a really strong foundation to work from.

Renee Hobbes, a professor at Temple University, writes an opinion piece in today’s Inquirer about a recent study that shows that kids where a computer has been introduced into the home actually lost ground in reading and math skills.   I agree with most of what she says, which boils down to what a lot of us in the educational technology field have been saying for years: access to the technology does not automatically make kids smarter.  We’ve spent a long while debunking the myth that kids today are Digital Natives who automatically know how to assess information online and then remix it into their own fabulous creations.  Unfortunately the “digital native” voices are the ones that were louder, or were the ones that were picked up by the media.  It’s a much easier story to say we old people are clueless about technology and these young people are going to save the world with the techno-knowledge.  It was also easier for schools to pop in computer labs and smartboards and institute laptop programs without considering what to do with them.  At least they could say they put the technology into kids’ hands.

So I agree with her on that point and her criticism of schools for not addressing critical thinking skills when it comes to technology.  There are exceptions to that, of course, but until recently, many schools added technology fairly blindly.  What I take most issue with is her characterization of parents.  Early in the piece, she says this of mothers (not dads, notice, but moms):

THESE days, the “soccer mom” has long been replaced by the “techno mom” who buys a Leapfrog electronic toy for her baby; lap-surfs with her toddler; has a Wii, Xbox and PlayStation for the kids; puts the spare TV in the child’s bedroom; sets her child down for hours at a time to use addictive social media like Webkinz and Club Penguin; and buys a laptop for her preteen so she won’t have to share her own computer.

This pisses me off, quite frankly.  We had electronic toys for our kids fairly early on.  And yes, we have a Wii and a Playstation, but I bought the Playstation originally for me, not my kids, thank you very much.  There’s no TV in either of the kids rooms or computer either, and there never will be.  Our kids have played online games, yes and yes, my son has his own computer.  Because I have to do work on my computer, actual work, and he has homework that has to be done, and yes, he uses Facebook and plays online games, etc.  Yes, we could share.  In fact, we tried that model, but it didn’t really work for us.  I suppose we could have pushed Geeky Boy into something that had nothing to do with computers, and that would have been fine, but it would have cut off his social life.  We limit our kids online activities.  We’re not perfect about it, but we do our best to help our kids balance their computer activities with sports, reading, and other interests.  Quite frankly, most of the parents I know a) don’t have as much technology in their house as we do and b) also severely limit their kids’ online activities.  For good or ill, most of the parents I’m around (which I realize is very class-specific), bought into the media fear-mongering long ago and have gone into the other direction of being fairly restrictive about computer activities.  There are certainly kids I know of who are online constantly, mostly not because their mom is too busy blogging or facebooking to pay attention, but because their mom is working long hours.  So I take issue with this new stereotype.

Hobbes continues this characterization toward the end by saying, “Unfortunately, many parents are too distracted with their “constantly connected” life to pay much attention to how the computer is used at home.”  Again, most parents I know aren’t “constantly connected.”  I can barely find moms on Facebook.  Most parents who are distracted are distracted by work.  While some see that as a negative thing, in this economy, many people can’t afford not to stay connected to work.

I think it’s a good idea to point out to educators and parents that just putting a computer in the house or classroom isn’t going to magically transform a kid.  But I don’t think it’s a good idea to degrade parents and educators for “not paying attention.”  Many are paying attention and we should help those that aren’t, rather than making them feel like bad people.

Besides paperwork, this has been a week of mishaps, continued issues, and missteps.  On Tuesday, the basement flooded again, taking out our hot water heater.  Thankfully, I’d had a shower before that happened.  I made an attempt to re-light the heater myself, but chickened out after I’d found the pilot light.  I had images of myself going up in flames.  Mr. Geeky was out of town until late Wednesday night.  I might get a hot shower Thursday.

Wednesday night, Mr. Geeky called me from the airport.  He couldn’t find his car and he and his students were stranded.  His plates had just expired, so he was worried he might have been towed.  A cop told him they wouldn’t do that, but that they might have moved his car for construction.  So, I went and picked him up.  The next day, he made some phone calls.  Turns out, they were looking on the wrong level.  All the levels look the same, with the same letters to indicate the area you’re in, with no indication of what level you are on, except at the exit.  I took him back to the airport to get the car, dropped him off and zipped back home.  I didn’t have my phone with me, so he couldn’t call me to tell me that his battery was dead.  Luckily, they have a guy for that, but it took him a while to find Mr. Geeky.

Meanwhile, my computer had started to flail.  Considering that I’m trying to prepare some computer science/technology courses for the fall, this was a very. bad. thing.  After some diagnostics and suggestions from the Apple forums, I’m happy to say that it’s working just fine now.

But. Still no hot water.  Someone’s coming today around lunchtime to look at it.  When I called Mr. Geeky to tell him about it, I was ready to go out and buy a new one.  That might happen anyway. Sigh.  So, let’s see–3 days without a shower.  I have washed my hair in cold water, but do not have the fortitude to put my whole body in.

And. Still having neck issues.  Trying to do my physical therapy exercises, but I need to go back to actual physical therapy.  And said issues keep me from doing too much at the computer.  I need a new chair, I think, and a keyboard drawer.  Suggestions welcome.

We joined a new pool this summer, but we’ve yet to go.  We just haven’t had the time.  Aside from the above-mentioned issues, we’ve had appointments and lessons and whatnot.  Next week gets even worse, with meetings for me and then a trip to a workshop.  Maybe August.  Sigh.

I’ve spent the last few days dealing with paperwork of all kinds, but mostly paperwork for school crap.  There are health forms–for school and for sports–registration forms, emergency contact forms.  You name it, there’s a form for it.  What I wouldn’t give for some automation of all this crap.  It’s gotta be a pain for the data entry/filing people to receive hundreds of forms, figure out if they’re complete, etc.  And I don’t even have forms yet for Geeky Girl’s new school–did I mention she’s going to go to the school where I teach?  (Yes, yes we’re excited.).  And I don’t have any kids with issues–as Laura at 11D pointed out in a Tweet.  Just navigating the regular forms is a pain.  I can’t imagine filling out other forms, especially in situations where the system tries to hide behind its bureaucracy.

I find the health forms particularly painful.  In my ideal scenario, my kids’ health records (or at least their immunization records, which is what most schools really care about) would be stored at a statewide data center.  Every year, I’d have the option of doing the form by hand or simply going to a web site, finding the school to send it to, and then clicking the send button.  Hell, I’d even pay a fee for that; I already pay my doctor for the records, so I’d be happy to pay someone else.  Emergency contact information seems like it could be automated too.  Every year, I fill out the same information (and yes, there have been years when the info has changed, but still).  An online form seems like a much nicer option.  Having spent the better part of today building my own online form, I know they can take some time, but surely, the time saved in the end for us all would be worth it.  Pop that info into a secure database and be done with it, I say.

We’ve been on the road for the last couple of weeks.  We went to the beach and then were home for 24 hours before heading off to London.  The trip was a gift from my dad (Thanks, Dad!) and we stayed with friends of his outside of London.  It was exceptionally nice of them to put us up for a week.  The kids had a great time even though we shuffled them off to every tourist attraction possible.  We did the Eye of London, the Tower of London, and the Natural History Museum.  We also made a trip to Oxford and to Hampton Court.  Now it’s back to reality, with some housework to catch up on, school forms to fill out, and more.  Half the summer is really gone (at least for me).  It feels weird.  I hope everyone else’s summer has been relaxing and fulfilling.

Tomorrow, the kids finally–finally!–are done with school.  I’m not entirely sure why school dragged on so long.  People are claiming we didn’t even use all our snow days, so that doesn’t quite explain it.  Of course, Labor Day was late this year, so that partially explains it (given that school begins the day after Labor Day).  It’s really been kind of silly.  Geeky Girl hasn’t done all that much for at least a week.  Geeky Boy does have exams, but things seemed to slow down the last week or so, with little homework.

We’re looking forward to some much needed rest and relaxation.  In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be traveling a bit.  When we return, I’ll give you all the lowdown.  After that, we’re pretty much done for the summer.  We’ll squeeze in a visit to relatives late in the summer, but otherwise, we’re going to just be hanging out at home and the pool.  I’ll be doing a little bit of work to prepare for classes in the fall, but I’m not that concerned, given that I’ve already done a fair amount.  I’m really going to try not to work too much before my official start date.  I know things will be busy enough once work begins.  We also have a lot of other things going on this summer, which I’m not quite at liberty to reveal just yet, but I’ll let you know.  In the meantime, stay cool, and I’ll be back with more news in a week or so.

There have been many, many discussions around the interwebs about housework and being, specifically, a scientist.  Mostly, the discussion has centered around the idea that women more than men worry about balancing work and life, about an equal distribution of labor in the house, and therefore they write about it a lot and articles about work-life balance are often directed at them rather than men.  Janet, aka Dr. Free-Ride, has a nice collection of links as well as a write-up of her own.

I think about work-life balance a lot.  I think about housework way more than I should.  When I think about them, I recognize the cultural norms I’ve internalized that make me care about that stuff more than Mr. Geeky does. And while I’ve become more comfortable about bucking those norms, they’re still there nonetheless.  The shift to my being mostly in charge of the house, whether I actually do all the actual work or not, has been somewhat gradual, but is also an effect of two main things: 1) upbringing (both mine and Mr. Geeky’s) and 2) the job market.

In the area of upbringing, both of us have similar experiences.  Our mothers were responsible for keeping house and taking care of children.  In my upbringing, a couple of things happened that shifted my experience away from the typical gender labor distribution.  First, when I was born, my father was in law school and it was my mother who went off to work to support the family.  My father stayed home with me when I wasn’t being cared for by paid help or friends and relatives, which during the summers, was almost all day.  Though I couldn’t bring any of the details of that time to life now, almost 40 years later, it certainly had an impact on me.  Second, my mother hated housework so that, even once she quit her job (when I was about 7), she outsourced the housework immediately.  I have very few memories of her cleaning.  She did do all the cooking and grocery shopping, but she mostly enjoyed those jobs.  And my dad, in addition to the standard yard work and taking the garbage out, would often roam around the house cleaning up clutter.  In Mr. Geeky’s house, his dad didn’t do anything (as far as I know from what Mr. Geeky has told me) outside of the standard male chores: garbage, yard work, home repair.  He did spend plenty of time with the kids as did my dad, though my dad changed quite a few diapers while Mr. Geeky’s dad never did.

So Mr. Geeky, while being a feminist, had as his learned experience within a household, the idea that the woman does the housework and the man goes to work and takes out the garbage.  Intellectually, he knew this was not always a fair arrangement, but from a practical standpoint, his muscle memory doesn’t automatically move him to do the dishes or laundry.  That said, when we were a young couple without kids, we did almost everything together–cooked, cleaned up afterwards, laundry, cleaning when friends came over.  It was only when kids got added to the equation that the work load got redistributed, and that’s where the job market comes in.

Everyone knows the humanities job market sucks and that was the market I found myself entering about a year or so before we decided to have kids.  Almost before I could plan a career, my career died.  There were no jobs for me.   And while, as I’ve said many times before and it’s the story of many an academic woman, I could have gone off to another place to pursue a different career, I opted to maintain my relationship with Mr. Geeky, take “just a job” and play it by ear from there.  Partly, too, because my career fizzled out, I was sort of adrift trying to figure out what to do.  I didn’t have enough information about my future to make any good judgements.  Many of the conversations I see that say, well, you (woman) should have put your career first or on equal footing with your spouse’s.  Well, if you don’t have any idea what career you want to pursue, that’s kind of hard.  Like economics, many of the judgements people make about careers and relationships and work-life balance assume completely rational behavior.  I’m only now becoming slightly more rational.

Individual couples make all kinds of different arrangements to make dual income situations work.  It’s true that sometimes those arrangements place more burden on the women than the men.  In our house, I stress way more about the housework than Mr. Geeky does.  I’m certain that some of that is internalized norms about judging a woman by the state of her house.  It is what it is and we just have to figure out a way to manage that.  Currently, this whole FlyLady thing is really working.  It requires no more than an hour of my day.  Because things are more organized, it’s very easy for me to delegate work when I need to.  It seems corny, but it’s true.  When I started doing this, I told my family, but didn’t expect them to do much of anything to contribute unless I asked them.  Here’s what’s really helping:

• I keep the sink shiny, which means no dishes in it.  And when your sink is shiny, you feel like the counters need to be, too.  It just happens.  Mr. Geeky and the kids do kitchen cleanup after I cook and I’ve noticed a real difference in the quality.  When it starts out nice, no one wants to mess it up.
• Unload the dishwasher every morning.  I do this while waiting for my coffee to brew.  It takes five minutes.  It means that I can stick dishes that accumulate throughout the day in (so they’re not on the counters).  If I’m not around, it means the dishwasher is empty and awaiting dishes from dinner, cutting down the work the kids and Mr. Geeky have to do.
• Put in a load of laundry every day.  I do this after I’ve showered, which I now do shortly after Geeky Boy does or when he leaves at 7.  I put the clothes in while my second cup of coffee brews.  So far, there’s only been one day out of 14 where I haven’t had a full load of laundry to put in.  That should tell you something about the amount of laundry we generate.  I’m also able to easily ask someone else to throw a load in.  It’s great not to be doing six loads on the weekend and feeling like a martyr.
• Fold and put away a load of laundry every day.  I do this as I’m getting ready for bed or have one of the kids do it.  Again, not having to fold and put away 6 loads or more over the span of a day or two makes it seem much less burdensome.

While I’m doing most of these things myself right now, it’s not burdensome, and it’s easy to delegate.  Things I’d like to delegate in the future include grocery shopping and cooking.  From my past experience working full time, I know that there are some nights that I just don’t feel like cooking and though I don’t mind grocery shopping, it would be nice to alternate.  So my hope is that we can come up with a plan so that at least a couple of nights a week, someone else is cooking and that Mr. Geeky makes every other grocery trip.  Aside from that, I really feel like the housework is manageable.  I took this on because it’s me that suffers most when things are not in order.  It was something I wanted to do for myself and it’s spread to the rest of the family and I will keep spreading it until I feel like things are equitable.  Philosophically, everyone is way on board with all of this.  Do I wish that Mr. Geeky was as passionate about making sure the house runs smoothly as I am? Sometimes, but I’m happy that he doesn’t work ridiculous hours, spends a lot of time with me and the kids, and does a reasonable amount of work around the house.  Nothing is perfect.  We do the best we can and when things feel out of whack, we renegotiate–and I am usually the one who has to initiate that since it affects me more.

As several people mentioned in the posts around the blog world, attitudes surrounding parental leave and household chores really need to change before there will be real equity.  Society still looks at housework and childcare as women’s work and that makes men reluctant to take it up wholeheartedly, even men who are in many respects, feminists.  Those societal pressures are bigger than all of us.  Equal pay for women would go a long way to make it possible for people to outsource housework and childcare.  Flexible work schedules, too, without repercussions, would be helpful as well.  And those are things that can be done politically, both at the national and local level.  And if men don’t want to blog about these issues, they can certainly vote and serve on committees and generally advocate for change.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The work-life balance minefield. (scienceblogs.com)
• Work vs. Family (geekymomblog.com)
• The Voices in my Head (geekymomblog.com)

Tomorrow I’ll be cleaning up in preparation for a visit from the in-laws, so I thought I’d throw something up now.  If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I have either a herniated or bulging disc in my neck, which is creating pain in my shoulder and down my arm.  I had a very nice visit at the orthopedic’s yesterday and they’ve sent me off for physical therapy.  I start on Friday.  It hurts to sit at the computer and type for very long.  I can do it in 20-30 minute stretches.

Apparently, I no longer do pain very well, or at least pain that prevents me from doing things that I want and need to do.  On Monday, I was very upset about my pain and when Mr. Geeky asked me if I was okay, I burst into tears and said, “No.”  I used to be a trooper about pain.  I barely flinched when I slammed my finger in a car door once.  Labor, no big deal.  Uncomfortable maybe, but really not too bad as far as I was concerned.  Now I’m a big baby about it.  I’ve been given permission to eat Advil like candy, which definitely helps.  I’m taking warm baths and icing and heating.  I feel confident I’ll be okay.  Unlike some people, I do tend to follow doctor’s orders.  Mr. Geeky also insisted that we get a mattress topper and new pillows, which we did last night.  We got memory foam and after one night, we like it.

On the very positive side, I was accepted to this workshop at MIT.  The acceptance rate was 18%.  I’m quite excited.  I have lots of ideas for what I want to do with my teaching, but I can always use more.

In addition, I’ve jumped on the FlyLady bandwagon, and so far so good.  I’m on day 7.  My main goal is to do only the baby steps for the day and ignore most everything else.  Some days, I’ll do the daily mission.  Today’s mission, for example, is cleaning out the fridge, something I need to do anyway, so I’m planning to tackle that after this post.  I also just left post-it’s for the kids to do some things when they get home.  My goal is to have this place running like a well-oiled machine by fall.  The best part about the whole thing is the idea of getting dressed first thing.  I had relished hanging out in my pj’s, but getting dressed–showered, hair done, shoes on and all–is pretty awesome.  I’m often done with any chores before 7:30, leaving me plenty of time to drink my coffee, catch up on news, and help Geeky Girl get ready.  I’ve always had a work first, play after attitude, but this takes it to a whole new level.  I also scheduled a pick up for all the clothes we’ve cleaned out in the last few weeks, so clearing out slowly but surely, on my way to that well-oiled machine.

Parties for this kids birthdays also take place this weekend.  Everything is arranged.  I don’t have to do anything except show up.  Next week is the last full week of school.  We’re all ready for a break and hopefully a restful summer.

Just popping up to say, this article makes me insane.  What do you all think?