The more I reflect on my Leading Online collaboration with Reshan, the more I find buried in the folds.
My latest learning extraction is that this book was such a joy to write because it aligned so perfectly with everything else that has been going on in our lives over the past year. Time with the book was time in the lab, and many of our experiments, even when they failed, fed our work and our lives:
For example:
1) We have both used Google Docs in school to organize the work of students and teachers. But Leading Online forced me to go deeper into the Google Docs suite than I ever have before; as I learned about new techniques or tools with Reshan, I immediately put them to use with my classes and teams.
2) Reshan has used Weebly in the past, but I have not. Now that I am learning about it (as I use it), I have developed a list of ways I might use it for my upcoming creative writing class.
3) By creating a book project that includes a bunch of other professionals, Reshan and I have also been exposed to different kinds of questions than we usually hear. When you work with the same set of people day in and day out, as most of us do in school, communication patterns become somewhat predictable. Partially, this is a result of pure pragmatism -- we develop shortcuts and shorthand to save time as we aim to meet our daily deadlines. When you work with different people, though, they don't meet your expectations or play by your rules -- and this is a great way to expand your conceptions of what is possible. Our first interaction with Beth Holland (after receiving a wonderful blurb from her) led to a great question when she asked, "I wonder if you could run a virtual book club reading via Subtext?! That could be so cool!" (The English teacher in me thought, "great, if Beth helps us run a virtual book club, maybe I can use that with my students over the summer.") Interacting with Grant Lichtman taught us that we were on the right track as he expressed his enthusiasm for some of the features in the iBook; at the same time, Grant helped to expose some bugs in one of our early iBook versions. Interacting with Dan Pink, who also wrote a blurb for us, helped us to learn about awayfind.com, a very nice way to tell people that you are "out of the office." It was instructive for us to learn that you can demonstrate a human touch even when you have automated your communication for a brief period of time.
4) And here's my favorite example: the last page of the last chapter of the book called for a picture -- something that would send the right message about using technology without allowing it to dominate our lives. We decided to take a picture of our children wandering around some statues of people that are part of an art instillation at a college near our houses. As Reshan snapped dozens of pictures, our children met for the first time. Soon they were holding hands and dancing and laughing. The morning stretched into the early afternoon, as work became play . . . as a project became family time.
So here's a secret when picking passion projects to pursue: Find projects that don't cause a disruption in your daily schedules, or rub up against your larger responsibilities; instead, find projects that enrich your daily schedules and feed your daily responsibilities.
And when people ask you how you found the time to do something "extra," just tell them it's not extra, it's part of what I do. Or, if you want to stretch their thinking a little bit, tell them that true passion projects don't take away time, they add time.
My latest learning extraction is that this book was such a joy to write because it aligned so perfectly with everything else that has been going on in our lives over the past year. Time with the book was time in the lab, and many of our experiments, even when they failed, fed our work and our lives:
For example:
1) We have both used Google Docs in school to organize the work of students and teachers. But Leading Online forced me to go deeper into the Google Docs suite than I ever have before; as I learned about new techniques or tools with Reshan, I immediately put them to use with my classes and teams.
2) Reshan has used Weebly in the past, but I have not. Now that I am learning about it (as I use it), I have developed a list of ways I might use it for my upcoming creative writing class.
3) By creating a book project that includes a bunch of other professionals, Reshan and I have also been exposed to different kinds of questions than we usually hear. When you work with the same set of people day in and day out, as most of us do in school, communication patterns become somewhat predictable. Partially, this is a result of pure pragmatism -- we develop shortcuts and shorthand to save time as we aim to meet our daily deadlines. When you work with different people, though, they don't meet your expectations or play by your rules -- and this is a great way to expand your conceptions of what is possible. Our first interaction with Beth Holland (after receiving a wonderful blurb from her) led to a great question when she asked, "I wonder if you could run a virtual book club reading via Subtext?! That could be so cool!" (The English teacher in me thought, "great, if Beth helps us run a virtual book club, maybe I can use that with my students over the summer.") Interacting with Grant Lichtman taught us that we were on the right track as he expressed his enthusiasm for some of the features in the iBook; at the same time, Grant helped to expose some bugs in one of our early iBook versions. Interacting with Dan Pink, who also wrote a blurb for us, helped us to learn about awayfind.com, a very nice way to tell people that you are "out of the office." It was instructive for us to learn that you can demonstrate a human touch even when you have automated your communication for a brief period of time.
4) And here's my favorite example: the last page of the last chapter of the book called for a picture -- something that would send the right message about using technology without allowing it to dominate our lives. We decided to take a picture of our children wandering around some statues of people that are part of an art instillation at a college near our houses. As Reshan snapped dozens of pictures, our children met for the first time. Soon they were holding hands and dancing and laughing. The morning stretched into the early afternoon, as work became play . . . as a project became family time.
So here's a secret when picking passion projects to pursue: Find projects that don't cause a disruption in your daily schedules, or rub up against your larger responsibilities; instead, find projects that enrich your daily schedules and feed your daily responsibilities.
And when people ask you how you found the time to do something "extra," just tell them it's not extra, it's part of what I do. Or, if you want to stretch their thinking a little bit, tell them that true passion projects don't take away time, they add time.