Circles of love, chocolate, gifts and downtime

Today I was sent a link to Connecting Dotz … Linking people with ideas with people with ideas… and their lovely cards of the Osani: Circle of Love Game. Osani Circle. This struck just the right holiday note for me. Sitting in a circle. Feet touching, playing a the Love Game.

As I enjoy some time off with my family in the drippy, cool Northwest of the US, know that you are all in my heart, in corners big and little, in acquaintance deep and light. I wish you a new years full of learning, love and good health. I wish our world peace, wisdom and joy.

I have made donations to the following organizations in your collective names:

And for your stomachs, here is my family’s tradition – Fudge!

Put in large bowl:
(really big, big, big to allow stirring room):

  • 3 packages chocolate chips – 36 oz. total (I recommend Nestles or Guittard — don’t go cheap!)
  • 1 8-oz jar marshmallow cream (if you can only find 7 oz jars, that’s OK)
  • 2 cubes butter (buy a brand name — sometimes the cheap stuff is full of water and it will ruin the fudge — very sad)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Have ready at hand:

  • 2 cups chopped nuts (optional — you can even add coconut!)

Put in large kettle:
(again, I mean big – the mixture boils up to four times it’s original volume as you cook it!)

  • 4 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1 can evaporated milk (not skim or lowfat!)

Bring the sugar/milk mix to a rolling boil stirring constantly. Cook a full eight minutes (timed once the mixture comes to a boil — critical!!!).

Take off heat and pour over chocolate/butter mixture. Beat with mixer until creamy. Add nuts and spread in a pan to cool. Lick the bowl and beaters before washing! I like to use a cookie sheet with high edges, but the size of pan depends on how thick you like your fudge. Mine is about 13×24. My siblings use smaller pans. My mom uses two Pyrex pans. Cut into pieces and enjoy!

Now it is time for some “downtime.” Forgive me if I ignore your emails, twits and posts for a few days. Time for  meals, conversation, books, puzzles, games and just some plain ole NUTHIN!

Happy Holidays

Nancy

8 Things You Don’t Know About Me

Dave Snowden tagged me over on Cognitive Edge with the “8 things you don’t know about me” meme. (Dave, thanks for the compliment of interesting-even-when-we-disagree – I feel the same about you!) I was so gobsmacked that Dave did these memes, that I’m responding, even though I often take a pass.

Like Dave, it is hard to think of things that many of you don’t know about me, especially those who have hung in as readers over the past 3.5 years of blogging. It is a revelatory medium. But heck, here it goes:

First, the rules:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules
2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself
3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged

Hmmm…

1. I was an exchange student for a year in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1974-75 (I still have some residual Portuguese in my brain.
2. I was in many musical theatre productions from high school through college, most often the colorful, character roles (alto, and yes, I used to tap dance too!). I had one romantic lead, but she was a feisty one (Barbera in “The Apple Tree.”)
3. I played guitar (fingerpick style) and sang in a bluegrass band in North Carolina for a number of years, mostly for beer, branch water and food.
4. I am a recovering Catholic.
5. I dislike black licorice.
6. I have a bit of fear of heights.
7. I need time for my “closet introvert” (despite the fact that I can be very extroverted, but I suspect a lot of that is learned behavior.)
8. I wanted to design and build an underwater city at one point and that led me to majoring in marine botany in university.

So who shall I torture with a tag? How about some people I don’t link to often. A little exposure can be lovely!

1. Michelle Laurie (budding blogger!)
2. Michael Clarke (international development blogger)
3. Honoria Starbuck (look at her art!)
4. Janet Ginsberg (read her germtales!)
5. Gabriela Avram (community of practice blogger)
6. Steve Dale (CoPs, community and public sector work)
7. Caren Levine (new community blogger)
8. Dave Burke (a coder blogger)

We’ll see who follows their vanity feeds and see’s the tag!

Photo by LinBow

Safety, Inclusion, Contribution, Play and the Culture of Love

Take a minute to read this great post from Bob Sprankle (who says he is an elementarytechnology integrator – wow, that’s a new one on me!) What We All Want. Bob shares the results of his deployment of the Pew internet student survey (the online NetDay Survey by “Speak Up,” a national research project conducted by “Project Tomorrow” ) in his classrooms, and with his family. What’s coming out of the survey? That kids care about safety, inclusion and contribution. Spot on!

For me, this is the same thing I hear people wanting from their work groups and their communities of practice. What the words mean in context varies, but the pattern is consistent. Well, the adults also want some relief of the giant to-do lists and endless expectations their work puts up on them. They want safety in that they want to be able to be heard, to have time for reflection and quality in their work and learning, despite high output expectations. (This is not to be confused with the culture of fear that has taken hold of my country. The word ‘safety” has been pretty warped lately!) They want to be part of something and to be a contributor to that “something.” They want their work to matter.

Bob then goes on to talk about the importance of play in learning. Again, this shows up in the adult world, but we still seem resistant to talking about it using that old “P” word. As if it were wasting time and keeping us from the giant to-do-lists that are eating us alive.

As we roll towards the end of the year, it is useful to remember that learning, knowledge creation and sharing, innovation, yes, even productivity, relate back to these four things: safety, inclusion, contribution and play. Together, these make great descriptors of a culture of love.

I’m not sure I’ll be blogging much over the holidays. I have one post that I’m working on, but just in case, Happy Holidays – may they be filled with safety, inclusion, contribution, play and a whole lot of love.

Hat tip to Stephen Downes for spotting Bob’s post.

Repost: Blogs and Community, Launching a New Paradigm

One of the hassles of moving between blog software is the difficulty of finding old stuff in the archives. Today someone was looking for this article, Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community? and it was really hard to find. So I’m “reprinting” it here on the WP part of my blog for easier future finding!

Blogs and Community – launching a new paradigm for online community?

First published 2006 in the Knowledge Tree
Edublog award winner, best paper, 2006

In September, the following article of mine was published on the The Knowledge Tree. I decided I’d like to have a copy on my website, so I’m reproducing it here. I’ve added a little postcript to the end. Plus I learned yesterday that the paper was nominated for an Edublog award. More on that in a separate post.

Just a note to those seeing it as I first put it up, I have some work to do to put the graphics on my site, so it may be funky till I work out the tweaks. The tables about 3/4 of the way down are easier to read in the word/PDF versions. I’ll also get a PDF up here as well, but in the short term I’ll link to the copies on the Knowledge Tree site!

For downloads of hard copies (word and pdf, go to the Knowledge Tree site. Click to access the recording of the live gathering and conversation in which we furthered this exploration.

Continue reading Repost: Blogs and Community, Launching a New Paradigm